IN THE FACEBOOK AQUARIUM: THE

RESISTABLE RISE OF ANARCHO-

CAPITALISM

In their new work the research collective Ippolita provides a critical

investigation of the inner workings of Facebook as a model for all
commercial social networks. Facebook is an extraordinary platform
that can generate large profit from the daily activities of its users.
Facebook may appear to be a form of free entertainment and self-
promotion but in reality its users are working for the development
of a new type of market where they trade relationships. As users of
social media we have willingly submitted to a vast social, economic
and cultural experiment.

By critically examining the theories of Californian right-libertarians,

Ippolita show the thread con- necting Facebook to the European
Pirate Parties, WikiLeaks and beyond. An important task today is to
reverse the logic of radical transparency and apply it to the
technologies we use on a daily basis. The algorithms used for online
advertising by the new masters of the digital world – Facebook,
Apple, Google and Amazon – are the same as those used by
despotic governments for personalized repression. Ippolita argues
we should not give in to the logic of conspiracy or paranoia instead
we must seek to develop new ways of autonomous living in our
networked society.

Ippolita are an interdisciplinary research group active since 2005.

They conduct wide-ranging research on technology and its social
effects. Their published works include Open non è Free (2005), The
Dark Side of Google (2013) and La Rete è libera e democratica.
FALSO! (2014). The collective also run workshops on digital self-
defense for girls, children, academics, affinity groups, computer
geeks and curious people. See: http://ippolita.net

First published in Italian, 2012.

English edition revised and updated, June 2015.
COLOPHON
Theory on Demand #15
The Facebook Aquarium
Author: Ippolita
Translated by: Patrice Riemens and Cecile Landman
Copy-editing: Matt Beros
Editorial support: Miriam Rasch
Design: Katja van Stiphout
EPUB development: Matt Beros
Printer: Print on Demand
Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2015
ISBN: 978-94-92302-00-7
Revised and updated English edition, June 2015
First published in Italian as Nell'acquario di Facebook, Ledizioni,
2012.
Published in French as J'aime pas Facebook, trans. Isabelle Felici,
Payot, 2012.
English version originally published as a feuilleton on Nettime, 2014.
Supported by the Antenna Foundation, Nijmegen
(http://www.antenna.nl) and Casa Nostra, Vogogna-Ossola, Italy.
Contact
Institute of Network Cultures
Phone: +3120 5951865
Email: [email protected]
Web: http://www.networkcultures.org
This publication is available through various print on demand
services.
For more information, and a freely downloadable PDF:
http://networkcultures.org/publications
This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-
NC-SA 4.0).
'I started building an aquarium. It became larger
and larger, until I managed to build a saltwater
aquarium. Then I stopped and thought, either I
walk out, or I go into the aquarium myself.'
- Malcolm
'Hit a straight lick with a crooked stick.'
- Jamaican proverb
CONTENTS
In the Facebook Aquarium: Pre-Afterword

Part I: I Have a Thousand Friends, But I Know No One

1.01 Default Power, Or Please Follow the Instructions

1.02 In the Beginning was Google
1.03 The Era of Democratic Distraction-Attention
1.04 Social Dynamics: Voyeurism and Homophilia
1.05 Psychological Dynamics: Narcissism, Exhibitionism, and
Emotional Porn
1.06 The Performance Society
1.07 Public and Private, Ontology and Identity
1.08 Privacy No More: The Ideology of Radical Transparency
1.09 Free Markets and Financial Bubbles
1.10 Free Choice and the Opt-out Culture
1.11 Substitutes for Presence and Emotional Solace

PART II: The Libertarian World Domination Project: Hacking,

Social Network(s), Activism and Institutional Politics

2.01 Online Ideologies: the Enlightenment of Google and the

Libertarianism of Facebook
2.02 Libertarianism or a Short History of Capitalism on Steroids
2.03 Technological Darwinism from the Paypal Mafia to Facebook:
the Irresistible Rise of Anarcho-Capitalism
2.04 Social networks Through the Anarcho-Capitalist Lens - or the
Management of Sociality in the Era of Big Data
2.05 The Hacker Spirit and the Disease of Anarcho-Capitalism
2.06 Pirate Parties, or Technology in Politics
2.07 The Wikileaks Affair: A Futile Challenge or Sensible Defiance?
2.08 Anonymous, or Out of the Box Activism

PART III: The Freedoms of the Net

3.01 Online Revolution and Couch Activism: Between Myth and

Reality
3.02 Orwell, Huxley, and the Sino-American Model
3.03 On Anthropotechnics: Reaction and Survival
3.04 Beyond the Net of Empty Nodes: Autonomous Individuals and
Organized Networks
3.05 Mass Participation
3.06 Beyond Technophobia: Let's Build Convivial Technologies
Together!

References

Thanks
IN THE FACEBOOK AQUARIUM - PRE-
AFTERWORD
This essay is a critical investigation of the phenomenon of social
media and the so-called Web 2.0. We use the example of Facebook,
but most of our analysis is applicable to all the free services on the
internet. We want to stress that our approach is anti-prohibitionist.
This is not a simple stand 'against' all commercial internet
experiences, but a description from a hybrid political and situated
approach.

The problem is not the existence of machines in general, and not

even digital cameras or social-networks in particular, but specifically
these machines that are made to control us, with algorithms
designed to record our online activites while generating profit. We
have to practice harm reduction and prevention, but we also must
use creative skills to introduce heterogeneity, and move like nomads
between the folds and crevices. Every tactic is welcome, there are
no overall answers or global solutions, but only individual, local
paths that can become collective, translated, betrayed and adapted
to different realities.

For example, the relationship with the social can be framed in many
ways that are useful: with the application of the rules of social media
marketing to political communication, with hacking, through
desertion, and the construction of the social 'other'. We like the idea
of replacing the concept of the social network with the trusted
network. We do not need to socialize more, but we need to build
organized networks with the people and the machines that we trust.

The difficulty lies in the organization, because as its name implies, it

is a kind of 'organic' matter, typical of organisms, and this process of
de-corporealization, the delegation of vital-to-the-machines issues,
already started long ago. Formation is required for all, since the
digital natives are often analog illiterates and almost always digitally
naïve users of the internet who don't absorb consumerism
antibodies at birth. For a start, they need to be trained to not leave
traces on the web, to learn social engineering techniques in order to
recognize these when they are applied to them, and to understand
their own digital alter egos. They need not be scared of the dangers,
nor excited of the compelling professional opportunities offered by
the sharing economy; or of even learning how to use commercial
devices, or worse still, filling in forms which are destined to enter
into the oblivion guaranteed by the Google bureaucracy.

We are available; above all this is an invitation to write to us. It's a

perfect time for radical critique. The group Ippolita has long since
scattered throughout the world. We come from different disciplines,
but we all grew up in the shadow of hacklab and experiences of self-
management. We use the cartographic method to describe the
morphology of the objects that we examine, depending on each
one's point of view.

The legacy of the 20th century has accustomed us to think that

social control pertains only to the political, but it has long since
become primarily an economic question of commercial implications.
It is no coincidence that the NSA has made use of the collaboration
with Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Apple and so on, to obtain
data for the surveillance program PRISM. Although several
companies have claimed to be unaware of the program and have
refused to make such information automatically available on a large
scale, it is easy to understand how their data storage capacity
makes them the only credible partners to expand the scope of
espionage. If only for the fact that these companies have been
developing specific skills in this field for many years.

The mainstream media have cried foul; indignation about the

interference of intelligence agencies, and the US government in
particular has spread. It was a historical break, there will be a
'before' and 'after' Datagate. But few really care about where this
vast quantity of personal data is stored, this data that every day is
filtered through commercial platforms. It is certainly legitimate and
necessary to protest the state bureaucracy and detest it, but those
who feed the phobia of state, weighing in on the Snowden case and
similar ones, may not be aware of the power that lies behind the
States, their accomplices, and without them the pervasiveness of
PRISM would not have the same effect. We are talking of the digital
masters: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are able
to conserve our lives as we live them, moment by moment,
orchestrating grandiose experiments with social technology where
the rules are decided in the laboratory. For example, the alteration
of the Facebook newsfeed in the 2014 experiment of emotional
contagion which has involved approximately 689,000 unaware
users. The Megamachine cannot exist without them.

The platforms are transforming into systems that govern citizens.

The overlap of the public plan with social and personal interests is
generating extraordinary forms of emotional fusionality. Commercial
social networks that are becoming inhabited are being experienced
as a collective digital body, a common good that's capable of
embodying the global public opinion. Users who for the first time
are putting up with the experience of taking the public at their word
do not realize that the places where democracy is being exercised
cannot be the same as those where cooking recipes and photos
with your hair looking lustrous are being exchanged. Above all,
these spaces should not be offered to the public for free by private
companies, in exchange for profit. There is a need for separate and
dedicated places, where the rules are created by the users
themselves. Use rather than attendance is crucial, because
democracy is not a form of intellectual tourism, but a concrete
practice. If we want it to be really popular it has to be experienced
from the bottom up, in small local groups, so that everyone has time
to learn and criticize. The digital paideia business is a metaphysical
narrative; it all happens in the space of clicks tweets, and posts, the
important thing is to participate in this sort of super-consciousness.1
The plurality of individual thoughts combined and reinforced in a
single thought functions as 'the opinion of the Network', which
generates a sense of self-acquittal and gratitude.

Historically only the great monotheistic religions have managed

such a mass psychical sharing. While the big players are busy
flooding global space, new liberal transformations are being
overlooked. As you will see in the text that you have before you, it is
a variety of reactionary counter-powers, while they are declaring
themselves 'libertarian' heroes, they have nothing to do with
socialist ideas of freedom, nor with the practices historically
recognized as socialist. At this point it is important to remember the
great success that open source continues to experience. It looked
like a technical issue, of how to develop and license but instead it is
a political style. The Open Source Initiative was founded in 1998 to
promote the spread of non-proprietary software, but has in fact
served to channel the radical attitude of the movement of free
software with much success. The open attitude, which is open to
trade, had the merit of showing the commercial advantage gained
by the release of code under liberal licenses like the Creative
Commons, which has favored the voluntary free work of millions of
users.

To make the source code a public application means making it

accessible, not free. At least in theory, because when you find
yourself with millions of lines of code, to really be able deal with it, in
a hands-on way requires great human and financial resources. Free
software instead is free because rather than constraining the
applications to a license and preventing its re-appropriation, it
refers to a philosophy of freedom.

Freedom is understood as a duty, a commitment and horizon, not

an access or opening and much less as an automatic result
guaranteed by the proper license. It is a process, not a given. Of
course then we have to fall into the practice of this philosophical
approach, and unfortunately, it's often a small step from radicalism
to fundamentalism. But we know that it is easy to tell them apart.

Authentic radicalism is hindered by an unwavering skepticism about

any dogma; with disenchanted irony it observes every call for purity,
or nostalgia about a golden age that has never existed. It is willingly
silent when confronted with the media noise of the large events; it
welcomes the small well curated things. The movement that we call,
for convenience's sake, Open Data (which under the same definition
collects a number of very different practices) has its technical and
cultural origins in something very specific: Open Source. Whether
it's fighting against the excessive power of patents, registered
trademarks and all forms of the privatization of knowledge, or
making the data available that is held by public authorities, we do
not tire to point out, again and again, the abyss that exists between
Open and Free. Open data does not question the possibility of
making profit by making data public. It is a reassurance addressed
to the commercial traders: quiet, it's public data, but open, come
closer!

Sharing knowledge is undoubtedly a noble cause, but it is sad to

note how the banner of freedom of expression and circulation of
knowledge does not find a welcome reception, except when it is
technologically proven that it can produce profits. Therefore it is
very difficult to think that the big companies of the Web 2.0 would
accept not taking advantage by experimenting with user data, when
even for human knowledge to be available to the public it must
follow the laws of the capitalist market. It is therefore obvious that
companies like Google are absolutely in favor of open data, content
and access.

But even in this case it is not about condemning open source and
all its derivative models, since they are without doubt better than a
completely closed approach. However, we stress that the debate
about technology is in fact dominated by a fixed and seemingly
immutable horizon, that of capitalism. Beyond the blackmail of
survival, which certainly neither the developers nor the leaders
address, is there something we do not want and do not have to sell?
What is a common good if it is not something that you do not sell
and do not buy? The data managed or held by the governments is
similar to the natural heritage of a historic geographical area; in on
other words it is as if Italy would put one of its art cities on sale,
arguing that it is a necessary and inevitable market opening. The
data in question involves the physical bodies, cultural identity, social
relations, history and linguistic behavior of real communities.

From this perspective, the push towards an open society, in

Popper's sense of the term, highlights the attempt of an emergent
high-tech ruling class, capable of leading the current bureaucracy
into a new era of radical transparency, in which human data and
administrative data will be managed for free by those elites who are
able to fully profit from them. But for now the only existing
transparency is that of the users, who become more and more
machine readable. Transparency applies to the masses, not to the
systems of power, governments included. Social engineering
underlying the platforms remains concealed or denied, subject to
the prophecies of Big Data.

In the language of computers: we need to re-engineer

organizational processes and the production of sense. In the world
of social business we are all treated like criminals, even if we do not
notice. That is to say, we are all subject to the techniques of
profiling, the informatics derived from criminal anthropology.
Identifying the network of relationships, cataloguing behaviors,
understand the desires and fears of users and integrating them into
a feedback system (users voluntary improve their own cataloguing)
is the mother lode of the so-called Web 2.0. This is an order to
create targeted advertising among other things. Personal data is
used to make statistical predictions about any request coming from
a wealthy client, for commercial or political means. Every time we
use a free service we accept its terms of use, which often means
fully and unquestionably accepting the ability for external parties to
experiment on our digital body and those of other people with
whom we are in contact. We do not care about this digital body,
until an account is violated or disabled (or when the analog body
dies), and something does not work anymore. Then we realize that
there is no one to ask for help; the only option is to turn to those
who know a little about these machines, the geeky friend, or worse
still, the informatics consultant on duty whom we are beginning to
rely on. So we slowly drink the bitter cup of total technological
delegation in which we are stuck and we can confirm this every day.
Most of us no longer own our data, at least not in name, it is stored
somewhere else on cloud services rather than on the hardware that
we have at hand. In the Panopticon of the commercial society we
compete to generate as much 'authentic' material as possible, in
redundant Facebook posts or distilled into smaller and smaller
spaces like a perfect 140-character tweet.

Each of us is a unique and changing being and it is this ineffable

uniqueness, combined with the desire to emerge, which feeds the
machines. The combination of our differences becomes fuel for bio-
political control, and we simply become biomass. In this way
capitalism can extract value directly from the human capacity to
generate meaning, regardless of the distinctions between sex, race,
age and social belonging. By subjecting a diverse range of
individuals to profiling algorithms it becomes possible to improve
the system of prediction, indefinitely. In all this there is nothing new
that the legacy of the 20th century had not already delivered, at
least in theoretical form. No apocalypse, we are still very much in
the old Europe and despite everything we have the necessary tools
to recognize and challenge the formation of toxic narratives like this.
The prophecies of the self-realization of Big Data were already
around in Delphi five hundred years before Christ, when predictions
in the form of prophecy had become a political device.

Unable to stop the moving train just a few will decide to get off. An
economic-social class division is beginning to take shape at the
horizon, not only in regard to the constant and sterile threats to net
neutrality, an absurd logic that never existed and can not exist, just
like privacy, but also in the sense of access to services. On the one
hand there will be those of the A type, partially protected and paid
for by the elite who understood that using Gmail to manage their
own affairs is a bad idea; on the other hand those of the B-type, the
uneducated masses, shaped by social media filled with advertising
and subjected to marketing and profiling. The dynamics of privacy
by payment could be the same as the old virus and anti-virus
model: who produces the former will also produce the latter.

We are not alone, there are those who begin to smell a rat, and
have already been working for some time on digital self-defense.
Self-defense is to be self-consciousness, of one's own history and
proper limits, a way of learning how to manage personal resources
in a common world. To transform personal vulnerabilities into many
strengths, without yielding to a militaristic, Manichean narrative. For
example, many teachers, educators and trainers have found that to
intervene in the study of technology in order to train individuals, it is
necessary to recognize that commercial platforms should be
structured as pedagogical settings. They are beginning to criticize
the system in ontological terms.

Technologies are tools, not data. All technologies embody and

incorporate the ideologies of the people who created them. In the
case of highly complex and popular technologies, the ideological
effects appear as always in place, i.e. natural conditions, while in fact
they are absolutely artificial consequences of the adoption of those
tools. We met those involved to convey the passion for knowledge,
halfway between philosophy and technique, creating workshops
and playing, to imagine a new digital paideia. We found that a
motivated teacher can be as determined as a hacker.

As we said at the beginning, this is above all an invitation to write,

discuss, and make direct action. It's a perfect time for radical
critique.
Ippolita, Naples, 2015

Translated by Cecile Landman

1. Paideia (παιδεία), refers to the training of the mental and physical faculties in order
to produce a broad and enlightened outlook. Paideia includes physical, moral and
intellectual exercises as well as socialization in order for the individual to become a
successful member of the polis. back
PART I: I HAVE A THOUSAND FRIENDS,
BUT I KNOW NO ONE
1.01 DEFAULT POWER, OR PLEASE
FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS

Facebook has now almost reached the one billion users mark
worldwide, Windows Live Messenger, Twitter and LinkedIn host 350
million, 330 million and 130 million accounts, respectively.1 Google+
has also made a splash in the market. These numbers are
constantly rising, while new social networks appear almost daily.
This phenomena is not exclusive to Western or democratic
societies; tens of millions of Russians have an account with
Vkontakte; Chinese social networks like Qzone and Renren, which
are closely controlled by the authorities, have over one hundred
million users; the Iranian government sponsors Cloob, etc. An
overwhelming majority of all these users accept the default settings
of the platforms offered by the social networks. When these settings
are modified, as often happens (e.g. in 2010 when Facebook revised
its privacy settings, not once, but several times) almost all users
adopt the new settings without dissent. This is what we call 'default
power': the ability to change the online lives of millions of users by
simply tweaking a few parameters. For the networks owners
anything is possible, whether it is closing down the pages of cat
lovers or censoring risqué photos.

Next time we log on our online profile may appear radically

different, as if the décor in our home had suddenly been
rearranged. We should always remember that when we talk about
'mass social media', nobody wants to be part of this mass. But when
we use these networks we are the 'mass' and the mass is subject to
default power.

1. All statistics in this translation are reproduced from the original Italian edition:
Ippolita, Nell'acquario di Facebook, Milan: Ledizioni, 2012. back
1.02 IN THE BEGINNING WAS GOOGLE
In early 2006, when the Social Web was just for the select few (in the
US, Ivy League universities and Stanford were just beginning to
embrace Facebook), Ippolita published Open non è free ('Open
Does not Mean Free').1 We argued that open source and free
software are not the same thing. Freedom comes at a cost while
opening up to the market can be highly profitable. Our reception
was modest at best, as our approach was largely philosophical at
the expense of simplicity. This is because it was becoming apparent
that we were witnessing a paradigm shift in the digital world from
epistemology to ontology. The 'what' (what you know) was rapidly
replaced by the 'who' (what you are). In other words, management
of knowledge was becoming management (and construction) of
identity.
But the subject matter was of paralyzing complexity, and worse still,
of little interest to the general public. Debating the transformations
in IT for the benefit of a handful of specialists was a pointless
exercise. Therefore our new task became a critique of the largest
actor in its domain, the most popular and versatile search engine,
Google. Google's mission, a dogma preached by many digital
evangelists, is the organization of all of the information in the world.
As stated by Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of the Mount View giant,
Google is a global IT enterprise valued at 'a hundred billion US
dollars'.
But Google is just one example of what is becoming increasingly
common, namely people delegating their '(re)search choices' to a
hegemonic subject. Google's vision of the future finds its clearest
expression in the 'I am feeling lucky' button: a technocratic subject
who shares my desires and realizes them. I am what Google knows
of me: I trust Google with everything; my ontology is Google's
epistemology. My online searches and browsing, my contacts and
my preferences, my emails, pictures, private and public messages;
everything that makes up my identity is being taken care of,
managed 'for my own good', by Google.
Thanks to its copyleft distribution, The Dark Side of Google, has
been translated in several languages.2 Yet, even as Google is still very
much discussed, no new analysis has managed to overcome
specialist concerns and address the larger public. On the other
hand, there are an increasing number of studies published on
indexing algorithms and manuals on Google's ten new services that
enable users to generate wealth. But nobody has attempted to
break through the banality of the new service documentation. Cloud
computing is now affected by FOG (Fear of Google), the dread that
an information monopoly becomes a threat, not only to individuals,
but also to private companies, state institutions and international
bodies. But what is actually being feared? There is a growing angst
about the possibility of an emerging rhizomatic control by
businesses and administrations, (in earlier times we would have said
the military-industrial complex). Semi-authoritarian governments,
but also anti-trust commissions, firms and individuals have taken
Google to court in cases where millions of dollars are at stake. Yet,
in the age of the triumphant 'free market', it shouldn't be that
difficult to grasp the fact that 'gratuity' means that the services
provided have to be funded from somewhere else: in this case
through increasingly perfected control. Someone must be able to
'know it all', in order for sophisticated account holders to 'own' their
unique, customized object, and feel really 'free'.
Has anything changed since 2006? Not really, the dozen or so new
services offered by Google have only confirmed the totalitarian
nature of a project aimed at 'organizing all the world's information'.
Google embodies more than ever the global 'webization' of the Net.
Its weapons are always the same, simplicity and efficiency,
academic-inspired 'excellence' (Stanford, Silicon Valley), soft
capitalism (rewards, brand and corporate identity), exploitation of
open source code, etc. Sure, Google now seems old, panting to
keep up with the 'new actors of the Web 2.0' and belatedly joining
the 'social networking' fray. The 'good giant' definitely did take a
'social' turn with Google+ but only after the catastrophic failure of
Google Wave and Google Buzz. Google+ 'circles' (of relationship)
were promptly copied by Facebook in an attempt to silence its
critics regarding the rather tricky subject of its privacy management.
In the meanwhile, more aggressive competitors have gained
positions of power.

1. Ippolita, Open non è free, Milan: Eleuthera, 2005. back

2. Ippolita, The Dark Side of Google, trans. Patrice Riemens, Amsterdam: Institute of
Network Cultures, Theory on Demand #13, 2013. Available from:
http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/no-13-the-dark-side-of-google-
ippolita/. back
1.03 THE ERA OF DEMOCRATIC
DISTRACTION-ATTENTION
Web 2.0 refers more to a new mode of behavior than a set of new
technologies. We must stay online all the time in order to: chat with
friends, post pictures, text, videos etc., share everything with your
community, stay connected, be part of the 'zeitgeist' of the online
world.1 'In a word we must 'share'. Perhaps the greatest hoax ever
invented and yet, one that has had extraordinary success. Emails,
IRC chats, blogs, mailing lists, feeds, peer-to-peer, VoIP… Wasn't that
enough to share? No, because according to the belief in unlimited
growth, which is the gospel of Californian turbo-capitalism, one
always needs more, bigger (or smaller but more powerful), faster.
We are all afflicted yet enthusiastic followers of today's ideology. Our
new phone is more powerful than our old desktop computer and
our laptop has a greater capacity than the old server at work. Our
new email allows us to send attachments larger than all our
previous messages combined and our new camera has better
resolution than our old TV.
With Facebook, the ideology of 'we want it all but faster!' has
entered a new, quasi-religious phase. Salvation is the promise and
'share and thou shalt be happy' is the message. With over nine
hundred million users in May 2012 (i.e. the population of Europe
and the US combined) exponential growth, a global phenomena yet
organized in groups of 'friends', Facebook could not escape the
attention of Ippolita. A radical critique of Facebook is essential, not
only because we should always aim for the largest target but also
because it informs the tactical approach of Ippolita. We want to
develop new technological instruments of self-management and
autonomy, not imposed by the dictates of a refined theory, but with
a basis in daily use, abuse and subversion of the technologies that
form our current networked world.
Now, if you are Facebook addict (or LinkedIn, MySpace, Groupon,
Twitter, etc.) to the point of not being willing to take a closer look at
what is happening behind the scenes, then you probably should
stop reading here. Our aim is not to convince you that Facebook is
evil, but to use it as an example to understand the present. This is
not an objective investigation, on the contrary it is subjective,
partisan and based on a very clear assumption: Web 2.0 lead by
Facebook, is a phenomena of technocratic delegation and is
therefore dangerous. It doesn't matter whether the instruments
themselves are good or bad, or whether we love or hate them, and
it doesn't matter whether we are captive and deluded users or tech
savvy geeks.
The key assumption that underlies all research conducted by
Ippolita is very simple: to connect to a network means tracing a line
between a point of origin and another point. In a sense, it is the
same as opening up one's window to another world. It is not always
easy to engage in exchanges or to open up, because neither is
immediate or natural. Specific skills need to be developed to suit
your personal needs and capacities. There is also no such thing as
absolute security – the only real security is to avoid connecting at all.
But since we want to get in touch with others and because we want
to create tools to make this possible, we are not renouncing
connectivity. On the other hand, we will not passively adopt all 'new'
technology as a tool for liberation.
The 'rhizomatic' diffusion of social networks creates its own dynamic
of inclusion and exclusion, the same as we witnessed during the
boom of mobile phones. People without a Facebook account are
part of no community at all, or more radically: they simply do not
exist, and it becomes difficult for them to keep in touch. This is
especially true for those who haven't started building relationships
before the magical era of social networks. Teenagers, therefore, face
even more peer pressure to adopt these new technologies
exclusively, at the expense of other modes of communication. On
the bright side, they are usually more savvy and competent at
handling these technologies than adults. Being born into a digitally
networked world, they know the advantages and drawbacks through
firsthand experience. On the downside, they usually lack historical
memory, mistakenly believing that they are completely different
from the generations that preceded them and therefore face
problems that require totally new tools to solve them. But being
ridiculed on your Facebook wall is not so different from the teasing
that occurs among all teenagers regardless of the period or culture.
Social issues are human issues before anything else: they are always
specific to relationships and the public environment. Despite high
resolution and touch-screens, 'civilization 2.0' looks very much like
all civilizations, which preceded it, as human beings have always felt
the need to attract each other's attention. Humans still need to eat,
sleep, maintain friendships, and give meaning to the world they
inhabit. They still fall in love, experience disappointments, hope,
dream, err, harm or kill each other. In other words, humans deal
with the consciousness that their existence has its limits both in
time (the horrible reality of death) and in space (the scandal that
there are others and a world outside) – even in the era of digital
social networks. We will see that in the time of global distraction-
attention it has become more difficult to develop and implement
suitable policies, as everyone is constantly busy chatting, publishing,
tweeting, instagramming etc., so much so, that there is no time left
to cultivate meaningful relationships.
Despite the fact that body and language define the limits of human
experience, an important part of the adult population still refuses to
learn how to use digital technologies in a responsible way.
Frightened by the prospect of not being able to keep up in a society
that has fallen victim to a rampant 'cult of the youth' while
continuing to be ruled by gerontocrats with facelifts, many adults
simply don't want to get their hands dirty with digital technologies.
People who are active socially (in 'real life'): often hide behind a kind
of demotivated 'I don't understand a thing' -attitude, which comes
close to a new form of Luddism. This perception of having to work
with something totally new is further aggravated by the uncanny
enthusiasm of technophiles, who are advocates of internet-
centrism, a belief that everybody and everything is destined to pass
through the Web, whether it's about interpersonal relationships,
buying and selling, local and international politics, health, or
education. For the technophile, Web 2.0 is the realization of a
perfect world, where every netizen contributes to the common
good, primarily as a consumer.
Cyber-utopians come in many denominations. The most rabid
conservatives are the cold war nostalgics, who are still convinced
that the Soviet block collapsed during the autumn of 1989 as if by
magic, thanks to the pressure exercised by CIA-sponsored free radio
stations, and as result of the dissemination of clandestine pro-
Western publications enabled by the new technologies of the day
(photocopiers and fax machines). In other words, those regimes
were defeated by the freedom of information. Apparently an
explanation of events where the West's freedom of information
triumphed over Soviet tyranny is preferable to considering the
economic and political dead ends inherent to that system, the
mistakes made by it's rulers or combing through the pre-glasnost
archives. The approved narrative is that people behind the Iron
Curtain suddenly discover that the emperor has no clothes, the pro-
regime guns would never be aimed at them, and most importantly
Western supermarkets were laden with such wonders as to
embolden anyone who had to put up with the shoddy wares of the
communist dictatorships. So the people submissive to the diktats of
the Warsaw pact became enlightened by the subversive Western
media and rebelled to gain access to the free market.
Having established capitalism as the one and only way, the
conservatives seemingly found themselves with no more enemies to
fight. The end of history, as preached by ultra-liberal like Francis
Fukuyama, was only a sad realization in the alluring landscape of
1990s global consumerism. But China did not collapse after the
Tiananmen Square events on the contrary it launched a dynamic
race into capitalism, while keeping its despotic regime in place. Real-
time Western media did not bring democracy but did enable
Westerners to feel part of the global spectacle while remaining
ensconced in their living room couches. The Gulf War was instantly
broadcasted courtesy of CNN and later the 'Arab Spring' could be
(re)lived thanks to Facebook and Twitter. With a few exceptions, the
old dictators are still in power while a few new ones have made their
appearance on all continents. This is all good news for cyber-
warmongers, because digital warfare looks ever more essential to
the triumph of the 'free market'.
Conservative cyber-utopians are easy to spot. They will tell you that
the Web 2.0 communication tools are the freedom missiles aimed
at the heart of totalitarian regimes. They eulogize Iranian, Egyptian,
Tunisian, Syrian, and Cuban bloggers (among others) portraying
these as pro-Western agents and guerilla-fighters for the free
market, endangering them far more than they would be otherwise.
They financially sponsor foundations and info-war programs, to
defeat modern dictatorship through the power of free of
expression, spread counter-repressive systems which disrupt
censorship and provoke the uprising of the oppressed masses.
Progressive cyber-utopians are less at ease with military metaphors,
yet they still talk about internet freedom as a key concept that
needs to be underwritten by governments pretending to aim for a
more free and just society. Convinced that the free flow of
information is a major instrument for democracy, they are Web 2.0's
democratic evangelists. Insofar as users themselves generate most
of the content, they contend that democracy will follow all by itself,
as a kind of collateral benefit of the internet. In their view the
rhizomatic spread of digital automation in society shall automatically
lead to global democracy.
Whether they are progressives or conservatives the 'internet gurus'
are spreading the perverse logic of social cybernetics where
participation in Web 2.0 inevitably generates the conditions for a
more developed level of democracy. As with all progressivist beliefs,
this is based on the assumption of a linear history, benevolent
progress, and that this progression can be quantified. In this simple
utopian vision, online participation is to democracy as the GDP is to
the well being of society. The era of freedom has arrived and
authoritarian regimes are collapsing by the power of a few pointed
tweets. Meanwhile, Western societies are becoming more
democratic by the day, as citizens are ever better informed, and can
access the 'truth' 24/7, thanks to digital networks privately managed
for the common good. Connected citizens are totally protected
against the abusive behavior of corrupt governments, the
manipulation by marketing firms, the propaganda unleashed by
religious, nationalist or xenophobic extremists, the hidden violence
of certain types of social relations (e.g. stalking), and finally,
blackmail and organized crime. The cybercitizen always chooses
responsibly. Ignorance is a residual problem and wars are simply
caused by a lack of information. Even hunger and poverty will be
'solved' thanks to information abundance and free connections that
are made possible in this great space of freedom that is the
internet.
Today, we are immersed in the knowledge society. We are told that
networks make it possible for information to flow freely, as is the
case for money, and we are being promised that these flows of
information will bring us wellbeing, wealth, and happiness. We have
moved from the wealth of nations to the wealth of networks;
democracy at the global scale, connection at the local scale. But
even a quick look at the reality surrounding us shows us that cyber-
utopianism is a delusion never mind the ongoing financial and
economic crisis. Democracy 2.0 has nothing to do with an open,
liberal society and even less so with a revolutionary society made up
of autonomous individuals, capable of managing a world based on
non-authoritarian dynamics. On the contrary, Society 2.0
disturbingly resembles the 'closed society' the liberal philosopher
Karl Popper was describing as the counterpart to Western
democracy.
The enthusiasm around social networks is a classic phenomenon
that can be witnessed every time a new media technology makes it
appearance. With every new wave of technological innovation, there
is an influx of 'experts' and futurists revealing the hidden logic of this
or that technology. So first we had the press, which was believed to
be the absolute bulwark of democracy in Europe; then as the
telegraph system emerged, war came to be seen as an absurdity
belonging to an earlier dark age where people could not
communicate. Later we were made to believe that radio, a
promising technology which at least in theory, should enable
everybody not only to receive broadcasts but also to broadcast
themselves, would be the crucial tool for a new era of peace. Finally,
television held the promise of exhibiting to all what was happening
in remote regions of the world: the horrors of war, now to be
witnessed in real time, would be averted. Yet religious wars have
erupted since, and this is specifically thanks to a press bringing
modern nationalists and state bureaucrats all the support they were
lacking. The telegraph was one of the major instruments which
brought North American Indians to their near-extinction in the 'Far
West'. The radio (broadcast) was the most powerful propaganda
weapon in the hands of fascists and the Nazi regime. The same
phenomena can be observed in the genocides in former Yugoslavia
and in Rwanda. The television functions both as an anesthesia of
the masses and a pulpit for the most aggressive type of
(tele)evangelists.
Media euphoria is never a good thing, because it is based on the
idea of technological determinism and a faith in the Enlightenment
tradition for which knowledge is emancipatory and revolutionary.
This is why we are repeatedly told that information is empowering,
that knowledge and ideas are revolutionary per se and that
progress is inevitable. So why worry anymore when communication
means are ipso facto democratic? The long awaited-for revolution
has taken place through the social media which enables every
individual to personally participate in the construction of society.
Technological determinism is based on an assumed 'historical
necessity' in which individual choices amount to nothing. In this
respect it is akin to Marxist dialectics: freedom will impose itself by
necessity, since technology is free in itself, and heralds universal
human rights, independently of the people involved - just as the
dictatorship of the proletariat is inescapable. This hides the fact that
the firms behind the social media boom are not working
unconsciously to bring about an unavoidable historical process, but
are, on the contrary, actively pursuing their own vested interests. It
is not the case that privacy is an outdated idea simply because
society is moving towards the total transparency its technology
prescribes. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, etc. are the actors
bent on abolishing privacy so they can introduce the reign of
customized consumption.
Evgeny Morozov is among those rare authors to have warned
against the dirty tricks of the Net, as well as against technology-
worship and internet-centrism. The Belarusian author reminds us
that the essence of technology is not technological, but can only be
analyzed in terms of sociology, economics, political science,
psychology or anthropology. It is therefore absurd to think of the
internet as an independent, solely technological object, that can
absorb any other media discourse.
More an Aristotelian property rather than a Kantian category,
technology is a master key of conceptual and discursive discourses,
as the technological object appears to embody a virtuous attribute,
the technologicity, a manifestation of a technological idea. This ideal
finds it natural environment in the hi-tech object. This is an attribute
entirely devoid of concrete meaning, just as if horsiness was an
attribute unique to horses and humanity unique to human beings.
We need to consider these issues without take refuge in obscure
statements.
It is often argued that it is all about the use of a technology, since in
itself, a technology is neutral. This is a fallacy. Technology is anything
but neutral. Every tool has specific characteristics that need to be
analyzed. In other words, technology embeds and incorporate the
beliefs, the ideas and the ideologies of people who build that
technology. That's why they're not neutral, and that's why we can
retrace an archeology of technologies analyzing the archives of
these technologies in the sense of Foucault's archive and
archaeology. But it is also useful to look at the issue in its general
context. Technology goes with power, and the usage of
technological instruments implies a competence, which is the
outcome of specialized knowledge. This puts the user in a dynamic
of power: 'in relation to'. Even using a technology is not neutral
because it alters the identity of its user, e.g. a plumber derives his
identity as a plumber from his power-knowledge of plumbing
technology. An essential point to understand is that the
communication tools, specifically designed for online socializing, not
only alters the identity of the users, but also the identity of the
community as a whole. The use of communication technology in a
social context is a source of social power, we term 'socio-power'. By
this term we mean the following:

the conditioning forces which shape the relations between

individuals and collectivities. These forces express themselves
in the 'devices' which are now embedded in everyday
socialization i.e. all those moments where subjectivity relates
to common sense, behavior norms, judgment criteria, notions
of belonging and exclusion, and the concept of deviance. [...]
Power activates the mechanisms and certain types of
outcomes (i.e. the creation of a particular behavior) which are
analogous to those produced by the socialization process. The
differences depend on the 'devices' being used. While power is
usually visualized in specific moments, socio-power is more
holistic, invasive, and ubiquitous. Socio-power effects the
organization of knowledge and the regulation of practices.
 Therefore it should not exclusively be seen as the power to
alter another person's behavior by force. On the contrary, it is
a much more subtle, ability to shape a given course of action
and to promote or discourage certain dispositions.2

Seen from this perspective, we have distanced ourselves noticeably

from Morozov's position who, as befits a good and sincere
democrat, really believes that Western governments are on a
mission to export democracy all over the world. As socio-power is
so invasive it becomes necessary to abandon the analysis of large
oppressive systems (governments, big business, international
politics) in order to focus on small fissures and deviances that form
lines of flight. So let us not limit ourselves to a mere critique of the
interference of social media in today's society, as if it were
Facebook's fault that people now only communicate through virtual
channels. We need to dig deeper, is it only because the users
themselves are welcoming this interference and making it possible?
Our analysis should keep a proper perspective on those large,
oppressive actors who appear to be dominant and representative of
this Zeitgeist of the knowledge society. Let us refrain from thinking
that every new technological gadget is potentially a tool of
empowerment and democratization. We should remind ourselves
that it might also be a formidable tool of oppression as well.
Therefore, we will try to shed light, a bit like an archeologist, on the
historical, political, and economic rationale behind Facebook's
assertion that sharing is the panacea that will cure all society's ills.
However we will keep in mind Morozov's acute analyses on the ease
with which authoritarian regimes have adopted the philosophy of
Web 2.0 in order to better control their population. The fact remains
that new modalities of relationship between individuals are
emerging and they call for a specific analytical approach. So let us
now go into the details of what we do not like about Web 2.0, and
Facebook in particular.

1. Ippolita, Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter, ‘The Digital Given. 10 Theses on Web 2.0’,
The Fiberculture Journal 14 (2009), http://fourteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-096-
the-digital-given-10-web-2-0-theses/. back
2. Stefano Boni, Cuture e Poteri, Milan: Eleuthera, 2011, pp. 29-33. back
1.04 SOCIAL DYNAMICS: VOYEURISM
AND HOMOPHILIA
Facebook promotes 'homophily', the mutual fascination
experienced by those who feel they share a common identity -
which has nothing to do with affinity.1 Facebook 'Friends' are, at least
formally, people who come together because they 'like' the same
things: 'this is what we like' is what they express. Perhaps in the
future they will add 'this is what we don't like'. But the latter is
unlikely, since dissent provokes discussion. So we take part in the
same events. We are equals, and that is why we feel happy together
and we exchange notes, messages, 'presents', games, and pokes.
Social exchange is organized on the basis of the identity. Dialectics
is impossible, conflict is banned by design and evolution
(intersection, exchange and selection of differences) is obstructed.
We stick together because we recognize ourselves to belong to the
same identity. Deviance is out, diversity is a non-issue, and actually,
we are not concerned in the least.
From a social viewpoint, homophilia leads to the tendency of
generating monolithic groups of people who literally all echo each
other. It is precisely the opposite of affinity, where difference, on the
contrary is a condition. Difference here is even prized as the starting
point of every relationship. In affinity-based relationships, individuals
perceive each other and engage in relationships as the outcome of
a bundle of differences which suggest likeness, facilitating easier
interactions. There is no such thing as a requirement to adjust to
the group, since it is the uniqueness of the individual that creates
value, not his conformity within the group.
The logical outcome of social structuring in small homogenous
groups, consisting in a few hundred 'friends' or a few thousands
'fans' is the emergence of social dynamics akin to those of a village.
Everybody knows everything about everybody else. Social control is
pervasive and implicit in every relationship. Even if it is possible, in
theory, to set up different levels of sharing of the information
published on our profile, the actual practice is to have everything
published without restriction, and as this spreads out further and
further afield, 'total transparency' on 'the whole internet' is attained.
As per company policy, Facebook is based on the concept of
sharing, and is designed to allow you to connect with and find
others more easily.2 The underlying economic rationale of this,
which we will elaborate in more detail, is obvious: 'encouraging
people to become public increases advertising revenues. [...]
Technology makes everything more visible and accessible. The
technology is completely aligned with the market.'3
The ideology of sharing on Web 2.0 makes exposure of others a fully
acceptable and encouraged social practice and self-exposure the
golden rule of community life. Rob was yesterday at Alice's party,
here are the pics, 'like' them and share them with all your 'friends'.
Update your profile and tell everybody what you 'like', where you are
with whom, and what you are doing. Please tell us what is your
favorite brand of jeans, and what's your favorite position in bed,
with full details. You're looking for this great lube with that special
taste, now here we've got a customized ad just for you, matching
your requirements precisely, and available now!
When a group's identity is established on the basis of feelings so
simple as to be captured by the 'Like' button, iterating over and
again what one 'likes' becomes essential. But on the other hand it is
also crucial to know in real time what other people 'like' so as to
avoid unpleasant discrepancies with the common identity that
reinforces our sense of belonging. To cement the group identity
implies control of others as well as self-control. Articulating a strong
dislike of this or that, is out of the question, just as are nasty
pronouncements about this or that person who is one of the
'friends' of some of our 'friends'. Just ignoring is the right option. In
these types of relationships, creative conflict is replaced with
indifference but also a subtle nastiness where people take pleasure
in posting the least flattering photos of their 'friends'. This creates
an underground relational accounting system, where we react
almost instantly to those who are respond quickly, while sharing
invitations, comment requests and 'like' with others are simply left
as an afterthought.
Facebook offers many tools to track all the activities of users.
Facebook Connect and Facebook Mobile make it easy to stay
connected even when users are logged on Facebook, or in front of a
computer screen. The spread of self-exposure devices like
smartphones and tablets enables further cross-collecting of geo-
referenced GSM data together with increasingly detailed personal
profiles on social networks. All of this is for our own good, in order
to let us share more, faster and better. But do we really share?

1. Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin and James M. Cook,‘Birds of a Feather:

Homophily in Social Networks’, Annual Review of Sociology, vol 27: 415-444, August
2001, http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415. back
2. See, https://www.facebook.com/help/search/?query=real%20names. back
3. Erica Naone, 'The Changing Nature of Privacy on Facebook', MIT Technology Review,
May 2010, http://www.technologyreview.com/news/418766/the-changing-nature-of-
privacy-on-facebook/. back
1.05 PSYCHOLOGICAL DYNAMICS:
NARCISSISM, EXHIBITIONISM, AND
EMOTIONAL PORN
The first thing we share on Facebook is obviously our own identity,
be it through our real name, or, possibly, an avatar. Date of birth
and sex, at the moment two options only, male or female - must be
provided, to prevent the registration of children under thirteen. In
practice, whatever name is given is almost always the true first
name and surname. As the homepage states as a welcome
'Facebook enables you to connect and share with people in your
life'. It is of course easier to trace somebody if she uses her 'real'
identity.
Facebook doesn't like fake names, since it's network profiles itself as
'a community where people use their real identities'. We require
everyone to provide their real names, so you always know who
you're connecting with. This helps keep our community safe.' 'The
security of our community is very important to us. Hence we will
delete any account registered under a false name as soon as we
discover them.1 Ippolita, being a collective that uses an heteronym
while promoting the creation of multiple identities can only
repudiate such an approach. Moreover, from a biological point of
view, an individual's identity is always mutating, and a name and a
place of birth are a fairly limited as an identifier of a human being.
The self presents itself to the world as a theatre play. Identity is a
permanently under construction, it is neither stable nor
unchanging. Only the dead are fixed, living beings are not - that's
why they are living.2 But for now we will dispense of the
philosophical aspects of identity, and focus on what makes up the
negotiation of virtual identity.
The profile picture we choose is highly important. Therefore we
should post a photograph that shows us under the most favorable
angle and arouses interest in the viewer. This is our 'True Me', not
those pictures where we look tired, bored - or drunk. Embarrassing
pictures are those of others, which we will seek out, in accordance
with the dynamics of exposure and self-exposure. Everyone wants
to present their best face while seeking out the defects in others
with unhealthy abandon. On Facebook we are all Narcissus looking
at his own image as reflected by the social network. Hence it is
important to hide what is embarrassing and unfit to be told, as it
risks making one un-'liked'. Since Facebook had been originally
conceived as a speed-dating site, albeit one geared to 'fish' in the
largest possible 'pond' (yet in the very elitist manner of the Ivy
League universities, now transformed into a kind of 'mass elitism'), it
is clear that in order to achieve the maximum dating score, it is
essential to show your very best face.3
The second movement in the mirror is the image that reflects itself.
We reflect in order to please ourselves, not in order to complain.
But Narcissus' mirror image can only be a form of exhibitionism
taken to the extreme. Compulsive use is characteristic of the
discovery of a new game, especially when the game's rules require
total self-disclosure - though the more obscene parts should be
censored, since it is well-known that Facebook will terminate
accounts if found to host pictures of naked bodies. Celebrity
demands some sacrifices, yet even micro-celebrity, the currency of
Facebook, can only be obtained through exhibitionism. Fans must
always be able to connect with their micro-idol.
In the society of the spectacle, we are all at the same time
applauding spectators, and actors on the stage playing the role of
our virtual identities. It is impressive how much personal details
people are prepared to disclose just to get some attention. It is easy
to demonstrate that social network constitute a remarkable arena
of self-exhibitionist masturbation. Create a Facebook account with a
believable first name and surname (neither too common nor too
obviously false) open an email address (created on Google, and
linked to all mailing lists, newsletters and RSS feeds your alter ego
should be interested in), list where you went to college, name the
football team you're a fan of, music you like and what your hobbies
are. Send as many friendship requests as possible, Facebook will
help you discover scores of new 'friends' you'd never known they
existed. Answer with enthusiasm to those you want to befriend you,
send them links to LOLcats, offer to take care of their farmville - and
you will be rewarded with plenty of attention.4 With a bit of
'engineering' you can discover all you wish to know about your new
'friends'.
For some time now, software programs have been used on social
networks, giving users full mastery of the golden rules of social
engineering. These programs 'study' people's behavior in order to
extract useful information. They behave just as if they know things,
make errors, and lie. In this way socialbots have been able to
penetrate and compromise networks of trust on Facebook. But
there are also less sophisticated approaches that exist. Phishing for
instance, is a widespread attack method, based on social
engineering. To trap prey, you need only to issue a warning like
'alert! your Facebook account is under attack! Log in here now to
change your password!'. This way, even data that have not been
shared with everybody become accessible.
The resulting paradox becomes apparent; we live in a world where
everyone is forced to be authentic, to tell the truth about what they
do and love, to reveal their exact location and at the same time, the
opportunity opens for a predatory person to use the same tools to
be completely artificial and deceptive. The predatory user is in an
ideal situation where they are surrounded by a near infinite pool of
overly trusting, attention starved people. Andy Warhol predicted
that everybody would get her or his fifteen minutes of fame in the
end - but this is far worse than anything imaginable. We are now in
the age of diffuse celebrity, accessible to anyone, but with very
uncertain limits and demanding a relentless updating of our online
profile. We are required to have a total trust in and transparency
towards machines which know us better than we know ourselves
and advises us on products designed especially for us.
The final stage of psychological involution on Facebook is emotional
and relational porn.5 As talk shows and reality TV aptly demonstrate,
hair pulling, crying, shouting, quarreling in public and exchanging
insults, in front of a voting public is a source of perverse pleasure.
Even a total nobody feels famous. No need for any specific talent in
dancing, playing, singing or speaking in public - or to be even be
beautiful. A spectacle of unfiltered emotions in front of the camera's
gaze is enough. Facebook has intensified this worldwide project of
emotional porn by introducing transparency tools in the form of
boxes to be clicked on, forms to be completed and empty spaces to
be filled with content. What's your current marital status? It's
essential that everybody knows whether you are available, engaged,
or divorced and ready for adventure. Share your innermost feelings!
What are your thoughts right now? Be transparent!
The most amusing aspect, if it were not so tragic, is the prevalent
'blog style' format, which makes that yesterday's news irrelevant
today, allows no clear division of time. Hence, 'experience' is
relegated into a kind of ever-lasting present. The past sinks
inexorably into an obscure part of cyberspace, and nobody ever
reads the older entries, except to seek out the failings. After all,
everybody's got something to hide and social relations are based on
discretion and lies, or at least, on half-truth and omissions. But an
employer, a suspicious partner, a spyware program, or a
government to whom Facebook has sold your data would very
much like to know more about your previous life. Since you've
'shared' everything with such zeal, they will get all they want in no
time. Facebook's introduction of the 'Timeline' feature, where users
can insert images, notes, and contents relating to the period before
they had an account, answers to the same logic; namely, to make all
aspects of someone's personality visible, in a clear, linear and
sequential fashion
Here we require no depth, and no complexity, no ambiguity. We can
merely be. Non-being simply vanishes, and 'becoming' is simply a
category outside the order. Contrary to what happens in the outside
world, things within social networks simply are there, they do not
'become'. A new state is superimposed on the previous one, and
the previous state is simply deleted - permanently. Your identity is
fixed, even if it changes. What do you prefer, males or females?
Both? No, that's not allowed, you can tick one box only! Transgender
you say? I cannot parse that. Perhaps programmers are working on
new categories for the next version of the software. But if you've
changed your mind, no problem. Here's a new identity and a fresh
'status', that annuls all the previous ones. In reality however,
identities are complex bundles of qualities which are mutating,
sometimes painfully, because the memory of who we were is built
upon a process of forgetting, selection, and narrative, and not on
the total recall of a fixed profile.6 Facebook is the champion of
emotional and relational porn: be transparent! Write, draw, take
photos and make links with what concerns you in the most intimate
manner, show your emotions in the most candid way possible, for a
public that observes you in the most trivial way possible: this is
freedom of expression.

1. See, https://www.facebook.com/help/245058342280723. back

2. See François Laplantine, in particular: Je, Nous et les autres. Etres humains au-delà
des appartenances, Paris: Le Pommier, 1999 and Le Sujet: essai d'anthropologie
politique, Paris: Éditions Téraèdre, 2007. back
3. Mass elitism is an oxymoron which is the basis for many advertising campaigns. The
most prized products are sold 'exclusively' for low prices because 'luxury is a right'.
See Gruppo MARCUSE, Miseria Humana Della Publicità, Milan: Eleuthera, 2006. back
4. Farmville is one of the most popular games on Facebook, created by the gaming
company Zynga, with millions of users. The game simulates the life of a farmer,
allowing players to grow plants trees and breed virtual cattle. Objects may be
exchanged, gifted, bought and sold. back
5. Pornography, from the Greek, πόρνη porne, 'prostitute' and γράφειν graphein 'write'
or 'record'. Public representation itself, as a form of narcissistic pleasure, has the
traits of self-prostitution. An object in the public market of identity, involves
prostitution in exchange for attention. back
6. For a legal and historical overview of memory and the right to be forgotten in the
digital age, see Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009. back
1.06 THE PERFORMANCE SOCIETY
Sharing on Facebook essentially means sharing digital 'objects'
which make up virtual identities. I am my online behavior. But
spending so much time creating an online image of the self has
consequences in life off-line. The virtual identities users can
construct with Facebook's tools are generally 'flat': they lack the
depth of real identities, which are rich in shades and nuances. In
real life, before blurting out what we 'really think', you generally
weigh up the pros and cons. We don't just storm into the street to
shout out that we have been dumped, via SMS, and are now
available again on the meat market. Facebook demands unfiltered
action – and this 'sincerity' often amounts to naive stupidity.
But human feelings are far more complex. Literature, the arts, and
creativity in general all show the extraordinary capacity of human
beings to create shared worlds. There is a high risk that mass
participation in social networks won't lead to 'collective authorship',
but to a swarm of totally superficial interactions. As Michel de
Certeau argued it is time, and time only, which makes it possible to
shape the everyday world 'below'.1 When you do not have a place of
your own and act on the territory of others; even if you cannot
implement a long-term strategy, you can still resort to tactics. So in
theory, personal time can be used to build up significant
relationships, in other-directed contexts such as social networks,
whose rules are not established by users themselves. But even the
most sophisticated, subversion tactics in the use of social media
tools very rarely result in genuine zones of experimentation. Almost
always free time is reappropriated by the digital spaces and diverted
towards profit generation. Hence, an increasing number of people,
and that include technophiles, are beginning to understand that
there is something fundamentally wrong with the current system. As
artist Richard Foreman has puts it: 'we've been pounded into
instantly-available pancakes, becoming the unpredictable but
statistically critical synapses in the whole Gödel-to-Google net.'2 For
sure, speed is a two-sided sword. The illusion of immediate search
results on request (Google) and of immediate sociality on demand
(Facebook) reduces the depth of book culture and also the
possibility to build up a signification-rich world. Richard Foreman
asserts:

But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement

of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving
under the pressure of information overload and the
technology of the 'instantly available'. A new self that needs to
contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural
inheritance — as we all become 'pancake people' — spread
wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of
information accessed by the mere touch of a button.3

Individual interiority empties itself here in order to completely pour

itself again into the vessel of digital exteriority. This process is
related to external stress, that is the permanent pursuit of
significant responses (in terms of knowledge) and worthwhile
contacts (in terms of affect) sought out by individuals. The networks'
responses, as they are given by mechanical appliances (computers,
cables, infrastructures) and content devices (software programs),
belong to the scientific domain. But as Feyerabend notes where
science wants to impose a single truth, it displays the quality of the
religious.4 As the mother of technical thought and technological
objects, it is like a gas that saturates any discursive space, by
imposing itself through the proselyting methods which have been
invented and perfected by the world's most ancient and universal
hierarchy: the Catholic Church. Just as a good shepherd takes good
care of his flock, so does the modern technocrat cater for all the
needs of his sheep, provided they are docile and transparent,
sincerely declare all their concerns, and embrace the Gospel of
digital society. What is new is that the sheep now need to actively
self-define themselves according to the criteria that have been put
at their disposal. They do not constitute an indistinct mass, yet their
identities differ only minimally, and these variations are defined by
very clearly specified criteria. That is the only way digital
technologies can offer a personalized and immediate truth
satisfying all the users' wishes at the same time. Google, Facebook
and the other lesser deities of the economy of search and attention,
are therefore all minor hypostases through which we celebrate
scientific religion and the rituals of emancipatory technology.
We are impatient to learn what the search algorithms have ferreted
out for us. Even if we are in a hurry, and if a few seconds less or
more appear of vital importance, we still remain in control. This is
because the sociality provided by Google and Facebook has
managed to make us acquire a phenomenal amount of self-control.
We anxiously check out our email several times a day, we
sometimes even maintain more than one mail account. We monitor
our Facebook wall and keep watch over the feedback of our
followers on Twitter. We make sure that we haven't missed any
message on our smartphones, tablets and GSMs, all while we plug
into Skype, MSN, or any other chat system. This is what turbo-
capitalist sociality looks like and it forces us to control and
compulsively retouch our digital profile in case we fall short of the
'world outside'. We verify that we exist because if we aren't here and
there (and now), it is proof that we do not exist. 'Self-control' in its
primary sense of 'controlling oneself' has become a second nature,
an automatic reflex induced by the presence of technological
objects through which we partake in a global technological system.
We expect people to answer our mails, react to our posts, we want
to be recognized, and 'tagged'. We want a lot of attention, but we
get only crumbs and snippets of time, of the same quality as we can
afford to give to others, who are like us far too busy, with the
creation of a digital alter ego. Welcome to the performance society!
Despite being less codified than your run-of-the-mill religion, the
superstitious rituals that accompany the daily use of digital tools is
the seasoning for the tasteless fare online. Meanwhile, the control
mechanisms put in place 'for our security' are militarizing all
outdoor space and now are monitoring all online behavior too. As a
consequence, the 'inner space' of Foreman's 'pancake people' is
extremely circumscribed, as they live in fear of losing their 'friends',
acquaintances, and followers.5
Techno-enthusiasts, would like us to believe that distracted-
attention generated by the sheer number of web users can easily
be converted into cash revenue. In the knowledge economy, the
more people who bring in their own expertise, the greater the total
amount of wealth generated. But it is not true that people today
have more real knowledge. To know everything about a sitcom,
celebrities, the latest fashion trend in Soho when you live in East
Oslo, does not amount to knowing more or to a superior form of
knowing. We do not become any wiser by keeping up-to-date with
our digital 'friends' on Facebook or followers on Twitter. The sum of
this knowledge only serves the purpose of accelerating digital
processes. Raoul Vaneigem's ecstatic assertion, “say anything,
nothing is sacred” is trivialized by the mass of banalities circulated
on social networks. So everything become semi-sacred and semi-
trivial, every utterance is 'equipollent' (equivalent in significant)
because it appears as if nothing truly new can ever be said.
Yet not all knowledge is equal. Nor is all equivalent. It's true that my
old aunt Margaret may never be able to handle a smartphone or a
VoIP – though she might learn it if she received personalized
instructions. But she knows how to live in her world, which
continues to be the real world for the largest part of the world's
population, and also for us, even though we tend to forget it when
seated in front of our screens. Is there so much of a difference
between repairing a leaking tap at home, mending socks, or
listening to a friend and learning how to post messages on one's
Facebook wall? But why is it called a wall? Is it because it is an
infinite space for graffiti? The two aforementioned types of skills
might have a comparable degree of complexity, but both are very
different. The first type makes individuals more autonomous, the
second type is a form of knowledge-power that is entirely
dependent on productions which are heteronomous (i.e. led by an
other person's rules) vis-à-vis the world outside. This holds
particularly true for those users who haven't got any clue about how
Facebook works, technically speaking (and who therefore have zero
autonomy with respect to the tool), even though they make
compulsive use of it. When rules change, by virtue of 'default power',
on Facebook, or on the platform I use to build up my identity, I
become confused, and as a user get lost since what I have mastered
has become useless knowledge which I now need to update. In a
certain sense it's me that has become outdated and require an
upgrade in this permanent education process where you learn
strictly nothing save to know how to adapt to the system. When the
organization of the personal account is altered by the service
provider 'in order to enhance the user's experience', it is the identity
itself which is shaken up. But how can we oppose the programmed
obsolescence of expertise, if nothing that exists in the software
really depends?
The very concept of opposition and critical attitude becomes
obsolete, as well as the ability to seek alternatives. The articulation
of thought is sucked away by the speed of change, the escape
velocity required to flee the inconsistency of the sociality that is
being created. In the next chapter we will see that this new sociality
is part of a very explicit ideological project: anarcho-capitalist
fundamentalism, a project that completely resonates with a vision of
technology as liberation and salvation. The words used to represent
users' online experience tell us all that we need to know about the
hollowness of the myth of digital participation. 'I Like', 'FirstLink',
'Click Here', 'What Are You Thinking Right Now?' describe reactions
which are not even bidirectional but only one-sided. On Facebook
you can expresses your tastes, but criticism doesn't make any
sense. The most common rejoinder being: 'well, if you don't like it,
why you would you go there? Everything is online, so you're entirely
free to choose what you like'.
But freedom is not the same thing as a free choice between black
and white. Rather free choice is a constructive process, which, when
undertaken without necessary nuances, leads to absurd
simplifications. 'Voting' procedures may sometimes be
implemented, e.g. on Amazon recommendations, or regarding the
evaluation of Wikipedia entries. The pooling of these resources and
their analysis is used to establish rankings that is to organize the
results according to values expressed by users, which are bound to
change over time. We will return to this in details later on, when
talking about confidentiality and profiling. The evangelists of digital
democracy will argue that online expression of preferences will deal
with the 'dictatorship of the majority' issue once and for all. This
problem is most apparent in what is the world's most widespread
ranking system: Google's PageRank. In the beginning each and every
link to a site was considered to be one single preference, or 'vote'.
Therefore search results were those that 'had been vouched for by
the majority'. But very early on these simple algorithms were
contextually tweaked through the diktats of a global algorithm,
TopRank, which is based on individual data profiling (earlier
searches, browsing, history, locale, etc.). Here appears the ideology
of a very specific kind of transparency, which can only be achieved
by pilfering individuals' data on a grand scale, and throwing their
inner life into the vortex of an online system. All these contents
gathered through tracking procedures, are separated into smaller
and smaller subsections enabling ever more finely preferences-
atuned services and product for the individual web user.6
Algorithms can semi-automatically extract an appropriate response
to any request expressed by other users 'likes'.
The spatial metaphor of an 'inside' (individuality) vs. an 'outside'
(collectivity, network) is useful in order to grasp the fatal error of the
technological miracle, which is a distinguishing feature of the turbo-
capitalist dystopia. The knowledge amassed in the 'outside', a.k.a.
'Big Data' is illusory, because whatever knowledge is useful to
humans is not 'outside' and is also not easily transferable. Even
though knowledge can be acquired, shared, exchanged, transferred,
and rendered objective, it still remains based on a highly individual
process of the imagination. Contrary to the unreflective total recall
of digital devices, identity building is a process where we continually
shed knowledge, and memory, in order to recreate it, just as our
physical body is constantly regenerated through cellular processes.
When we 'know' something or somebody, we clearly enter into a
relationship with something that is external to our individuality. But
not all relationships are equally interesting, and in need of
deepening – and neither are all links on the internet. The
dictatorship of 'zero cost' is worth exactly that – nothing.7 The 'Like'
culture has nothing to do with personal choices; it just represents a
pseudo-random judgment. Establishing a new connection is not
easy. A network we navigate can be represented as a graph,
composed of nodes and connected by arcs. The act of connecting
nodes with a new arc is not trivial. In a graph with three nodes, {A-
>B->C}, if we trace an arrows from A to C, we change this small
world: there is now a direct connection between the (formerly) first
and last nodes. It is no longer necessary to pass through the second
node, B. When nodes are people's profiles, as is the case in social
networks, establishing a new connection (or cutting a previously
existing connection) means also a change in power distribution. A
direct line of communication means more autonomy than a line of
communication necessarily passing through many others nodes.
Therefore when we assert a new preference we split what was
previously a continuum, and create new divisions of space.8 This
requires time, effort and attention. It requires awareness, because if
we establish a link, i.e. a bridge, between two points in the network,
and it is poorly designed, the link will collapse with the very first
person attempting to use it. The cult of the link is exactly the
opposite: immediatism rules: 'everything has been said before', 'it's
all out there', 'everybody's here already – your "friends" are waiting',
'your competitors are watching, while your clients are waiting for
you', etc. You need only to type the right url and you're there, 'just
open an account on this or that social network, and you'll be among
'friends'. The party is out there, out there – it's the inner world that
is boring.
We can now understand the full extent of Pierre Levy's slogan: 'No
one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge
resides in networks).'9 This is a very treacherous aphorism indeed,
both on account of what it implies, and due to its consequences.
Hence, it demands our full attention. The tripartite of 'no one', 'every
one' and 'all' can be understood in terms of a pseudo-Hegelian
dialectic. The overcoming of the limits of the individual (thesis: no
one knows everything) is via a positive reassessment of global
knowledge (antithesis: everyone knows something), to arrive at the
synthesis of the complete inverse of the external world: all the
knowledge is 'out there' (i.e. reality equals information). It sounds
entirely reasonable: since everybody knows something, everyone
just has to 'throw out' what he knows and this infinite wealth of
knowledge is now 'out there'. Participating in the construction of
shared worlds now seems so easy.
As we will soon see in detail, everything, 'out there', has been the
creation of individual minds, who are able to socialize, and become
a collective. The apparently harmless idea of hoarding knowledge
'out there' in order to exploit it belongs to the belief in information
as such10 Too bad that there exists no information 'as such', unless it
is meta-category intended to wipe off, like a sponge, the complexity
of communicative interactions. What is the substance of
information? Intangible and ethereal, digital information needs
heavy hard disks made up of metals, silica and rare earths as
support. Engineering and industry are required to manufacture the
circuits through which digital information flows around and
electricity (obtained from coal, oil, nuclear fusion, the wind or the
sun) is essential to making information available. Without extremely
sophisticated data unbundling mechanisms, information would not
at understandable to us at all. The digital world is not disembodied;
it a is material world. On the other hand, no support is external to
us. Knowledge cannot be separated from the human brains
producing it. To put it in more technical terms: minds are co-
extensive to bodies, and bodies are co-extensive to minds. It may be
that, some day, non-human bodies will be able to display conscious
mental abilities, but these will not be of a human variety.
Consequently, even if this type of external support (whether digital
or otherwise) would exist for knowledge (it already exists for
information but information is not self-conscious) it would not act in
our collective interest. The concept of automatic sociality run by
machines is an absurdity. Even without going deeper into the
argument, we are able to state with certainty that data in general,
and Big Data in particular, is devoid of intelligence. Quantity of
information does not in itself generate sociality. The quantity of
information generated by Big Data does not make it amenable to
sociability. Big Data does not liberate or empower us, nor does it
automatically make us autonomous and happy,. Collective network
intelligence is actually a reactionary dream of control. When the
collective imagination, no longer reflects on itself, it crystallizes and
produces oppressive institutions.11 Institutions are of course
necessary for social organizations, but they almost always hide their
historical origins. They do not operate for the good of people, but
merely in order to perpetuate themselves and self-reproduce,
draining the energy of individuals in the process. We can easily
imagine that the institutions that will arise from the collective
technological imagination will be even more inhumane than the
ones we have already witnessed in history. Consider the example of
digital control, that is digital policing: if it is always somehow possible
to oppose human domination, how will it be possible to rebel
against the 'external' machine that has been entrusted with the task
to ensure the law is respected?12 It is not by accident that institutions
are step by step adopting the network model and transforming
themselves into reticular organizations. In doing so, they unload the
negative externalities onto the weak parts of the network, and
manage to concentrate even more power in the process. When
institutions don't even have a public remit, or a quasi-democratic
facade, but are blatantly governed by anti-social principles, such as
are anarcho-capitalist private enterprises like Facebook, it should be
obvious that the social network being shaped is a trap.
In conclusion: in order to communicate the Self and one's own
identity, the correct approach is not to have less rules and a smaller
range of tools for everyone to use. On the contrary, it is to have
more rules, and a greater range of tools, which need to be
appropriate for a variety of specific situations, and differ according
to the type of communication being used. Only then is it possible to
imagine a greater autonomy, meaning the power to 'establish one's
own rules'. Mass participation on Facebook only sets the stage for
an illusory world where only 'friends' exist – and no enemies. Worse
still, where the best way to keep one's 'friends' is not to go out and
meet them, but to continually update your own profile in a
downward spiral of toxic social network addiction.

1. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984. back
2. Richard Foreman, 'The Pancake People, or, the God's Are Pounding on My Head',
Edge, 3 August 2005,
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/foreman05/foreman05_index.html. back
3. Foreman, 'The Pancake People'. back
4. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method. Outline of an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge, 4th
ed., New York: Verso Books, 2010. back
5. The idea, that inner space is the last space left to explore can be traced back at least
to J.G. Ballard's guest editorial for New World Science. See J.G. Ballard, 'Which Way to
Inner Space?', New World Science Fiction, vol. 40, Concrete Island, New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1998, pp. 116-118. back
6. For a short presentation of how tracking research see: http://donttrack.us/. back
7. When we get a hundred free SMS for recharging mobile phones, to be sent within
the next twelve hours, we are faced with a communicative possibility that costs
nothing and is worth nothing, neither to the sender nor to the recipient. An act of
 communication is of value only through the effort and time spent on it. Yet this
perverse offer of free communication is so powerful that it can even make us feel
guilty for not having taken the extraordinary opportunity to send hundred of text
messages in a short burst. back
8. Graph theory can easily be used to show how in the internet (considered as graph) a
new link can completely reconfigure the network itself and is therefore an act of
radical creation. For an introduction to the topic, see Albert-László Barabási, Linked:
The New Science of Networks, New York: Perseus Book Groups, 2002. back
9. Pierre Lévy, Collective Intelligence, New York: Basic Books, 1995. back
10. Manuel Castells, The Rise of The Network Society: The Information Age: Economy,
Society and Culture, Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2000. back
11. Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey,
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997. back
12. Digital democracy based on the principle of a link per vote quickly turns into a
system of retroactive recommendations (Google, Amazon, FaceBook) which
effectively militarizes networks. Services that use profiling keep repeating: ‘if you have
nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear’. They argue that the law will not allow them
use the information taken from the user to go against the user’s own interests. This
is a rather a hollow defense to hush up the truth that we have been completely
robbed of our personal data. back
1.07 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE,
ONTOLOGY AND IDENTITY
Is what is private also public? According to Facebook, everything
private should tend towards becoming as public as possible. Public
meaning of course managed by, published on, and made available
through Facebook, a private enterprise. But the social networks to
which an individual belong are not the same as her or his
'behavioral networks' (the people we meets often, but who are not
'friends' e.g. parents, children, relatives, neighbors, etc. They do not
correspond with our online networks either. Danah Boyd's writing
on social networks is a good starting point for clarification.1 The
fundamental issue always remains the same: a personal ontology
being created within a collective context. This is how Mark
Zuckerberg thinks about it:

'You have one identity,' he emphasized three times in a

single interview with David Kirkpatrick in his book, The
Facebook Effect: 'The days of you having a different
image for your work friends or co-workers and for the
other people you know are probably coming to an end
pretty quickly.' He adds: 'Having two identities for
yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.'2

We at Ippolita have always posited that identity is a place of

difference, for the biological, psychological, and cultural reasons we
have already discussed.3 With his moralism, Zuckerberg gives the
impression he is about to cut through this Gordian knot of lies, by
asserting the necessity of having one identity, clear and precise, in
order to not deceive others. Zuckerberg would like us to believe that
Facebook aims to reconstitute our identities, shattered in
thousands fragments in our relentlessly competitive modern lives,
and that he wants to give us back our lost (mythical) integrity. So he
pushes us to form a personal profile, reconciling, as in an
advertisement of ourselves: hard working, family oriented, a sexual
subject, a spiritual person, a kind-hearted character and so on.
Facebook as the platform for personalized mass self-marketing.
Eliminating identity is impossible just as it is impossible to abolish
power. This is fortunate as it is what makes evolution, change, and
communication possible. Identity should be managed, multiplied,
altered, re-created – just like power needs to be. To communicate
means to talk or write from out a specific place, that is to assume an
identity, or to built up knowledge-power. Writing is based on
language, language on identity, which in its turn is based on power.
Therefore whichever means we use to communicate, we are already
entangled in the construction of identities, both personal and
collective.
But social life, as practiced today, flawed and perfectible as it may
be, implies the possibility to circulate, at will, different versions of
ourselves, resulting in different identities for others to mirror,
leading us to adjust ourselves to new social relationships. We are
not 'the same person' to each and everyone. So the question is not
about being able to access various level of depths within a single
individual profile, but to be really different according to the
predominant situation. Despite this apparent incoherence, this is
absolutely necessary and positive for us, in order to be in
accordance with our own integrity. As we shall see later on in detail,
it is important to spread knowledge-power, by strengthening the
bonds with our loved ones, by establishing connections where there
were none before, by cutting off the dead wood. What definitely
should not be done is to solidify knowledge-power into a static
identity by accumulating data that is only commercially relevant, and
has the personalization of advertisements as its sole purpose.
In everyday life, we do not behave the same way in the presence of
our parents as we do with our children. We don't talk with our
children about our professional problems, unless for some reason,
we to make them feel they bear some responsibility for them. If we
discuss the same subjects with our friends, we would still do so in a
different manner. We do not go partying with our parents, and
certainly not with the postman. We don't have sex with our boss
either (or at least not generally). So why should he be our 'friend' on
Facebook or, worse still, share the same confidential information
that we share with our partner? Yet, the emotional bonds with
members of our own family is no less important than the affection
we feel towards our friends. We probably spend most probably
more time at work than our love life. This is simply because we have
are faced with different types of relationships, within different social
networks, each demanding a different identity.
Also we should consider the constantly evolving nature of identity.
Rebelling against parents is commonplace for a fifteen year old, but
at thirty this impulse makes no sense – and if still does persist, is
likely the symptom of developmental problems. Our friends from
primary school, the few we haven't lost of sight altogether (only to
find them back on Facebook of course) remember a very different
person. Similarly, our first love may in retrospect see us as a ray of
sunshine in their lives, while our ex-partner detests us because of
the alimony that has to be wired every month. We repay in kind by
showing only coldness and contempt; love is over, things have
changed. As we change our social relations express the changes
that makes us alive. We will list several examples to show the
perversity of the mechanisms of fixed identity that are promoted, or
rather imposed, by Facebook. These examples, admittedly slightly
stylized, and set in the feminine gender, are unfortunately quickly
becoming, or have already become a reality.
Example 1, Dismissal: A very competent young female teacher,
adored by her students, is filmed drunk at a party among friends.
Explicit pics and clips are circulating in no time on Facebook, posted
and reposted by 'friends' of 'friends' until they finally reach her
director and the college's board. The teacher is now no longer
allowed to apply for her tenure, and is severely reprimand. Her plea
that her private life has nothing to do with her work as teacher is
dismissed, and she is fired for being a bad example to her students.
Example 2, Violence: A mother tries to protect her child against her
violent husband, is beaten, and violated. After a horrific ordeal she
finally manages to escape her tormentor. She moves to another,
remote city and starts her life over with her son. The nightmare is
over. But then there is Facebook. Her ex-husband out where she is
simply by reading her messages, and by checking out an app she
occasionally uses, which gives away the user's exact geolocation. In
order to regain a private life she will have to close her account. In
her case, merely being active on Facebook can put her life in
danger.
Example 3, Suicide: A young woman is caught on video by 'friends'
while she is fellating her boyfriend in the college toilet. The clip is
instantly on line, and in no time everyone knows about her private,
but now very public skills, which are extensively commented on
Facebook. She tries to defend herself, switches educational
institution, but to no avail: her new friends are also on Facebook,
and know 'what kind of girl she is', She is constantly ridiculed,
insulted and marginalized. 'You did it, so now you get what you
deserve' is the attitude openly expressed which convinces her life is
no longer worth living. She slashes her veins in her bathtub after
having written one final message on her Facebook wall.4

1. See http://www.zephoria.org/ and Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. Harison, 'Social

Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship', Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communications, 13:1 (October 2007): 210-230. back
2. David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009. back
3. For a radical approach on identity as place of difference, see: Rosi Braidotti,
Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, Cambridge: Polity Press,
2002. back
4. There have been a number of 'Facebook suicides' documented throughout the
world. See
http://www.repubblica.it/2008/08/sezioni/cronaca/suicida/suicida/suicida.html. back
1.08 PRIVACY NO MORE: THE
IDEOLOGY OF RADICAL
TRANSPARENCY
In its first five years of 'public' existence, (2005-2010) Facebook, has
increasingly narrowed the private space of its users.1 Facebook
centers its public relations drive around transparency, or even,
radical transparency: 'our transparency with regard to machines
shall make us free'.2 We have already deconstructed the assertion
that 'you cannot be on Facebook without being your authentic self'.3
The 'authentic self', however, is a tricky concept. Authenticity is a
process where you become yourself with others, who in their turn,
contribute to one's personal development. It is not an established
fact, fixed once and for all.
But the 'faith' in Facebook is a blind faith, an applied religion,
impervious to reason. Members of Facebook's radical transparency
camp, Zuckerberg included, believe greater visibility makes us
become better people. Some claim, for example, that because of
Facebook, young people today have a harder time cheating on their
boyfriends or girlfriends. They also say that more transparency
should make for a more tolerant society in which people eventually
accept that everybody sometimes does bad or embarrassing things.
The assumption that transparency is inevitable was reflected in the
launch of the News Feed in September 2006. It treated all of your
behavior identically.4
The fact that 'behavioral' social networks and 'affinity' ones are
merged together online, is, as we have seen before, the cause of
serious problems in daily life. Yet the merger is one of the main
dogmas of Facebook, and for very specific, commercial motives: in
order to maximize the sale of online advertisements, it is necessary
that users' data are in the open as much as possible, and that their
privacy shrinks to the point of being only a outdated notion from
the past. Advertisers must be able to verify, without infringing on
anyone's privacy, that their ads have indeed reached the Facebook
pages of those users whose profiles match the hypothetical
consumer of their product or service.
All this of course is 'for our own good'. This at least is Facebook's
official stance, a mission the company broadcasts by way of
numerous press releases, interviews and road shows. But what if I
do not want to be totally transparent? Not because I have
something to hide, but simply because I don't want everybody to
know the same things about me at the same time. I have many
aspects, I am not afraid of contradictions, and I have more
resources than my Facebook account allows me to express. I like to
introduce chaos and discordance in the data that purports to define
me, I like to shake up the deck.
Or, more simply: if I don't want to go out with you tonight, I should
be able to tell you I'm tired, and that's it. I don't want you to feel
hurt, or worse still, feel betrayed when you find you discover, on a
mutual friend's Facebook wall that I wasn't at home the previous
night, but had actually had gone to a party with other friends. Social
life is far more complex than radical transparency is able to
anticipate, unless we give up a large part of us that makes us
different from others, and therefore more us interesting and
desirable to others. Otherwise we risk simply become lost in a
group where we all hold the same opinion on all things.
The personal data of social networks, such as Facebook, is stored in
the cloud, not under out watchful eye like the private diaries of the
past. Not so long ago, account holders could not even delete their
Facebook entries, which instantly became the 'non exclusive
property' of the firm, in order for this data to be sold to third
parties. Of course, nobody was talking about copyright here. Sure,
Facebook does not intend to make money with our low-resolution
holiday photos nor with our hastily posted messages. The average
user is not an artist ripe for exploitation. However, data mining
made for profiling purposes, all this material accumulating in data
centers, i.e. Big Data, constitute a serious problem.5 Nothing is free,
especially not in Web 2.0, where the price to be paid for the 'free
service' ('It's free and always will be' proclaims Facebook's start
page) is to consent to the retrieval, indexing, and exploitation of all
the data in the users' profiles, and especially of mutual relations.
But what about privacy? Online sociality is based on the absence of
the privacy, meaning on the ability to mine emails, pictures, blogs,
texts, etc.: to extrapolate key and propagate contextual and
personalized advertisements. All this data is obtained from
exchanges that are usually deemed to be 'private and confidential'.
Google, Facebook and all social networks in general demonstrate
the existence of spheres which are neither public nor private, and
which are managed by technocrats, and more particularly by
technocrats employed by private companies fueled by the profit
motive. Privacy, literally, is the right to be left alone. For this reason,
speaking of privacy in a collective, but privately-owned social
network is an oxymoron, since the prime objective of a network is
the circulation of information. When the information consists of the
identities of the people making up the network, the idea to stay out
(while being part of it) is a not an option. The only way to retain
privacy is to not connect at all.
Privacy is a chimera: it only comes becomes apparent when we
realize it has been violated. Ever since the Echelon scandal,
everybody knows that privacy doesn't exist any more – and has not
existed for a long time.6 Yet, the problem with surveillance is not so
much the disappearance of privacy, but the fact that the ensuing
control and monitoring extends for such a long period of time. Each
user has a digital 'finger print', a unique and personal identity-
marker. Being part of a network means to be connected and to
leave traces of our passage. It is the same case with phones: even if
I get rid of my previous mobile, I am most likely to call the same
people with my new phone as with my old one, and therefore, to
reconstruct my social network. If a users profile exists that looks like
exactly the same, identification is automatic and immediate: it can
only be me. The way social networks function makes this even more
disturbing, because the names of members of a group are generally
not hidden to non-members, so as not to limit the possibility of
non-members to join the group. It is not difficult to generate
identifiers, or trace-marks, at the group level, e.g. a list of all the
Facebook groups to which an individual user belongs.
Supporting the free flow of information has nothing to do with this
type of 'sharing' everything and anything in an automated and
mandatory fashion. This is not the sharing of Copyleft i.e. sharing
knowledge, free of patent laws, trademarks and non-disclosure
agreements. Facebook's type of 'sharing' is not about making
knowledge available in the public domain. 'Publishing' on Facebook,
does not make information public, but enables information to be
managed by a private company, i.e. Facebook.7
There are several ongoing studies on systems of mass de-
anonymizing and re-identification, using specifically devised
algorithms on social networks. All that is required is a map of a small
social network (relations between nodes must be known) in order to
use that information to re-identify (by their real names') the users of
a larger network. For example, knowing the set of relationships
between a group of Flickr users, and then charting the segment of
them who also maintain an account on Facebook, enables de-
anonymization of a large number of profiles on the wider network.8
There are also other methods, which are simpler and just as
effective, that demand less mathematical knowledge. Knowledge of
website building and malicious code writing allow de-anonymization
through browser history stealing and profile hijacking. Our personal
or collective fingerprint trail can easily by tracked down through the
data collected by the search engines we make use of, especially if
we never clear our browser history and keep cookies and the logins
active all the time. To get hold of this data, bait-sites are setup to
lure in users with the promise of winning free gifts or pornography.
The hidden code, java script or something similar, downloads and
records browser history, cookies, passwords, software used,
keystrokes and then cross-checks all the data obtained. The process
of de-anonymization is even easier with the help of LSO (Local
Shared Object) a kind of flash supercookie, which cannot normally
be deleted by the web browser.9
The socialbots , discussed earlier, were studied in a recent
experiment by Vancouver University researchers, which
demonstrated the limited security of social networks.10 Users, have
the tendency to increasingly 'mechanize' their online behavior and it
becomes easier to emulate their activities through bots. This makes
social networks vulnerable to infiltration by bots that spread
disinformation and propaganda. The larger the infiltrated network
is, the more effective the campaign of disinformation. The Canadian
researchers' experiment shows how social bots mimic the behavior
of real users. First they create fake profiles and start sending 'friend
requests', responding adaptively to the reactions of real users.
Within eight weeks, the socialbots had managed to infiltrate 80% of
the targets, depending on the users privacy settings, and implanted
themselves permanently as nodes in an online network of trust.
When a socialbot has got the trust of a web user it can get access to
private data, just like a human being. In this sense, our information
is even more vulnerable than if access was completely public since
other users are convinced that programs are 'friends' and not some
malicious codes designed to steal their data. This research proves, if
such a proof were ever needed, that Facebook's much vaunted
'immunity' security systems are inadequate in preventing large-scale
malicious infiltration.
According to Zuckerberg, improvements are constantly made in
order to enhance users' online security, but these do not solve the
decisive problem: user identity, understood in this context as
authenticity. In order to trust a friend, whether online or offline, it is
first necessary to ensure that she really is who she claims to be, that
is to authenticate her identity. But, for the time being, users of social
networks do not manage the authenticity of their own identity. This
verification is done for them by algorithmic systems, run by for-
profit firms which offer these social networking services for free. In
this way we arrive at the somewhat paradoxical situation that in
order to 'access ourselves', that is to access our emails, Facebook
pages, Twitter account, etc. we have prove who we are through
logins and questions. Distributed authentication systems, as used
by Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, or OpenID have a
tendency to shift the authentication problem to third parties. Are
you who you claim to be is the question an online service we are
accessing for the first time will ask. Please click here and let us
check out your data on your Facebook profile, where, as is generally
assumed, you only tell the truth. To authenticate oneself hence
means to deliver authenticity, meaning literally, to ensure that 'the
same' (autos) is 'authoritative' and that this authority comes from
the inner 'me' (entos < intus), and not from some third person
outside. In other words: autos-entos (me, myself), is the authority
for me, myself. I have created my own identity and I am managing it
myself. This of course entails that I am able to give a meaning to my
identity and that I am able to communicate that meaning in an
intelligible manner. Which in turn necessitates that users are both
autonomous, and competent in handling digital instruments. In
practice it should be enough for online services which I am
accessing through search engines to stamp (earmark) my entry,
without capturing data that has the sole purpose of profiling. Think
of the stamp you get at a music venue, without the organizers
asking audience members for their ID cards, demanding to know
who their friends are, or inquiring about their tastes and
relationship status, in short, all the information available to the
service providers which manage our online identities.
The correct ideological position here would be to protect the
authentication process itself. This is far too important an issue to be
left in someone else's hands, such as machines, institution,
companies, which all have ulterior interests in profiling users
instead of simply checking our identity and securing our browsing.
These companies all act in the expectation of being able to sell our
data on to the highest bidder in case we would represent any kind
of interesting prospect, for the police, an intelligence service, or an
authoritarian government. In the name of radical transparency, we
are consenting to increasingly accurate profiling and contributing to
the vast pool of data which social engineers have at their fingertips.
 1. See Matt McKeon's interactive graph, 'The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook',
http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/. back
2. Danah Boyd, Facebook and Radical Transparency (a rant), 14 May 2010,
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/Facebook-and-radical-
transparency-a-rant.html. back
3. David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect, p. 210. back
4. David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect, pp. 210-211. back
5. The popular term data mining is vague and non-technical. Data analysis on the basis
of half-automated systems is a vast and heterogeneous research field. To simplify, we
can say that generally data mining is not focused on the identification of real people,
but the extraction of significant correlations in large amounts of data through
algorithms, e.g. interesting patterns in groups of aggregated data (cluster analysis), or
data out of the norm (anomaly detection). Data mining becomes problematic when
the goal is to profile users for surveillance purposes - this is the specific use of data
mining we are referring to here. back
6. Duncan Capbell, Électronique Planétaire, Paris: Editions Allia, 2001. back
7. See the afterword of Ippolita, The Dark Side of Google. back
8. Arvind Narayanam and Vitaly Shmatikov, 'De-anonymizing Social Networks,'
Proceedings of the 2009 30th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pp. 173-187,
http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/sp/2009/3633/00/3633a173-
abs.html. back
9. On Supercookies LSO see: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-
your-cookies-think-again/. The Mozilla 'Better Privacy' add-on is still an effective tool
against LSO's (but not profiling). https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/betterprivacy/. back
10. Yazan Boshmaf, Ildar Muslukhov, Konstantin Beznosov, and Matei Ripeanu, 'The
Socialbot Network: When Bots Socialize for Fame and Money', Proceedings of the
27th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC'11), December
2011, http://lersse-dl.ece.ubc.ca/record/264/files/ACSAC_2011.pdf. back
1.09 FREE MARKETS AND FINANCIAL
BUBBLES
The radical transparency of Facebook users finds no equivalent in
the firm's own financial dealings, which are singularly opaque and
openly disregard the rules of the market economy. This dangerous
game has resulted in developments heralding an even larger
speculative bubble than the 'dot-com' boom at the start of the
Millennium. In our discussion we will knowingly use only pro-market
sources, such as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.
Here is a story that almost beggars belief. On January 3, 2011,
Goldman Sachs together with the Russian company Digital Sky
Technologies (DST), is in the process of investing $500m in
Facebook, while giving its richest clients the opportunity to invest in
their turn.1 Note that Goldman Sachs are, as risk assessors one of
the firms which are among the main actors responsible for the
financial crisis. The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), the
body that is supposed to supervise the financial markets, goes on
alert: one of the few rules it enforces is a limit of 500 separate
investors in off-exchange deals, above that number a company is
obliged to list publicly, i.e. on Wall Street. In order to enter an IPO
(initial Public Offering) companies need to make their accounts
public, to enable investors and potential shareholders to arrive at
an informed business decision. Goldman Sachs' route around this
'obstacle' was to create a special vehicle for a few selected über-rich
clients, while making $1,7bn profit in the process. This clearly
transgresses the rules of the market, enabling Facebook's shares to
continue being traded on the secondary market, and therefore
avoid the need to make the firm's balance sheet public.
Curiously, the firm's valuation is multiplied in the next twelve month
by a factor five, and then doubled again in the following half-year: at
the end of 2009. Facebook was valued at $10 billion, rising to $25bn
in July 2010, and to a further $33bn in August. There were rumors of
$50bn figure by the end of December 2010.2 Meanwhile, post-
dotcom Google's valuation was $23bn in August 2004 (when it
IPO'ed), but Google is at least an innovative tech firm, whereas
Facebook merely offers a mash-up of already existing technologies.
On January 20, 2011, it was announced that the Facebook IPO won't
happen after all, as Goldman Sachs got cold feet at the prospect of
a clash with the SEC. American small investors were furious they
could not get in on the deal, while über-rich speculators who went
onboard with Goldman Sachs' offer were laughing all the way to the
bank with the promise of lucrative profits.3
Facebook manages to skirt even the most minimal of financial
controls. The firm's valuation is valued at more than six times its
gross revenues (only two times for Google), and it has accumulated
half a billion dollars in cash so it can finance new investments. The
fact is that Goldman Sachs was able to finance Facebook out of its
own debts (just six months before investing, Goldman Sachs had to
fork out $550m on settling a case of fraudulent misconduct),
through luring investors with a prospective IPO of Facebook.4 When
Facebook finally came to Wall Street, it was valued at $115bn. A
great bargain for those early investors, who are bound to cash in big
time, but it is less likely to be lucrative for the small investors, as
these astronomical valuations are causing a financial bubble of
enormous proportions. Early financing for Twitter, Groupon, and all
other technological start-ups was a matter of millions, not billions of
Dollars. Yet all the same, the mechanisms which made it possible to
yield colossal profits from 2.0 start-ups' IPOs have began showing
serious structural strains. This is well illustrated in the analysis of
post-IPO transactions in LinkedIn (May 2011) and Groupon
(November 2012) shares, which we take as early signs of the
impending collapse of Facebook. The two aforementioned firms
were something of a success on the stock exchange, especially
Groupon, which had carried out the most important financial
operation in the technology sector since Google's IPO in 2004. But
soon after the 180 days anti-speculation delay before which trades
were not allowed, LinkedIn share prices plummeted. Meanwhile,
Groupon's devaluation had started immediately after the IPO, as if
the boom-bust (or creation-evaluation-investment-profit-taking)
cycle had suddenly accelerated yet again.
Obviously, these firms do not rely on artificially inflated profits alone
they are totally dependent on exploiting the data they have
accumulated from their users. As a consequence, investors have
started to have second thoughts about these firms' growth
potential. As we have learned from the ongoing financial crisis, the
growth perspective is all what matters. This irrational system is now
continuing its course full throttle, driven by the law of data. We live
in a data driven society, with our economy and financial markets
manipulated in real time through technical systems of control based
on the pool of available data. Therefore, there are more and more
opinion polls, a plethora of measurements are carried out, as if to
factor in what cannot be quantified: the social well-being, which is a
function of individual well-being. The impact of profiling system on
individuals is even more difficult to evaluate.
There are cases where the obsession with metrics and data starts
becomes counter-productive. Consider the example of Zynga, the
global leader of online games. A company enamored with metrics,
e.g. calculating the best predictive work performance creates an
oppressive environment where wellbeing becomes impossible. In
other words, if the law of machines is faster, more powerful, more
data when these same demands are imposed on human beings,
creativity withers and anxiety reigns.5 Even the financial industry has
become wary of the over-competitive atmosphere of corporations,
as they see gifted workers suffering from psychological burnout.
Zynga's IPO in December 2011 was an initial success but shares
started depreciating the very same day. In Zynga's case, profits are
dependent upon its ability to relentlessly churn out successful
games, beating previous sale records each time. But it's a bit difficult
to break records when you're already the top of your industry. As
everybody knows, work does not set free and even less so in Silicon
Valley.
It remains difficult to understand how Web 2.0 firms are evaluated
in terms of worth and profitability. But we can understand a little
more with simple arithmetic. Let us assume that Facebook's value in
January 2011 was indeed $50 bn. At that time Facebook claimed
500 million users. $50bn divided by 500 millions equals $100, i.e.
every Facebook account is worth $100. If I were a wealthy investor
on Goldman Sachs' client list who'd bet, let's say, $50m (and has
thus become 0.1% owner of Facebook), I would just pay someone to
create new accounts. Create 1000 accounts – with a lot of links and
entries (easy to do with customized software doing it automatically),
at the rate of $100 for each account created, I make 100,000. I
spend $50 on each account for 'the work' and gain $100 in return.
In case there are any rich investors among our readers, please
contact us since we know how to automatically generate hundreds
of Facebook accounts and would gladly accept some of that money
being created out of nothing! This is actually the underlying
message of so-called 'abundance capitalism': everybody's going to
get rich without doing anything, since the machines will do all the
work for us. But for the time being the machines are betting on the
stock exchange, using sophisticated algorithms, within an
increasingly competitive and aggressive cultural environment while
inflicting ever increasing workloads on humans, the latter have
turned into a vast biomass for data extraction (users), or into mere
producers-controllers for robots amassed in sweatshops. Little
consideration is given to the disastrous consequences this has on
individuals' lives. It has been proven that the cult of chance which is
characteristic of the stock exchange, enhances a positive
assessment of risk-taking and in this sense encourages
irresponsible or even criminal behavior.

1. Peter Lattman, 'Why Facebook Is Such a Crucial Friend for Goldman', New York
Times, 3 January 2011, http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/why-Facebook-is-
such-an-important-friend-for-goldman-sachs/. back
2. Joseph Menn, Francesco Guerrera and Shannon Bond, 'Goldman Deal Values
Facebook at $50bn', Financial Times, 4 January 2011,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e0dad322-173c-11e0-badd-
00144feabdc0.html#axzz1KzW89fTA. back
3. Anupreeta Das, Robert Frank and Liz Rappaport, 'Facebook Flop Riles Goldman
Clients', The Wallstreet Journal, 19 January 2011,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954004576090440048416766.
html#articleTabs%3Darticle. back
4. 'The Goldman Sachs Facebook Deal: Is This Business as Usual?', Public Policy, 19
January 2011, http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-goldman-sachs-
facebook-deal-is-this-business-as-usual/. back
5. John Cook, 'Is Zynga’s Culture Really Rotten at the Core? Hear how Mark Pincus
Described the Mission in April', Geekwire, 28 November 2011,
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/zyngas-culture-rotten-core/. back
1.10 FREE CHOICE AND THE OPT-OUT
CULTURE
Social network gurus have a lot in common with financial traders.
They are young, greedy, reckless, white, male and have difficulties
forming relationships. We will talk in detail about nerd supremacy
later on. For the time being, let's simply state that uncritically
accepting Zuckerberg's positions, as a cure to social problems is
equivalent to trusting a dentist with rotting teeth. Even if he is a
great expert he is apparently careless enough to neglect his own
health. Let us not forget that the good shepherd here is more
interested in the data we are supplying than in our own well-being.
Ultimately, the idea of radical transparency is put forth as the
automated solution to remedy our inability to manage personal
relationships. Like every commercial digital platform, it provides
users with exciting new features that make the analog world seem
poor in comparison. It is impossible for Facebook outsiders to have
thousands of friends and stay in touch with all of them.
Speaking of 'free choice', there is a corollary to the default power
that is worth noting: the 'opt-out' culture. Facebook alters the
settings of millions of users without notification, providing only
obscure references well after the fact. In doing this Facebook
assumes that users themselves have no clue about what they really
want, or at least, that their service provider knows better than the
users do themselves. Digital social networks accumulate enormous
amounts of user data and know how to monetize these with
increasing efficacy thanks to feedback systems (votes, likes, report
abuse etc.). Facebook retain the real identity of their users and have
a more encompassing view of them than they possibly could have of
themselves. Seen from their perspective it is logical to think that any
change will be of benefit to them, since the data proves it in an
unequivocal way. Later, the users can always decide to opt out and
reject this new update. The assumption that new versions are
always better is easy to grasp, in this sense innovations become
self-imposing. Yet this issue is a very uncomfortable one, since,
technically speaking, it is increasingly difficult to enable so many
millions of users to choose easily what should be shared, and how
to share it. Obviously the commercial social networks are not solely
responsible for offering unwieldy privacy settings. Also for users, the
'optimal' strategy in the data-driven world of radical transparency, is
to leave privacy settings more or less at the mercy of default power.
Delegation is intrinsic to these tools. Users are attracted by their
simplicity, but explicitly prefer to choose their own levels of sharing
and exposure. In the same way, also from the point of view of the
social media company, it is not easy to be user-friendly, capture a
mass audience, and explicitly ask for user consent. Both for users
and service providers, to operate by an 'opt-in logic' is more difficult
and cumbersome than just delegating the choice to an algorithm.
Of course, delegation is easier than self-management. Freedom of
choice and autonomy are always difficult and risky. At a mass scale,
it is impossible. Also, as we see in the 'Google culture', a celebration
of the cult of innovation, permanent research and development,
resulting in new software usually being released in untested, beta
versions. True usability is only achieved after incorporating feedback
from beta versions. Imposing a change that turns bad then
becomes a manageable risk, since it can always be redressed if too
many users start complaining.
Let's consider a real life scenario. From December 2010, Facebook
began providing users with a facial recognition feature which
automatically tags uploaded photos. Photos were scanned and
faces identified based on images previously tagged in Zuckerberg's
databases. When this software was introduced in the United States,
it generated a large amount of controversy due to the threat it
posed to privacy. Facebook's responded to criticism by suggesting
users deactivate this feature by modifying their default privacy
settings and opting out. Of course, when the new technology was
released, Facebook neglected to tell its users (whether individuals or
commercial partners) that the face recognition software had been
activated by default on the social network. Facebook is not unique
in this regard: Google, Microsoft, Apple, and the United States
government have all been developing new automated facial
recognition systems. The rationale given to the public is that this is
'for the good of users', and to protect citizens from dangerous
terrorists. But the destructive potential of this technology is
terrifying. In the worst case scenario, an authoritarian regime can
semi-automatically 'tag' dissidents' faces captured in the streets by
CCTV, create a comprehensive system of surveillance, and strike at
the time it choses. In democratic societies, the technology is
accessible to any tech savvy person. The logic of the Opt-out follows
the same rule of developers: release early, release often (RERO).
Constant updates allow user feedback to improve the software in
successive beta versions. Yet, social relations cannot be quantified
in these kind of logical cycles. The evaluative mistakes that are made
when new technology is released can cause pernicious collateral
damage.
Paradoxically, the webization of the social through mass profiling
results in anti-social outcomes, since we all can become guilty by
association or innocent by dissociation. Since human decision
makers are increasingly delegating their power to algorithms, we
can only expect an increasing number of evaluative errors of a kind
that would be easily avoidable in real life, or within decentralized
systems. To bear the same name as someone with a criminal record
or listed as a terrorist by the federal police becomes a crime by
association. The machines turn us into defendants because they are
unable to distinguish us from someone who possesses the same
name. If we have been victim of identity theft, and someone uses
our credit card for an illegal activity, we also become culprits, insofar
as our digital alter ego is guilty beyond doubt We are then no longer
in a regime of 'innocent till proven guilty', but of 'guilty till proven
innocent'. The criminalization of society is the logical outcome of
profiling procedures - which ultimately derive from criminal profiling.
In the end, there only obvious beneficiaries are the ill intentioned,
who are always conscious of the need for an alibi.
Ordinary users are vulnerable to all kinds of abuse because due to
the profiling which turn them into potential culprits. A Facebook
account, or an account on Google+ or Twitter, is not owned by the
user. It is a space made available to the user in exchange for letting
herself be partitioned into commercially interesting bits and pieces.
Strangely enough, the user herself carries zero value, since she
must, prove who she actually is but also that she is innocent. In
Facebook's case, there are a number of reasons for which users can
be banned. The most common one is using a fake name. Some fake
names are easy to notice, but not all are. 'Superman' is most likely
an alias but which algorithm is sophisticated enough to make out
whether 'Ondatje Malimbi' is truly a Kenyan user with a Swedish
mother? To do so it would require access to civil registries, tax-office
files and social security databases; a scenario which is actually not
that unlikely. Incidentally, we should note that authoritarian
governments appear to have far less reservations about
implementing 'radical transparency'.
Managers of social media play a decisive role when it comes to what
is permissible and what is not. In this sense they do help shape the
rules of the society in which we live. They may not have the power to
send somebody to prison but they actively cooperate with
governments to enforce official and social laws of the land. Google
specifically, since the beginning, has partnered with the American
intelligence community. 'Google Earth' began as military cartography
software developed by In-Q-Tel (a venture capital firm with CIA
connections), and sold to Google in 2004.1 After the USA Patriot Act
was passed, with its harsh penalties for any collaborator who assists
government enemies, commercial services providers have become
extremely cautious. Enforcing censorship is less risky than hosting
potential terrorists on their servers, or even people criticized by the
US government. In countries under US embargo, dissidents' profiles
are often closed while the regime's supporters are free to propagate
their views on the government's controlled servers. While eulogizing
Iran's 'Twitter Revolution', nobody, not even the people in the
Administration - who waxed lyrical about its democratizing effect-
seems to have noticed that Twitter was infringing the US embargo
by offering its services to Iranian citizens. The PRISM case is nothing
more than a mere confirmation of what we already know about
Echelon, global tracking and global espionage, with the burden of
the direct, automatic involvement of the major digital players. We
can expect a lot of similar 'scandals' in the future.
Censorship is commonplace on Facebook, which often projects
itself as guarantor of the net's neutrality, a concept we have already
criticized. Facebook's very peculiar idea of democracy is based on its
moralism, as we have seen at work before. Any user suspected of
hate speech may be immediately banned. Here is a characteristic
example: >My Facebook account has been cancelled, with that of
****'s because we were the administrators of the 'Against Daniela
Santanchè' group (a far right Italian politician), or rather, I was
administrator and **** the developer. I tried to log in but I only got
a message that my account had been de-activated. I sent an email
to the address I had found in the FAQ. At first I got no reply, but
received the following response two weeks later, after a second
message:

Here is Facebook's automated response message:

Your account has been suspended as you are the

administrator of a group that has been cancelled since it
violated Facebook's rules on rights and obligations. Groups
whose content or pictures promote the use of drugs, show
nudity, allude to sexual acts, or attack an individual or a group
of persons are not allowed. Unfortunately, due to technical
and security reasons we cannot go into details about the
group that has been cancelled. However, after having
examined your situation, we have reactivated your account,
which you now can access again. In order to avoid such
situation again in the future, we advise you to check from time
to time the content of the groups you are administering. If you
do not want to carry out this responsibility, you can cancel
your administrator status by clicking on 'Modify Member' on
the group's main page, and then on 'Cancel Administrator'
next to your name. For more information on unauthorized
behavior on Facebook, please refer to the users' rules and
obligations notice, which you can access by clicking on
'Conditions' at the bottom of every Facebook page. We thank
you for your understanding.

Users Organization Facebook Inc.

This user's account has been reactivated, but not that of the group's
developer, probably because she was a repeat offenders had
started other 'hate speech' groups. When were are in another
house we behave according to their wishes: in this case we follow
the behavioral rules of Facebook. It is peculiar that Facebook overtly
bans pornography and corroborates the claim that it is a purveyor
of emotional pornography. The emotional blackmail becomes
explicit when users try to leave Facebook. The process of quitting
Facebook is lengthy, users are required to reconfirm their intention
to leave several times (it's easy to join, leaving is not!). Pictures
tagging the user next to friends are displayed with a caption under
each picture: 'you'll be dearly missed by so-and-so'!
The managers of a commercial service are not the only ones who
decide what is hate speech. Your account could also be suspended
due to blasphemy, for instance. Facebook is fluent in your language
and able to identify offensive statements. Or some informer act as a
guardian of public morality may have came forward and reported
you. Nonetheless it easy to find racist, sexist, nationalistic and
fundamentalist groups on Facebook, in which case it's up to you to
help censorship and turn them in. Free choice and freedom of
expression become tricky to defend when confronted with
algorithmic logic, the same logic that makes Google, by default,
withhold results it considers dangerous for you, meaning sites with
obscene content. These hidden results almost always consist of
display of explicit sex, which now makes up almost half of the world
wide web, while explicit violence is largely acceptable. So if you wish
to visualize all results you must de-activate 'Safe Search', the
standard functionality has installed in default mode so as to protect
you from yourself.
Racism, sexism, violence, nationalism, fanaticism, child porn, all
existed before social media. Yet the ease with which these tools can
be infiltrated by all the above is staggering, just as is the
carelessness of people who trust machines to pass judgment on
what is right and what not. The lack of a contextual framework for
the flood of information on the net makes it a useful medium for
spreading extremist, partisan or fraudulent content usually
masquerading as appeals for a humanitarian cause or the defense
of a common identity. Whether in our mailbox or through social
networks, we are all familiar with the '419' type of fraud. The chain
letters to assist a poor child who suffers from a rare disease,
petition for noble causes, or the promise of wealth if we share our
bank account with a rich Nigerian now in exile. The fact that such a
message spreads through our circle of friends, lowers our defenses
and allow it to be disseminated further without examination.
The case with malevolent, or ideological messages is more complex
but follows the same principle. If you are invited by friends on the
Facebook group 'United Against Poverty' chances are that you will
'Like' it, add a link on twitter and perhaps forward it to your mailing
lists. Since we are accustomed to fragmented time and that our
moments of full concentration are rather rare, we might not have
noticed at first glance that the charity dinner meal was organized by
an Italian neo-fascist group in support of Serbian enclaves in
Kosovo. Unwittingly we may appear as sympathizers of the
nationalist Bosnian Serbs, the far-right extremists who provoked
genocide in Kosovo. Facebook, Twitter and Google's algorithms were
all created by über-geeks who, with their limited experience of social
issues should not be the ones make significant decisions on the role
of technology in society.
1. In-Q-Tel's core business is cryptography and surveillance in cloud computing. It
would seem that the Pentagon has decided to make the cloud more 'secure',
perhaps in order to avoid the embarrassment of another 'WikiLeaks' affair. See: Lena
Groeger, 'SpyCloud: Intel Agencies Look to Keep Secrets in the Ether', Wired, 29 Jun
2011, http://www.wired.com/2011/06/spycloud-intel-agencies-look-to-keep-secrets-
in-the-ether/. back
1.11 SUBSTITUTES FOR PRESENCE
AND EMOTIONAL SOLACE
Many question remain on the issue of language, which we referred
to as the second boundary of human and social experience. The
algorithms of social network are in any case much less sophisticated
than human language. The semantic web is still in its infancy and for
the time being, it is up to the users to make themselves better
understood by machines, which they do by diligently updating their
digital profiles and simplifying their expressive richness to fit the 140
character limit of Twitter or the omnipresent 'like' button.
The first human boundary, the body, gets an even more brutal
treatment. We must physically adapt to social media, by being
instantly reactive, and learning a new digital mobility; the motility of
our fingertips, so we can handle ever smaller keyboards and touch
screens. It is the eye, however, which gains a more pivotal role
because despite the promises of 'virtual reality', the screen still
presents the sole access point to social media. Touch, taste, and
smell are entirely absent (with the exception of console game where
there is some tactile simulation). The rest of the senses are seldom
used in the disconnected life too. Hearing has to cope with low
fidelity sounds from mp3s to ringtones, which are worlds away from
the quality of analog stereo. Yet what is expected from social media
is always the contact with others, hence a physical contact, even if it
has to be mediated. Seen in this light, all social media are a way to
substitute for presence and make it possible to create a simulacrum
which conceals absence and physical distance. They restore
somewhat the otherwise fading memory of the other. Without social
media, our daily life might become unbearable, now that we are
used to being available at all times, while we procrastinate when we
have to be physically in the present since we cannot be fully
immersed in the screens and in the analog environment at the
same time. Yet still, as Facebook has promised us, we feel that we
take part in the creation of a new, shared world while comfortably
seated in front of our computer without running the risk of
confronting the dangers of the physical world.
Everything occurs faster in digital platforms, everything appears
more real than reality and seems more intense. How can we be
together with one hundred, or one thousand, 'friends', and interact
with all of them? How can we follow all the updates about people,
groups, companies, that we find interesting and influential? It is
simply impossible. With Facebook, Twitter, and other social media,
physical presence is substituted by sharing the platform prescribed
by social media, and this prescribed sharing becomes the
experience that shapes our everyday. Paradoxically, if you want to
be more socially active, and to develop your digital self, you must
become more passive in the physical sense. You must devote a lot
of time to your profile in order to make it attractive and popular. You
must practice for many hours everyday and commit yourself to
interacting with smartphones and laptops. During all these hours
spent on commercial networks the body becomes one big eye
where we surf without being able to dive, hearing is hardly ever
used, yet we are always ready to answer the suggestions coming
from the reality 'outside'.
Real socializing then becomes more rare, but also more tedious and
repetitive compared to digital sociality, where everything is both
more abundant and fluid. It may even become more difficult to
engage in socializing without the mediation of digital tools, since
there are no 'friends' like on Facebook in reality, nor subscribers like
on Twitter. A pseudo-presence keeps reality at a distance and even
tends to substitute for reality itself. Tools increasingly monopolize
the very demands they pretend to satisfy and rapidly become the
only possible answer, irreplaceable and inevitable.1 The logic of
notifications push users to be at the mercy of the platform. If
everyone travels by car it becomes quite dangerous to travel by foot,
even if traffic is slow. If everybody communicates through
cellphones, it will become difficult to find someone to chat to; the
pedestrians you see in the street that are talking are talking to
somebody else at the other end of an electro-magnetic spectrum.
Ultimately, the real is less alluring than ever as we prefers to remain
seated and use only our eyes with a remote control and keyboard,
instead of getting up and going out to explore reality with the whole
body and all its senses. There is an anthropological transformation
taking place, which is governed by the media as they are able to
make us forget that they are mere instruments of mediation;
instead they have managed to come between our bodies and our
perception of reality. Of course, teens and children seems to
manage better than adult this situation, but make no mistake: they
socialize thanks to the digital tools by staring at the screens
together (this is one of the main differences from the typical adult
individual use), only because the rest of their life is so controlled,
planned, organized that paradoxically the commercial and private
social networks are becoming their only space of 'freedom':

The media would have us believe that they are means for
accessing experiences, when in fact they have become portals
which merely frame pre-scripted experiences as story-boards,
and continually decode what is livable and accessible through
the internet. [...] A cloning of life takes place, not in the sense
that the media can replace experience, but in the sense that
they are placed as necessary conditions of experience: they
 impose on us with the enticement of that old madam called
Technology, whose trump card has always been her lascivious
whisper 'I serve you'.2

So, what is the purpose of social media? We are happy to switch on

our computer and to see all our Skype contacts. It is reassuring to
have a lot of new messages in our inbox, and to find the stuff we
have posted being commented on. Social media reassure us about
the existence of a world outside and that we are truly part of that
world. Every SMS, tweet and ringing of our mobile, do not have a
merely communicative function, but they also, foremost, reassure
use of our existence within a social network. The frenzied attention-
distraction which is the outcome of social media usage is partially
due to the fact that these technologies are relatively new. We are
still learning how to deal with life in real time.
If we need constant reassurance, it is because we are all, to some
extent, living in constant fear of being left behind and left alone. In a
paradoxical way social media is a source of both comfort and
frustration. We need to check all the time that we do indeed exist,
especially in the social real, since we always run the risk that 'the
others' are getting together without us, or that they are enjoying
themselves somewhere else. To discover this in real time can be a
blow to our self-esteem. Social psychologists talk about a pervasive
apprehension that one is out of touch with social events and have
labeled it FOMO (Fear Our Missing Out).3 The experience of solitude
has become as rare as silence, slowness and deep thinking. Perhaps
after throwing everything about ourselves on digital platforms, to
stay alone would mean to have to face an insufferable inner void
and move around with a body whose connectivity 'limbs and senses'
have been severed and in a sense disabled. The development of
digital social media is a phenomenon that might be understood
within a long-term process of dis-embodiment and increasing focus
on sight at the expense of other body-senses, through the
development of new media technologies. We do have a long history
of distancing ourselves from reality and attempting to master it
from the outside, through an all-powerful vision, while at the same
time trying to be a part of it without getting hurt in the process. In a
certain sense we have here, in a nutshell, the whole history of the
technical system of the western world. But we will return to that
aspect at length later on. Now we have considered the impact of
social media on the physical body let us return to the role of digital
sociality. The next section will investigate the political dimension of
commercial social networks.

1. Ivan Illich remains an essential source on technological tools and the technical
approach that underlies them, even if his analyses are somewhat dated by now. The
distinction he makes between industrial tools and tools of conviviality remains very
timely, however: '‘I choose the term ‘conviviality’ to designate the opposite of
industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse
among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in
contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon
them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be
individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic
ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain
level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates
among society's members.' See: Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality London: Fontana,
1975 (1973), p. 24. back
2. Franco La Cecla, Sorrogati di presenza. Media e vita quotidiana, Milan: Mondadori,
2006, p. 26. back
3. John M. Grohol, 'FOMO Addiction: The Fear of Missing Out', Psych Central, 2013,
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/14/fomo-addiction-the-fear-of-
missing-out/. back
PART II: THE LIBERTARIAN WORLD
DOMINATION PROJECT: HACKING,
SOCIAL NETWORK(S), ACTIVISM AND
INSTITUTIONAL POLITICS
Everyone wants powerful friends. But they want friends
more powerful than themselves.
Elias Canetti, Notes, Aphorisms, Fragments, 1973-1985
2.01 ONLINE IDEOLOGIES: THE
ENLIGHTENMENT OF GOOGLE AND
THE LIBERTARIANISM OF FACEBOOK
We are now coming to the issue concerns us most directly and is
the closest to us: the political question. Even though politics
appears to have very little connection with social networks, it is
precisely the political ideology behind their respective business
model that makes the major difference between the two giants of
social media and long time competitors: Facebook and Google.
Ippolita has been active in critiquing the totalitarianism of Google,
the platform that organizes all the world's information. Yet Google,
in sense, can also be understood as a continuation of the
Enlightenment project, the old dream of global knowledge
accessible to all who benefit from its benign tyranny. To liberate the
human being from her 'minority position' and let her gain autonomy
was an aim of the Enlightenment, and we surely still appreciate this
ideal. But if is true, the dark side of Google is also the
Enlightenment's dark side: its unrestrained display of scientific
rationality, technological progress and all of the myths associated
with this. The regressive aspect of pure reason is the barbarity of
total control, the alienation of the human, and of the life world as a
whole, which submits to the new religion of the machine. Google is
undoubtedly the realization of the mega-machine in all its positive
and negative aspects. Google develops innovative algorithms and
filters to produce search results, which is ultimately the outcome of
scientific research and technical invention. Yet Google's contents do
not derive solely from profiling its users but also through the effort
to create an abundance of free information. Access to information is
managed by a technical subject, and not by the users themselves,
who intend to be benevolent (the famous 'Don't be evil' motto), in
the context of 'free market' capitalism.
In the United States, Google is perceived as politically 'liberal', which
is tantamount to the center-left in European parlance. In the rest of
the world, Google is perceived as supporting freedom of expression
and to being opposed to repressive (and usually anti-American)
governments. Google's disputes with China have earned it a
reputation as a company standing for democratic values, or at least,
democratic access to information. Free access to all information is
good in principle. On the other hand, it can be understood as a new
reinterpretation of the American Dream, only the frontier
movement is now the conquest of digital information. Progress here
is the accumulation of data, making the network denser, and, a
universal vision of koinè (community, public,) on the global scale. Its
involves an digital community which all contribute to the
Encyclopedia and extends to searches, images, emails, books and all
forms of information. So if we just gloss over the enormous problem
that of all knowledge being managed by a private entity and large
scale technocratic delegation, then, Google is not so bad after all. Of
course, there will be an increasing number of conflicts, due to
Google's vast material interests, and the global reach of its services.
These conflicts will include both private individuals and national and
international authorities and involve infringements of the
fundamental right to privacy, suspicion of abuse of its dominant
market position, cartel-formation, collaboration with intelligence
agencies, etc. But it is equally true that, as a company dealing with
global knowledge, Google does not have a clearly definable political
position.
The same cannot be said of Facebook, which is financially supported
by the libertarian extreme right in the US, or to use that strangely
apt oxymoron: the anarcho-capitalists. It is not easy to describe this
particular ideology in a few sentences, especially from a European
perspective. Libertarian ideas in Europe may come in many shades,
from municipal libertarianism to anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-
communism, individualist anarchism, etc., yet they all are historically
linked to anarchism, and therefore to socialist internationalism.
From this perspective, a fundamentally anti-socialist reading of
anarchism seems a logical absurdity.
Yet, as we shall see shortly, US rightwing libertarians not only play a
central role in the everyday practices and corporate politics of
Facebook, they are also prominent in shaping a whole set of values
which has emerged over the past twenty years in the digital world.
There are also significant connections between the world of hacking
and libertarian ideas. From this vantage point, we are not out to
explore the epistemic similarities between political philosophy and
economic theory, as much as we are trying to uncover the governing
principle linking apparently disparate phenomena like Facebook,
WikiLeaks and Anonymous together.
2.02 LIBERTARIANISM OR A SHORT
HISTORY OF CAPITALISM ON
STEROIDS
Libertarianism is comprised of a diverse group of political currents
which came to prominence in the sixties, promoting a radical
strengthening of individual liberties, in a strictly 'free market'
context. These political positions have nothing in common with any
kind of socialist tradition or practice. Some of its representative
advocate keeping a bare minimum of shared society, and fall under
the banner of minarchism proposing a minimalist state by
deliberately confusing social relationships with social institutions.
But truly radical individualism, posing as 'anarchist', as it is set out in
the works of the better known libertarian authors such as Murray N.
Rothbard, Robert Nozick or Ayn Rand, the founder of Objectivism,
can only come to fruition if all oppressing social institutions are
dismantled, including the State; hence the somewhat paradoxical
definition of 'anarcho-liberalism' and 'anarcho-capitalism'.1
A good start to understanding the theoretical context of anarcho-
capitalism, is in the work of Murray Rothbard, the first author to use
the term in his writings. Rothbard, an economist who was also a
student of Ludwig von Mises in New York in the 40s, created an
original synthesis between the fierce anti-socialism of the Austrian
School of economics and American individualist thinkers, especially
Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. According to the Austrian
School, free market capitalism is the only economic system that will
vouchsafe individual freedom. It is good 'by nature' and therefore
property rights are 'natural rights', and expanding property law is
the only means to protect 'true liberty'. Any system interfering
between the individual and the enjoyment of her private property is
considered an oppressive tyranny which should be overcame by all
means possible. Being a staunch advocate of individual freedom as
a supreme good, Rothbard criticizes the moral legalism of those
libertarians who accommodate the institutional status quo. For
Rothbard market freedom can only be effective if the political
practice itself is free of oppressive laws and regulatory measures by
the State.
This approach fall shorts of the concept of liberty, since the only
liberty that matters here, is that of the capitalist market, which is
itself the outcome of the free agency of totally individuals motivated
by their purely private interest in the accumulation of capital and
consumerism. Since individualist anarchism is the political
expression of individual liberty and the free market itself is the
realization of that liberty; anarchism and capitalism are, according to
Rothbard, one and the same thing. 'We are anarcho-capitalists. In
other words, we believe that capitalism is the fullest expression of
anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism.
Not only are they compatible, but you can't really have one without
the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will
be anarchism.'2
Later on we will see the paradoxes underlying this blind faith in the
benevolence of the free market. For now let us just emphasize how
libertarian economic theory and policies are deeply related to the
actual practices of Californian turbo-capitalism.3 According to this
line of thought individual liberty can only be realized through
economic and monetary transactions. Considered as actors that are
'free by nature', individuals assign subjective values to the goods,
services, and utilities available in an ideal free market system.
Deregulation is the necessary condition to bring about a market
that is 'benign by nature', without interference from the state and
other public entities. Private property, as a 'natural right' is the
foundation of individual identity; and the accumulation of goods
and utilities constitutes the very substance of liberty.
Society from the anarcho-libertarian perspective is nothing more
than the outcome of purely economic transactions at the individual
level. In order to understand how such a vision has come into being
we need to consider the historical context. According to Austrian
economic theory, especially Ludwig von Mises, Rothbard's guru, the
individual has a practice which defines her a priori, without need for
her concrete actions to be taken into account. Through the study of
this field, praxeology, we can arrive at fixed axioms.
Absolute truth derives from a single axiom only, the Fundamental
Axiom or the principle of action.4 The action axiom asserts
individuals act in order to achieve their subjective ends, by applying
means. This axiom is considered true for all human beings, at all
times it can neither be denied nor falsified, since even negating this
axiom is a form of acting. In philosophical terms, we may describe
the action axiom as a synthetic a priori proposition. From the
fundamental axiom we can derive the following, equally
unconditional truth: all individuals try to maximize their own utility.
An individual always acts in such a way as to alter their present
condition, which they perceive as unsatisfactory, in order to replace
it by a condition deemed superior. Every human action therefore,
consists in the elimination of a perceived want and of the
satisfaction of a need. In other words, every human action tends
towards the advancement of our own benefit. Every action is aimed
at individual profit, but in an entirely subjective manner. The
individual cannot avoid acting, moving and maximizing their own
benefit and this is usually realized through the accretion of wealth.
Plenty is good and more is even better.
The concept of time as a scarce resource sheds more light on the
far-reaching influence of the doctrine of human beings as only truly
free in the role of a consumer. This is precisely the definition of
liberty underlying the digital social networks and 'Web 2.0' ideology.
As time is a scarce resource, and all human action is oriented
towards the satisfaction of needs through the consumption of
goods, speed becomes the essence of achievement. On the basis of
this purely deductive affirmation it follows that in the matter of
production and consumption, the shorter the action lasts the
better. Individuals, as consumers driven by subjective needs, prefer
immediate gratification over long term satisfaction. Soon is good but
the sooner the better. Speed above all else.
Naturally, praxeology as is has been developed in the writings of the
Austrian School is more nuanced and complex is possible to
present here. Yet, like any theory which presents it self as having
absolute validity at all times and situations and for all people,
praxeology exhibits a number of irreducible contradictions. Yet we
need to consider one particular aspect it shares with the anarchist
American individualistic tradition: absolute subjectivism. In classic
economic theory, not only in English one (but also in Marx), there
are objective values from which an axiology may be derived.5
However according to Austrian praxeology no such thing as
objective values exists. Economic exchanges can be beneficial to
both parties, instead must be. If was this not the case then the
axiom of profit maximization in as little time as possible would
collapse. This entails that a good has a value that differs according
to the individuals involved. Therefore, it is possible to gain
distributed profits while at the same time underwriting unlimited
growth, due to an errors in evaluating the wrongly estimated
'objective' value.
But this generalized expansion of individual economic welfare,
which coincide with freedom tout court, is only possible in a
situation of absolute economic freedom, without any interference
by institutions. These institutions are by definition oppressive, as
they seize private properties, manipulate conscious and dull the
senses of individuals who are by nature able to strive for the
satisfaction of their immediate needs. Hence, this is the absolute
reference point of individualism: the individual, posited as an
absolute subject, demands absolute freedom. She needs to be
liberated, in the most literal sense, from all constraints.
The nation state, whether it is in a capitalist or socialist guise, is
clearly the common enemy of the Austrian School and American
individualism. All the more so since the Federal Government and all
its institutions which claim to regulate the capitalist marketplace are
effectively reducing individual freedom. Yet not all libertarians are in
agreement about the absolute necessity to abolish the state.
Nowadays, the most well known exponent of anarcho-capitalism is
David Friedman, a US economist who favors a more gradual
abolition of the state.
The whole anarcho-capitalist discourse can be encapsulated in one
single word: privatization. Privatization can and should be extended
to all sectors of society from firms to common law. If the individual is
to triumph, no mediation whatsoever should be tolerated. But who
then is this alleged individual? Our critique of digital social networks
equally applies to anarcho-capitalism: the crucial question remains
the relationship between individual and collective identity. Since
humans develop their individuality within a social context it does not
make sense, even theoretically, to consider the individual as a given,
absolute identity separate from her social, biological, and cultural
environment.
To be more specific: philosophically speaking, absolute subjectivism,
from which the economic theory linked to anarchist individualism is
deducted, is in open opposition with the radical relativism which
characterizes of our research. Our ambition is not to describe social
network 'as they really are', following the approach of technological
determinism which apparently reveals a technology's true essence.
Still less can we accept the idea that it would be possible for
someone to really know everything about human nature, and hence
to be able to infallibly deduce the essence of society as a whole.
This would be unrealistic as well as unfair. The fact that there are
'realities' external to ourselves does in way mean that we can
depend upon the 'the world' to demonstrate the truth of our
beliefs. Some descriptions of the world are more appropriate than
others, but only because they enable us to act better, not because
they represent the world better than other descriptions. Radical
relativism does not mean that all viewpoints are equally valid. On
the contrary radical relativists support a position that strongly
reflects their own particular standpoint on issues, precisely because
there is no foundation or an ultimate, inherent truth.6
Additionally we may consider the very idea of a subject that is totally
free from any link with the outside world and whose sole purpose is
to act as rapidly as possible in pursuit of purely economic interests
does not reflect the concrete experience of human beings and living
beings in general. On the contrary, we constantly create and
maintain links and relationships for no apparent economic reason
at all. We do not always act to maximize our personal utility. We
even sometimes prefer to postpone (or even to deny) the
satisfaction of a personal desire not only to please other people, but
even simply to expand our sense of freewill, in a complex game of
weighing up the benefits and the drawbacks. To recognize the
positive value of our limits is an essential part of human life
experience (as far as body and language are concerned), despite
the anxiety may cause us to discover our finitude in both time and
space by becoming aware that we are endowed with limited mental
and physical resources, in the same way as our the horizon of our
planet is limited. Personal autonomy is a process, not a state of
nature or something permanent. The interaction between human
individuals (and even non-humans) with the products of digital
technology and the objects of our everyday world, are not
immutably determined and cannot be reduced to axioms from
which rules of conduct could be perfectly derived.
There is no need to be an anti-capitalist anarchist in order to
understand that libertarianism is grounded on a remarkably
impoverished and warped definition of the concept of freedom in
order to justify greed.7 Without going into a detailed refutation of
libertarianism, for our purposes here it will suffice to examine the
misunderstanding of freedom which is the conceptual basis of
anarcho-capitalism. The sphere of freedom is far more complex
than the mere freedom of the capitalist market. A positive definition
of freedom, meaning one that adds rather than subtracts, and
which still has a revolutionary quality, can be found in Bakunin: 'I am
truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally
free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my
freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and
confirmation. It is the slavery of other men that sets up a barrier to
my freedom [...] My personal freedom, confirmed by the liberty of
all, extends to infinity.'8
An individual is not born free by nature, but becomes free through
multiple collective processes of liberation. If we want to contrast the
two approaches as slogans, we could say that anarchic freedom
begins with the freedom of others, whereas from the liberal
perspective, freedom needs to be separately constructed for each
and every individual. Therefore, for libertarians freedom ends where
the freedom of others begins. Nothing could be more remote from
the anarchist conception of liberty, which is relative and subject to
constant verification, than the purely economic freedom expounded
by anarcho-capitalists.
Libertarianism, initially an economic theory eventually became a
political philosophy influential among parties, something totally
incompatible with anarchism, and even with anarcho-capitalism in
the strict sense. Despite this some of its adepts have gone on to
defending it in parliament. In the United States there is a libertarian
party competing for seats in Congress whose candidate came
fourth in the 2008 presidential elections.9 The US Libertarian Party
draws significant support and funding from prominent business
people, university professors and politicians. Magazines and think
tanks openly claim libertarian leanings and thereby consider
themselves to be the most radical and authentic representatives of
the true American tradition.10 In a sense, the libertarian worldview is
reminiscent of the myth of the white frontier man, alone in a hostile
environment - but fortunately armed with a gun - setting off to
conquer the Far West. Libertarian parties and institutions share a
minarchic orientation, they favor a minimal government that has a
sole purpose of protecting existing rights. Any interference would
lead to an attempt at changing or abolishing the state. This ideology
is very close to the Tea Party line.
There are openly libertarian parties in Argentina, Canada and Costa
Rica. In Europe Libertarianism is far less common, at least in terms
of official policy. Minor libertarian parties can be found in the United
Kingdom, Netherlands and there is a libertarian movement in Italy.
Though the political agenda of many rightwing parties contains
distinctly libertarian elements outside of the United States, Canada
and the UK, there is no coherent definition of what it even means to
be a libertarian.
In Europe, political movements are developing which are intimately
linked with the basic values of libertarianism and they experience a
remarkable degree of success, especially among the younger
generations. For example 'pirate parties' are becoming increasingly
popular. The most important ones are the Piratpartiet in Sweden,
the Piratenpartei in Germany, and the Pirate Party in the UK. But
there are also smaller pirate parties throughout Europe; in France,
Italy, Spain, Austria and the Netherlands. The ideology of the pirate
parties appears to becoming global. These parties advocate the
abolition of 'intellectual property' and are opposed to the dominant
position of corporations and multinational institutions, especially in
the digital realm. They also fight increased police powers and
surveillance through new technologies. Yet, they would like to realize
individual freedom in an ideal technology-driven free market: the
internet. There is a debate raging these days about how to define
the ideology of these pirate parties, but we should note that none of
these parties have a socialist orientation.11 We will return later on to
the links between pirate parties and libertarianism, in the section
discussing WikiLeaks.

1. For an introduction to anarcho-capitalism with many references to the foundational

texts see: http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/faq.html. back
2. 'Exclusive Interview with Murray Rothbard', originally published in The New Banner: A
Fortnightly Libertarian Journal, 25 February 1972,
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html. back
3. Conservative economist Edward Luttwak coined the term 'turbo-capitalism' in his
book: Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy, New York:
Harpers, 1999. We use the term in a much more polemic way, since it has become
 clear that today's economic trends have gone much further than Luttwalk's original
analyses. See the second chapter of Ippolita's The Dark Side of Google ('The
Googleplex, or Nimble Capitalism at Work'), where we draw a tentative description of
Google's 'abundance capitalism' and of the 'Silicon Valley model' in general. back
4. Murray N. Rothbard, 'Praxeology: The Methodology of Austrian Economics', The Logic
of Action One Method, Money, and the Austrian School, Cheltenham: Elgar, 1997, pp.
58-77, https://mises.org/rothbard/praxeology.pdf. back
5. An asset has a defined value that may be calculated in objective terms. In order for
economic growth to develop in a capitalist system there must necessarily be winners
and losers in any given transaction. In the ideal situation, where there is an exchange
between two agents, if the good is worth ten units and is being bought for eleven,
the buyer will be the loser; if nine units are paid for the same good, then it is the
seller who loses out. From this transaction we are able to conceptualize and
calculate profit, surplus values and so on. back
6. According to constructivist theory it is impossible to give an objective description of
reality since we live in a world build up from experiences, which themselves are the
result of our constructed behavior. Cognition is a vital process, in a sense living is a
cognitive process. Epistemological (pertaining to knowledge) issues are without
doubt ontological issues (i.e. they pertain to the (life) experience of the knower). Yet
this does not detract from the fact that reality exists, irrespective and outside of our
experience. Hence we ourselves prefer to use the term radical relativism in order to
emphasize the fact that reality is relative to our perceptions, meaning that it does not
reveal itself in an absolute manner, but 'in relation' to perceptions. See Tomàs
Ibañez, Il Libero Pensiero. Elogio del Relativismo, Milan: Elèuthera, 2007. back
7. See George Monbiot, 'This Bastardised Libertarianism Makes 'Freedom' an
Instrument of Oppression', The Guardian, 19 December 2011. back
8. Mikhail Bakunin, 'Man, Society, and Freedom', Bakunin on Anarchy, trans. Sam
Dolgoff, London: Vintage Books, 1971. back
9. The US Libertarian has the slogan: 'Minimum government, maximum freedom.' Their
website: http://www.lp.org/, features a test where individuals can measure their
'libertarian score'. back
10. The Cato Institute, founded in Washington DC in 1977, is the main libertarian think
tank in the US, (see: http://www.cato.org). The Ludwig von Mises Institute is more
oriented towards economic studies (see: http://mises.org). back
11. For a good overview on this issue see:
https://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pirate-party-is-more-libertarian-
than-the-libertarian-party/. back
2.03 TECHNOLOGICAL DARWINISM
FROM THE PAYPAL MAFIA TO
FACEBOOK: THE IRRESISTIBLE RISE OF
ANARCHO-CAPITALISM
Following this outline of the economic and political framework to
our critique, we return now to social networks, and specifically to
Facebook. It is no secret that Facebook belongs to the libertarian
realm in the US - it even has associations with the extreme fringe of
anarcho-capitalism. European news covered this issue several years
ago.1 At first glance, this story holds appears to have little relevance
to the growth of Facebook, but in fact it is of crucial importance,
because it shows that the world's largest social network is actually
part of a more extensive strategy to propagate the values and
practices of libertarianism.
In the first part of this book, we have used Facebook as an example
of a social network whose modus operandi is alien to the way we
experience things. This does not mean that the other major social
media companies (Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ etc.) are immune to
criticism. What is true for Facebook is also true for the others,
companies despite the vast differences in their targeted audience
and social impact. For the sake of our analysis we will focus
attention on the entrepreneur Peter Thiel, a stereotypical anarcho-
capitalist. Note that not all social media platforms are as closely
linked to anarcho-capitalism as Facebook is. But just as Facebook
typifies commercial platforms sociality, Thiel is representative of the
spirit of libertarianism within informs ventures capital financing in
Silicon Valley. Through our analysis of Thiel we can consider the
mentality of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and how they impact
on contemporary society.
Peter Thiel was the first outside investor in Facebook, with an angel
investment of 500,000 US dollars in 2004, thus holding 3% of
Facebook's shares. He planned to cash out his holdings when the
lockup expired, no matter what price Facebook's shares were
trading at. In August 2012 he has sold off most of his stake, turning
his initial investment into more than 1 billion dollar in cash. Thiel
made his name as a celebrated venture capitalist in the San
Francisco Bay Area managing among others, the Clarium Capital
hedge fund (with a 3 billion dollar portfolio) and the Founders Fund.
Born in Frankfurt at the end of the sixties, he studied at Stanford,
the cradle of Californian hyper-capitalism. At 47, Peter Thiel is
amongst the 400 richest men on the planet.2 He contributed
generously to ultra-right, libertarian Congressman Ron Paul's
presidential campaign fund when he stood up against George Bush
in the republican primaries. He is also member of the Bilderberg
Group, an annual private conference gathering together politicians
leaders and experts from finance, industry, academia and the
military officials, industrialists and bankers to discuss international
problems. He has also forcefully expresses his political opinions on
Cato Unbound.3
One of Tiel's pet projects is the radical critique of the social and
political system of the United States and by extension the entire
system of Western values, this is because the United States pose as
the standard bearers of freedom worldwide. Democracy, according
to Thiel, cannot be reconciled with freedom, because nation-states
and other so-called democratic institutions stifle individual liberties.
On this particular point, we actually could agree, as libertarians, in
the traditional, socialist meaning of the word. Representative
democracy in its current form is far removed from the idea of direct
democracy, or of the free and autonomous management of the
commonwealth. Corporate interests, together with the structural
crossovers between organized crime, institutions, and major
financial and economic groups have all too often reduced
democracy to an absurd ritual on election day. Yet Thiel's approach
in other respects is openly reactionary and misogynistic.
'Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the
extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are
notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of
'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron'.4 Peter Thiel is a proponent
of extreme capitalism without any restraints.5 His position is beyond
that of a mere critic of socialism; he is quite simply anti-social. Along
with numerous other influential figures, Thiel is a staunchly
advocate of technological Darwinism, a new version of social
Darwinism, this time framed in terms of transhumanist eugenics
and technology. According to this 'vision', the best technology shall
free the most deserving individuals, in order to outgrow the
limitations of the human species. The ultimate objective is a
superhuman technology, to become an Übermensch free from
death.
The concept of well-defined and static identities, which is one of
Zuckerberg's mantras, recurs in Thiel's biography where he is openly
gay and a strong defender of right-wing gays, to who he make large
donations through the American Foundation for Equal Rights and
GOProud. He also maintains close relationships with selected
politicians, such as Meg Whitman, who he also financially supports.
Whitman, an exponent of female emancipationism, is a former CEO
of E-Bay (bought by PayPal), and a former republican candidate for
the California government in 2010. Thiel, of course, made his
fortune cofounding PayPal, currently the most widely used
electronic payment system in the world. The political idea behind
PayPal was to remove the central banks control of the money
supply. This would sound like a brilliant attempt to set the world
free, if it did not result in power being centralized in what Peter Thiel
himself has proudly dubbed 'The PayPal Mafia', with himself cast in
the role of godfather.6
In the group of sharks that started the PayPal Mafia, clever
financiers, programmers, entrepreneurs, one figure stands out: Max
Levchin, the inventor of it all. Mafia is indeed the correct term to use
when talking about him, given his contempt for the 'laughable' rules
of the liberal market (in fact these rules are ridiculous since they
regulate nothing). These regulations have been set by oppressive
institutions in order to restrict the freedom of individuals. The term
is equally pertinent to the describe the firm's recruitment practices.
Google wants the best math graduates, those who dropped out
because they were too shrewd and smart. People who are mad
workaholics, free of moral dilemmas and ideally they already know
each other to create a tight-knit team. Finally but not least the
absolute opacity of financial operations at PayPal cannot is typical of
a mafia type of operation.
Let us briefly consider PayPal's basic way of operating. If I want to
make an online purchase, PayPal is the simplest and most
universally accepted method. Since it was founded in December
1998, PayPal promoted itself as the global intermediary for financial
transactions between various credit card systems or in the language
of Thiel and Levchin, the dream of a private currency without
borders. I need only to open a PayPal account, deposit some
money, from a credit card or bank account, and at this point I
proceed with the purchase. PayPal takes a percentage of each
transaction. The seller has to pay an additional fees to get cash in
hand, and since PayPal has in fact taken a dominant position in
digital payment systems, the money deposited on active accounts is
largely virtual. In this sense PayPal's way of dealing with money is
just like the banking industry.
Only PayPal is no bank, at least not in the United States where it is
operates as an intermediary. In Europe, initially PayPal's registered
office was in London, but it only became a proper bank only in 2007
after relocating its headquarters to Luxemburg for tax purposes. It
has become impossible for users to get the services a bank is
required to provide according to European regulations. Basically no
country in the world PayPal forced the company to follow the
normal banking rules and this is hardly a non-profit company.
Customer service is nonexistent and scams are not uncommon.
PayPal is known to regularly blocking users' accounts for various
reasons (homonyms, suspected fraud, or a mere glitch). The website
Cryptome is worth consulting for extensive evidence of how PayPal
treats users. Cryptome has been online since 1996, and collates a
large number of downloadable documents, censored by
governments and corporation around the world. In 2010
Cryptome's PayPal account was suddenly suspended and its funds
blocked.7
The very controversial sale of PayPal to eBay made Thiel and his
associates very wealthy. This was followed by a long series of
incredibly lucrative investments, even by the standards of Silicon
Valley. LinkedIn, Groupon, YouTube, Facebook, Zynga, Digg, all these
'Web 2.0' firms got funding from members of the 'PayPal Mafia'. This
is all documented in the public domain, interested people can be
find the details on financial sites such as crunchbase.com - even
Wikipedia articles provide links to trustworthy sources.
As for Thiel, he has connections with most of these companies,
either because he was one of the founders, or because he sits on
the board of directors. These companies all propagate a utopian or
messianic narrative of technology. We have enumerated here only a
few of the most significant companies. Palantir Technologies Inc.,
founded in 2004, and co-financed by the CIA, develops tools for
analyzing social networks traffic, and has branched into information
warfare.8 Geni, West Hollywood, in business since 2006) is a social
network devoted to the reconstruction of family genealogies.9 The
overarching aim is to build a family tree of the entire world
population. Registering on the site allows user to upload
documents, pictures and videos, and to research the family history
of its millions of users and of their ancestors. Halcyon Molecular,
Redwood City, has the objective of 'transforming biology into
informatics'. It is notable for developing techniques to accelerating
the process and reducing the costs of DNA sequencing.10
Thiel is funding, or has funded, projects that demonstrate his
political aims and reveal his network of support at the same time.
Two projects are notable in this regard. The Seasteading Institute of
Patri Friedman, the grand-son of ultra-liberal economist Milton
Friedman, and son of the anarcho-capitalist economist David
Friedman, was founded in order to establish small, autonomous
communities on artificial islands.11 These artificial islands would be
located in international seas and therefore beyond any kind of state
control.12 The Singularity University (formerly the 'Singularity Institute
for Artificial Intelligence'), aims at researching solutions to transcend
the limits of the human body in particular death, by accelerating the
'natural' evolution of a new dominant species, which will arise after
the Singularity.13 Each of these initiatives deserves a separate study.
The Singularity Theory espoused by futurologist Ray Kurzweil is
widely supported by the Californian transhumanist movement and
also by scientists like Marvin Minsky, one of the proponents of
strong AI. The discussion on transhumanism may seem fanciful to
anyone outside of the cliques of Californian technophiles - but it is
equally remote from the concerns of the great majority of human
beings whose daily problems are survival, drinkable water, sufficient
and not the prospects of technological immortality. Although the
enthusiasm for posthuman dystopias is rather limited in Europe, not
many voices are raised against the prevailing technophilia. Few
question their own dependence on all kinds of technologies from
their car to their smartphone. In this sense, it is significant to note
that the myth of unlimited growth based on increasing technical
efficiency is not actively opposed in the mainstream political
discourse of Europe or elsewhere.
In summary, Facebook is part of a game manipulated by the most
powerful anarcho-capitalist businessperson in the world. Radical
transparency is one of the components of a wider political project
that aims at controlling human relations through surveillance
technologies. An information war is at hand, autarchic communities
of technological elites are being designed outside of national
borders while institutes research the possibility of technological
immortality. These facts have been known for a long time. Yet the
media, web users, activists and people who should possess enough
common sense to be concerned about their independence and
autonomy, remain silent.
Most of Thiel's political positions remain fascinating, radical, and
disturbing at the same time. The emerging ideology is one of frantic,
unbridled individualism fueled by a capitalism that is both
technocratic and messianic. In open criticism against the curriculum
of elite American universities, Thiel launched a support program in
September 2010 for aspiring young people under twenty who are
willing to start their own company without following a traditional
university education. The 20 under 20 Thiel fellowship program has
funded twenty 'young promising individuals', who will each receive a
hundred thousand US Dollars over a two year period. Free
enterprise and meritocracy are the vital terms here. Seen through
Thiel's eyes it is not the internet which created a bubble of vacuous
behavior; it is the American education system which is no longer
able to exploit true innovation. Therefore only total privatization will
be able to open the doors of a prosperous technological future.14
In a more theoretical text, very tellingly titled 'The End of the Future',
Thiel depicts the current stagnation we are living in and points out
the fact that there is little investment in cutting edge technology
with few investors being prepared to back high risk future projects.15
According to Thiel this the root cause of today's social, cultural, and
economic crisis. The United States, traditional defenders of
innovation and ' the next big thing', have fallen into a prolonged
period of inertia. As the US is the economic leader of the West, Thiel
assumes the rest of the world will be following suit. Thiel sees the
crisis of the West in terms of the vanishing frontier, that needs to be
endlessly pursued, the frontier that is an essential trope of the
American Dream.
He often public expressing his profound disappointment at the fact
that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are dedicated exclusively to profit
and have little interest in pressing global problems. For Thiel,
capitalism is a truly revolutionary tool that, thanks to technology will
liberate the human species. But if capitalism has already triumphed,
what then remains to be saved? Simple, we have to make capitalism
better and the mantra of this current phase is 'green capitalism' and
clean technology. Sure, we know that 'green capitalism' is a hoax
which has the sole purpose of maintaining current consumption
and pollution levels while pursuing increasingly unsustainable
growth. But official environmentalism, which has very little to do
with a real protection of the environment, is probably preferable to
open contempt towards the ecosystem. When it comes to
predatory capitalism, the former godfather of the PayPal Mafia has
clear ideas: the anarcho-capitalist revolution requires faithful,
excited consumers on the one hand, and priests, bishops, and
popes with deep pockets on the other. The merchandise must
move between the two quickly and always be in stock. Limits to the
availability of natural resources cannot be tolerated in a free market
where everyone wins. In this case shifting to cyberspace might be a
better option rather than attempting to manage all the material
problems arising from a frenzied development in the real world.
Therefore in addition to quantity and speed, we can add a third vital
term: 'waste'.
Thiel is a fierce opponent of any attempt project designed to
improve energy efficiency. According to Thiel, no serious venture
capitalist should invest in projects that involve 'clean' technologies –
a euphemism that has replaced 'appropriate' and 'sustainable' in
the official discourse.16 In his turbo-capitalist vision, waste means the
refusal of limits. Waste is also connected to the need for clearly
defined identities and the horror of physical contact and
corporeality. This represents the exact opposite of a conscientious,
autonomous, and self-managed use of technology to meet
individuals and collectives needs and desires. The disposable
attitude as a source of physical and psychological waste is not only a
consequence of 'abundance capitalism'; it is also a structural
requirement of the paradigm of unlimited growth and endless
economic expansion of the anarcho-capitalist individual's liberty to
act. In this atmosphere of megalomania and unfettered
expansionism characteristic of big tech firms, waste also returns in
the constant change in function and new app developments.
Enormous waste fits into the long-term process of distancing and
rejection of the physical body, which we discussed in the first part of
the book. We will discuss this in greater detail later on.
In conclusion, it is quite easy to analyze the way Facebook operates
yet nonetheless one sees a number of culture-related issues appear
in the background. To keep track of all the activities of Peter Thiel is
an almost impossible undertaking. The message he conveys
through the work of his foundation can be just as confused as is any
of the ideas espoused by anarcho-capitalists. We read that the Thiel
foundation 'defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions:
political, personal, and economic'.17 Projects supported by the
foundation are asked about frontier technologies, non-violence and
freedom. Among them, Imitatio.org (inspired by René Girard's
Mimetic theory) explicitly presents tech company founders as new
society leaders, promoters of freedom that are almost gods, as Thiel
himself explained in his article 'Gods, Victims & Startups'. This begs
the question, what kind of freedom is this? What type of society are
anarcho-capitalists creating with their funds?

1. See in particular: Tom Hodgkinson, ‘With Friends Like These...’, The Guardian, 14
January 2008, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook. back
2. See, http://www.forbes.com/profile/peter-thiel. back
3. See, http://www.cato-unbound.org/. back
4. Peter Thiel, 'The Education of a Libertarian', Cato Unbound, 13 April 2009,
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian. back
5. See in particular: Peter Thiel, 'The Optimistic Thought Experiment' Policy Review, 29
January 2008. http://www.hoover.org/research/optimistic-thought-experiment. back
6. Jeffrey M. O'Brien, 'The PayPal Mafia', Fortune, 13 November 2007,
http://fortune.com/2007/11/13/PayPal-mafia/. back
 7. Andrew Orlowski,'Cryptome: PayPal a "Liar, Cheat and a Thug"', The Register, 10
March 2010, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/10/cryptome_PayPal/. back
8. See, https://www.palantir.com/. back
9. See, http://www.geni.com. back
10. See, http://halcyonmolecular.com. back
11. It is curious that Milton Friedman (1914-2006), winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in
Economics, a notable proponent of Laissez-faire economics and financial advisor to
the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, has been vigorously attacked by Rothbard,
who considered him a statist for his position on government control of the gold
reserves and currency issue. back
12. See, http://seasteading.org/. back
13. See http://singularityu.org and Bruce Benderson, Transhumain, Paris: Payot &
Rivages, 2011. back
14. Sarah Lacy, 'Peter Thiel: We're in a Bubble and It's Not the Internet. It's Higher
Education', Techcrunch, 10 April 2010, http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-
thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/. back
15. Peter Thiel, 'End of the Future', National Review, 3 October 2011,
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/278758/end-future-peter-thiel. back
16. Eric Wesoff, 'Peter Thiel Doesn’t Like Cleantech VC, Mankind', Green Tech Media, 14
September 2011, http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/peter-thiel-doesnt-
like-cleantech-mankind. back
17. Geert Lovink, The Principle of Notworking: Concepts in Critical Internet Culture,
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005,
http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/the-principle-of-notworking-geert-
lovink/. back
2.04 SOCIAL NETWORKS THROUGH
THE ANARCHO-CAPITALIST LENS - OR
THE MANAGEMENT OF SOCIALITY IN
THE ERA OF BIG DATA
Social networks predate the internet. Sentient beings in general and
in particular human beings, need to develop relationships among
each other. Few things indeed are worse than loneliness. Even
violent criminals, hardened by the prisons' inhuman conditions of
detention, shudder at the prospect of solitary confinement. May
testimonies of prisoners of war reveal that would rather face
physical torture than solitary confinement, since at least there is
contact with their torturer. Several scientific experiments conducted
on sensory deprivation have demonstrated that a healthy individual,
if immersed in a liquid at body temperature and deprived of
auditory and visual stimulation, rapidly looses any awareness of the
boundaries of his own body and risks insanity, obsessed with the
sound of his own heart. It is only through the acceptance of one's
own limitation that overcoming solitude in a way that is not harmful
to others becomes possible. Rising above loneliness through
socialization means that we recognize our own limitations and open
ourselves to creative sharing. According to Luce Irigaray: 'The
proximity of the other, or more precisely with the other, is
discovered in the possibility of creating a common world with him or
her which does not destroy the personal world of either one. This
common world is always in the act of becoming.'1
The need to contact within our own species is not limited to mere
survival activities (obtaining food, protection against predators,
reproduction), and this need grows with the increase in neuronal
complexity.2 Among humans (but equally among great apes) the
relational dimension slowly begins to break away from the
individual, literally thanks to the technè, which impacts on our
relationships and is the connection between the self, peers, and the
world. The first social mediation tool, in a certain sense the first
social medium, was probably fire. Instead of huddling together like
most social animals do, human groups started to relate to the social
medium - fire - by defining a social space organized around that
specific technical phenomena. All techniques that evolve into
technologies are instruments of mediation in the relationship with
the world and with others. Language is the simplest and most
powerful instance of this phenomenon: it establishes a separation
between the individual and the others (mediation) and permits the
projection of past memories (project, desires) into the future. In
other words, languages allow us to share personal imagination in a
shared, collective imaginary.
The story and the stratification of this complex network of
relationships that we call society is a kind of consensual
hallucination which we can access through language and symbols
by using evolved higher cognitive functions of the neocortex.
Animals possessing only a small frontal cortex are less complex than
human and are capable of producing practically no artifacts.
Neuroscience research demonstrates that when the functionalities
of a person's frontal cortex are compromised, she loses the
specifically human characteristic of empathy. Such a person will no
longer be able to imagine what an other person's experiences may
be. Once their reflexive capacity is either damaged or even
destroyed, they can no longer perceive themselves as individuals
belonging to various social groups such as family, sports teams,
groups of friends, social class, workplace team, local community etc.
The meaning usually assigned to things and to the world becomes
confused, fluid, ambiguous and ill defined. Nothing makes sense
any longer, in a distinct, articulated and communicable way.
To understand the world of which we are part means to position
ourselves in an environment which transcends our finitude as
individuals in space and time, while still comprehending this
environment through a fictional collective idea. The very prospect of
imagining and planning a future based on past experience, and
then to understand what surrounds us, falters at the moment that
we are no longer able to go through and modify in a significant way
the networks to which we belong. Even to imagine this has become
impossible. Paradoxically, when we are confronted with too many
data, we become unable to make sense of any of it. The sheer mass
of data and the speed at which information hits us makes any
analysis cumbersome, or extends the time required to a potential
infinity. Such an analysis hence becomes pointless using the
traditional methods. Yet there are two related concepts that allow is
to continue exploration and analysis: Big Data and profiling.
At the beginning of the 21st century, one gigabyte (one billion bits,
i.e. one billion text characters) seemed like a large amount of data. A
decade later, the internet contains a hardly imaginable amount of
data, something near five trillion gigabytes, the numbers are
predicted to double each year.3 We will provide two examples in
order to grasp this order of magnitude. A high-definition feature film
requires several GBs. Currently a personal computer contains more
data than an entire family would have been able to produce over
several generations. There are billions of site-pages on the internet,
but there exists also a large number of unconnected networks
which may be larger than anything we can imagine, or even what a
human brain can picture.4 We have entered the era of Big Data and
we are still only at the beginning.
In everyday life also, even when if we are not directly involved in the
use of the devices generating this data, we are witness to countless
occasions for the detection, storage and analysis of data involving
almost every human activity. The details are increasing and the
resolution is ever more finely honed. Everyday, an extraordinary
volume of SMS, emails, calls, posts, images, videos, chats and
documents of all types are being produced. There is no way we
could be aware of even a fraction of all the data being sent and
exchanged via WiFi networks and mobile devices capable of tracing
our movement. Search engines register all our requests through
logs, cookies and LSOs (local shared objects). Automatic payment
systems in toll booths, supermarkets, ATMs record all our
purchases. Social networking platforms record all our connections
with friends, colleagues, co-workers and lovers. Record, archive and
analyze everything at optimal speed. Quantity and speed are always
viewed as advantageous.
However, the focus is not on the magnitude of this, inordinate as it
may be, but the interrelationship between data and the increasing
opportunities to increase access and work from a smartphone, a
tablet or computer. Because this data is linked to us, we cannot be
dissociated from it and it constitute our digital footprint. Our
identity is therefore perpetually reconstructed through data
collection and analysis. But this has nothing to do with knowledge:
all Big Data can do is to provide ever more opportunities to make
profits through profiling.
In the first part of work we have already discussed the construction
of a profile, a unique digital fingerprint that identifies individuals as
precisely as possible. It is no coincidence that the vocabulary used is
'fingerprint' and 'traces', as if we were on the scene of a crime.
Profiling is an activity that originates from criminology. Whenever we
use digital tool and services we leave trace that might be subject to
profiling through analysis and archiving. The metadata is used from
profits, which in turn allows the existence of a 'free' 'Web 2.0'.
Unlike machines, human beings are not able to manage Big Data.
Machines can analyze and calculate in an individual's most likely
behavior. Recall that for anarcho-capitalists, the individual realizes
herself in action, through two variants production and consumption.
Since individuals are no longer able to orient themselves in the
noise of data that surrounds them, it becomes necessary to
delegate tasks to machines. In order to get closer to the ideal
society, individuals need to become machine-readable. They must
also continuously feed the databanks within ever accelerating
feedback loops. Users explicit and implicit preferences are then
archived, disaggregated and re-aggregated in real time.
Profiling is the promise of freedom automated: contextualized
advertising, research into users' sentiments to provide personalized,
tailored ads in order to maximize click-through sales. This is shortly
followed by the disposal of the purchase as soon as possible in
order to purchase a new commodity. We, the users, are all suspects
whose most intimate details must be known so we can satisfy our
compulsive craving for new and immediately obsolete objects. The
problem of privacy is endless discussed, but only enters the public
discussion once it has already been violated. This issue is usually
coupled with complaints about the immorality of an authoritarian
system that divides people into categories. In the era of Big Data
conspiracies are rife. But the real problem is much more concrete
and distressing because it affects us all personally and not as an
anonymous mass. While certain individuals want to be profiled, for
the others whatever we do in order to avoid profiling, our digital
footprint is inescapable. There is no way we can opt out once
enlisted in the army of the data-suppliers. We are all prosumers in
the sense that we are both at once the producers and consumers
of data.
The problem relating to the use and abuse of data mining have
been subject to debate for some time.5 New lines of digital
segregation are being created, based on access, i.e. which
researchers, institutions and groups have the means and the
opportunity to use this data? What are the rules, what are the limits
and who decides? Here is not the place for a detailed examination.6
We will return to our main point here. This is not about going
against progress and its promise of a brilliant future, nor is it an
escape into Luddism or into its exact opposite, cryptography. To
hide serves no purpose; neither does refusing to come to terms
with the present order of things. What we need to do is to get a
clear understanding of Big Data and profiling, in so far as practical
strategies for the realization of a society modeled on anarcho-
capitalism, an ideology according to which everyone is 'free' to rob
everybody else. The anarcho-capitalist 'utopia' can more accurately
be termed a dystopia, based on control and self-control. We are
imperceptibly drifting from a world rich with meaning from
relationships to one that where meaning exists only through
connections relayed by machines.
It seems we no longer need either theories or practices that are
grounded in personal belief and proved by life experience. The
status of knowledge is transformed, because it seems that the
figures speak for themselves. Knowledge emerges from data as self-
evident and imposes itself as a certainty. Statistical correlations
establish relationships between things and have a bear on
relationships between people. We no longer shape a discourse;
data is to have the last word. This is the chimera of a data-driven
society, where the role of the human subject is practically irrelevant.
The role of humans now is one of docile acquiescence where we
relinquish out ability to choose and desire. It seems a parody of the
ancient Delphic maxim 'know thyself', and instead is the messianic
promise of the Quantified Self movement, 'Self-knowledge through
numbers'. Give us ever more powerful machines, handover all your
data, be transparent and we can predict the future. The future of
the market, of course.
We fly over the world, we consider it from the outside, we see
oceans of data, expanding and swirling, transformed by tsunamis of
social trends, as sudden as it is fleeting, occupying all available
space before giving way to the next start up. We can analyze the
attitudes of the masses and the aggregate opinion is easy to obtain
through polls and data mining.7 We, the targets are enthusiastic and
willing victims; we love to be 'free' consumers. The general, global
recording of everything is the price to be paid if we want to be truly
'free' to choose. An algorithm can inform us of what we truly want: it
already advised which book to buy on Amazon. Algorithms correct
our Google searches, suggest to us which new film we should see
and tells us which music best suits our taste. It is an algorithm that
tells us of our potential friends on Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter and
Instagram. Algorithms are paying attention for us, and encourage
correct socializing. In the near future it will be no longer be
necessary to desire anything, since an algorithm will know our
desires before we do.
This future will be the equivalent of seeing with 'the eye of God',
who is able to predict the future in the crystal ball where the deluge
of information flows. Open your heart, let your body be dissected
into useful segments, speak your mind, tell us where you are now,
what it is you are doing, and who is your current company. Without
thinking say it all, now, and you will obtain all you desire, without
even knowing yet what it is you actually desire. Inexpressible vertigo
(in the literal sense of what 'cannot be'), infantile enthusiasm (in the
original sense of infans: the one who does not talk yet), mystical
ecstasy in front of the Matrix before our very eyes. The expressions
and imagery about Big Data often take on a religious tone, and that
is a bit too frequent to be mere chance.
A kind of techno-fascistic religiosity is the fetish underlying the
knowledge society of Big Data. It is an indifferent religion since
having a sufficient quantity of data, means any viable hypothesis can
be confirmed. Like the Bible, the Q'uran or any holy book, the scope
for interpretation is endless, yet Big Data is vastly larger. It is
precisely because Big Data is so vast that is can be manipulated to
accommodate and support any assumption. Statistics can be used
for everything but ultimately prove nothing, they are apparently
scientific proofs of highly ideological presuppositions.
Meanwhile, paraphrasing John Lennon, life is what happens to us
while we're busy amending our digital profiles and contributing to
an even mass of data. One could argue that there are inherent
limits to digital computing and that the libertarian faith in innovation
without limits is a logical absurdity. But even in the absence of limits,
this faith is an irrelevance, as we would not longer be able to
manage our data in an autonomous fashion anyway. We would no
longer be able to manage the very knowledge that keeps us afloat.
So time to put aside the illusions of omnipotence and to descend to
Earth. Performing a specific search with a concrete and defined aim
exposes the trap lying behind the sheer endless availability of data.
Our goal is to write a work for curious people. There is a great
difference between writing a serious essay and making an endless
compilation, and inevitably imperfect still, of critiques, general
observations and alternative proposals. The mere accumulation of
more data does not by itself result in a better quality of research.
There is not such thing as an objectively superior choice because it
supposedly represents the 'natural' outcomes of a search from an
unbelievable quantity of data. Worse still, the data is often
automatically deemed correct, and neutral, just because it is derived
from sensors placed on the body using wearable computing
devices. There are only subjective, well-defined choices, when
personal preferences are passionate pleas for something that we
do not like, just for the duration of a click, but we are willing to
become involved because it matters to us.

1. Luce Irigaray, Sharing the World, London: Continuum, 2008, p. 47. back
2. See the work of Boris Cyrulnik in particular: Ensorcellement du monde Paris: Odile
Jacob, 1997, Les nourritures affective, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2000, and De chair et d’âme,
Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006. back
3. The figures are taken from the report of the independent analyst firm IDC and
should be treat with the usual caution since they are a large multinational company,
with their own vested interests. But since the purpose here is purely demonstrative,
the precise numbers do no alter our argument. For more information see the 2011
IDC Digital Universe Study http://www.emc.com/collateral/about/news/idc-emc-
digital-universe-2011-infographic.pdf and David Bollier, The Promise and Peril of Big
Data, Washington: The Aspen Institute, 2011,
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/pubs/The_Promise_an
d_Peril_of_Big_Data.pdf. back
4. Contrary to what one might imagine, the public knowledge is only a fraction of
existing knowledge. Much of the knowledge is secret, state secret or trade secrets,
removed from the public eye and largely meant to subjugate and manipulate us. See
the comprehensive research undertaken on 'secret materials' by Peter Galison,
physics professor at Harvard, especially 'Removing Knowledge', Critical Inquiry, 31
(2004) Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
https://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsdept/bios/docs/Removing%20Knowledge.pdf and
his documentary film with Robb Moss, Secrecy,
http://www.secrecyfilm.com/about.html. back
5. Dino Pedreschi et al, 'Big Data Mining, Fairness and Privacy: A Vision Statement
Towards an Interdisciplinary Roadmap of Research', KD Nuggets, October 2011,
http://www.kdnuggets.com/2011/10/big-data-mining-fairness-privacy.html. back
6. For a good critical overview see, Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford, 'Six Provocations for
Big Data', A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet
and Society, September 2011, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?
abstract_id=1926431. back
7. The latest software for understanding social network dynamics and social influence
is SenticsNet http://sentic.net/. back
2.05 THE HACKER SPIRIT AND THE
DISEASE OF ANARCHO-CAPITALISM
There are some people who absolutely love machines. They must
know how devices work, and nothing will mitigate their curiosity,
least of all the fear of being punished for breaking the law. They
enjoy taking machines apart and putting them back together,
tinkering with them in the process to improve their performance. In
the case of digital devices they write codes to make them
interconnect and to function in a new way. They literally feed the
machines and give them new life. These passionate people are
hackers.
There are various types of hackers. Code hackers write in various
computing languages - and their 'dialects' - to create new programs.
Security hackers invent novel ways of bypassing or breaking a
system's protection. Sometimes they actually put this knowledge to
work, but often they just make their discoveries public. They
sometimes can be found working for large corporations,
governments, institutions or the army. In these cases they are
supposed to enhance the security of computer systems. Hardware
hackers are more interested in directly altering machines: cutting,
soldering, assembling and fixing not only computers but also radios,
stereos, and even, bicycles, toasters and washing machines. Geeks
on the other hand, may not always possess expertise in coding, but
they move effortlessly in the digital realm, and can create and
modify to audio, video, and text objects, and use communication
tools like IRC (Internet Relay Chat).
In the mainstream press, hackers and geeks are often portrayed as
repressed and brilliant adolescents who threaten to take down the
whole digital world from their obscure rooms filled with computers
and modified devices. Totally withdrawn in their own universe, they
are more at ease in front of a computer screen than facing a real
human being. They are nerds: physically below average, poor at
sports, shy with girls and lacking of social skills. But they do possess
other abilities, in particular the ability to adeptly use computers.
They have a power they can put to use wherever it suits them: they
potentially can destroy your data on a whim, or for money or, to
take revenge against world that does not seem particularly
interested in them.
These simplifications however, do not do justice to the complexity of
the hacker phenomenon. This stereotype makes no distinction
between the mercenary hackers training the military for cyber
warfare, and the 'script kiddies', who use viruses and malware they
downloaded from the internet. The mythical figure of the hacker
breaking into databases, stealing private information and mocking
the police is the most widespread representation of an enduring
maxim: knowledge is power. Mastery of technology generally is a
source of power. Knowledge-power is a social power in the same
way as a tribesman who can handle fire may establish himself as the
leader of the tribe, or as a shaman, to whom the leader of the tribe
must respect in order to gain from this technical power only he can
handle. Whoever has the knowledge can make use of it to become
superior to others and exert authority. Knowledge about machines,
in a world shaped largely by the machines themselves, is the
greatest possible power that exists in our age. The control of this
power creates an unrelenting struggle for supremacy.
Nerd supremacy has ancient roots. In a society that is run by
machines, it is logical to assume that those who master the
machines also command society. Though the specifics may not yet
be clearly established, it is at least arguable that a certain type of
relationship style has impact on most of the technical instruments
we make daily use of and which shape the way we interact with each
other. It makes no sense to seek for the absolute truth, nor to figure
out what is a 'real' hacker. If we were to analyze thousands of
individual cases and personal stories about hacking, we would be
left with such diversity that we would not be able to come to a valid
interpretation. There is no doubt we could marshal enough
'evidence' if our aim was to prove that hackers are dangerous
criminal, but we could equally come up with 'proof' that hackers are
actually exemplary citizens, fearlessly fighting against multinationals,
banks, and authoritarian governments to create a more free world.
Instead, let us rather observe that among the most influential and
powerful individuals in the world of today, whether it is in the 'real'
economy or in the realm of the imaginary, we find many hackers, ex-
hackers and aspiring hackers. It is uncertain to what extent Bill
Gates, Microsoft's founder, and Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, are
hackers but is well known that the Silicon Valley of the seventies was
the common denominator for them both. Larry Page and Sergey
Brin founded Google at Stanford University, and following the classic
geek tradition, relocated to a garage in order to house the machines
running their nascent search engine. They might be hackers with
commercial ambitions, unlike Steve Wozniak - Apple's other Steve,
but it can not be denied that they possess IT expertise. As can be
seen in the feature film The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg is very
much at ease with machines, so much so that he had devised a
computer-assisted dating system, which we now know as Facebook.
Julian Assange, the controversial front man of WikiLeaks, has a past
as Australian security hacker before he challenged governments
across the world by publishing secret diplomatic cables. Linus
Torvalds, creator of Linux operating System, is typical of many
hackers who devote their time trying to write better code than
everybody else. Possibly less well known to the public is Richard
Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Federation (FSF).1 He is
perhaps the best example of the purist hacker following his own
ideals of freedom without any compromise.
It is very important to understand the values that underlie what has
been called 'the hacker spirit' or even 'the hacker ethic'. This
because these values profoundly shape the collective, technological
imaginary, digital sociality and ultimately the society in which we live
as a whole. We must look beyond hagiographic reconstructions of a
mythical past where lanky and bespectacled heroes of the digital
revolution, with a twisted and odd sense of humor are driven by
pure love of knowledge and a peculiar notion of fun.2 Human
actions are never pure, nor can they be predicted by some
automated pattern or at least not yet. Simplistic trivialization of the
apparent differences between good and bad, 'white hats' versus
'black hats' hackers, or between hackers who have sold out to
corporation and governments versus those who remain
independent only serve to obscure a proper understanding of the
hacker spirit. The irreducible differences of individual stories are, as
always, a starting point for observation. But the question remains -
do these differences also betray similarities? Is there something like
a 'hacker style'?
Ippolita has a strong bias in favor of those individuals who get their
hands dirty and attempt to lead an autonomous life. One of the
mottos that describe the hacker attitude is 'hands on', put your
finger on it. Another motto is 'information wants to be free': we
should reject all barriers. To achieve this goal, hackers share what
they learn and explain their techniques and strategies, which is also
the way of gaining merit in the hacking community. From a political
viewpoint, when hackers and geeks talk within their community, the
use of the word freedom is frequent, as in freedom of expression, of
thought, in private life, as an individual, etc. The other dominant
concept is individual meritocracy. In the United States this
sentiment more or less corresponds with the liberal world-view. But
there are so many subtle shades in the spectrum that the original
color tends to fade away.3 If Zuckerberg and Stallman are total
opposites of each other, it may well be that their unexpected
similarities are revealed precisely by this opposition. The former
spends his time harvesting web users personal contents through
proprietary software, you can't download or modify Facebook's
code, in order to reap large profits from individually targeted
adverts. The latter appears to be completely committed to
protecting the software's basic freedoms: execute, modify, distribute
and share. Nonetheless, both are somehow hackers.
The common character trait both of them share is their
individualistic tendencies. There are very good reasons for this: even
from a purely technical viewpoint, sharing is only possible among
individuals if they are able to create personal projects. Besides, in
more prosaic terms, the relationship between a person and her
computer had become so closely personal from the 1980s onwards
that it borders on solipsistic alienation.
There are other remarkable similarities. The cult of excellence, for
instance: permanent improvement is imperative. A third
characteristic is the rejection of limits as a principle. Overcoming
obstacles, crossing boundaries, penetrating systems, is the
language used to describe the rush into technical space, which, with
the advent of the internet, had become a true virtual space in itself.
The tendency to set challenges, like 'which of us will get furthest' is
the outcome of individual excellence coupled to the will to explore
the unknown. In its crudest form this takes the shape of a duel
between two opponents. But there are more complex
configurations, all subsumed under the competition principle which
in itself is typically a male behavior. Not surprisingly hackers are
overwhelmingly males, with a high level of education, an inclination
towards abstract thinking, and often diagnosed with Asperger
syndrome.4 To develop from a small clique of computer geeks to a
vast corporate hierarchy, takes less time than one would think.
Communities of hacker-geeks celebrate meritocracy, risk-taking, the
need for maximum commitment, and finally the duty to think
independently before pestering your geek friends with basic
questions, a precept epitomized by the acronym R.T.F.M. - Read The
Fucking Manual. A community consisting of people who are able to
understand and appreciate individual effort also knows how to add
value and agree on a shared cause of knowledge. The explicit
references to personal charm, pride for discovering an elegant
solution quicker than anyone else and technical expertise acquired
at a high price are all recurrent motifs of hacker culture.5
The individual engaging in hacking is surrounded by an aura of
sorts, conferring on him a kind of superior power. On the other side
are the non-hackers, the users or the sheep who understand
nothing about computers. Manuals and guides are published for
these users, often called lamers - it is even possible to teach them
how to use certain programs! But it remains a common sense fact
that knowledge has a pyramidal structure. There are exoteric levels,
understandable to the general public, and esoteric levels only open
to the initiated. There are many levels of initiation and competence,
referred to in the stereotypical distinction between those who
belong to the elite in terms of being familiar with machines and
those who are mere amateurs.6
From this state of mind arises two behavioral characteristics: one is
a thinly veiled contempt of the physical body, the real world and for
physical contact with other human beings. The second
characteristic is a tendency to see everything in black and white, like
a transposition of the ones and zeros in binary code. Either it is right
or wrong, good or bad. The world is an epic battle between the
forces of good and evil, the dark forces have a global impact. The
knights of Knowledge, the Jedis of the machines, may chose for one
side or the other, but it is clear there is war and those who have
more weapons cannot remain mere spectators. We are drawing a
caricature to describe these competing traits but many examples
are consistent with this vision. A spirit of confrontation lingers.
Individualism and the cult of limitless liberty are two major traits
shared by both the hacker spirit and anarcho-capitalists. We can
add to that a blind faith in the redeeming power of technology. We
should also note that both anarcho-capitalists and hackers share
the same enemy: institutions, and more specifically US federal
institutions, which impose limits on their liberties (unrestricted
access to knowledge in one case, unrestricted freedom to get rich in
the other). Yet if we are to believe Eric S. Raymond's half-serious
pronouncements, the points of agreement go much further. Eric
Raymond himself is a high-ranking, 'historic' member of the hacker
tribe and a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian. In his portrayal of the
fictitious person J. Random Hacker, he describes his political
convictions as follows:

Formerly vaguely liberal-moderate, more recently moderate-

to-neoconservative (hackers too were affected by the collapse
of socialism). There is a strong libertarian contingent which
rejects conventional left-right politics entirely. The only safe
generalization is that hackers tend to be rather anti-
 authoritarian; thus, both paleo-conservatism and 'hard' leftism
are rare. Hackers are far more likely than most non-hackers to
either (a) be aggressively apolitical or (b) entertain peculiar or
idiosyncratic political ideas and actually try to live by them day-
today.7

There are good reasons to take this analysis seriously. Even if,
generally speaking, hacking is rather apolitical, politics have begun
to dominate in the hacking sphere. More than twenty years have
passed since the first large-scale suppressive operations against
hackers, with 'Operation Sun Devil' as a climax. In the US numerous
youths were trampled down during the 'Hacker Crackdown', and its
second act a few years later in Italy with 'Fidobust', aka the 'Italian
Crackdown.8 The suspicious attitude of the authorities has not
changed ever since. There has been an increase of repressive laws
excessively widening the scope for surveillance and banning
hacking-associated initiatives. Exemplary in this respect are the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States and
the European Union's Copyrights Directive (EUCD). Conflicts in the
'real' world have now shifted into the 'virtual' world giving a new
lease of life to old antipathies. Keywords like labor, class and
property see themselves updated into a Web-compliant jargon.
Large numbers of people are being criminalized on the pretense of
protecting copyrights, which all too often are a mere scapegoat for
corporate greed. Where some see virtual worlds as open
playgrounds, for the unscrupulous and acquisitive they are empty
lands ripe for conquest.
'The Underground Myth' is an article that puts the acts of hackers
into proper historical context and describes the ongoing process
where control of the internet is increasingly concentrated in the
hands of a few firms and institutions.9 All these organizations have
largely benefited from the contributions of these kids, whom they
criminalized out of curiosity only to co-opt them shortly afterwards
in order to improve their security systems, i.e. to build improved
controllable networks. The 'digital piracy' allegory is therefore very
appropriate only not in the sense intended by corporations. The
way cyberspace is being occupied has much in common with the
way America was conquered. The 'frontier' trope recurs, and with it,
that of colonization and the unavoidable violence associated with it.
The abuses and massacres perpetrated in order to spread
'civilization', together with material, human, and animal losses
incurred were not mere 'collateral damages', but they were essential
to the colonizing mission. In the same fashion, the conquest of the
digital realms implies pyramids of profiteering abuses at the global
scale and enormous pile-up of electronic waste and obsolete code.
In order to make all this possible, it is necessary either to buy out or
destroy the pirates infiltrating the digital oceans.10
In the 17th and up to the early 18th century, pirates in the New
World had a more adventurous, and also more free and egalitarian
life than the sailors on Spanish, British, French or Dutch ships.11
Later they were often coerced to sell their liberty and enlist under
the flag of the various European powers whose ships they
previously plundered. 'Letters of Marque' transformed pirates into
privateers, or in others words, into mercenaries. In the same
fashion, hackers at the beginning of the 21st century were
confronted with joint attacks by institutional colonizers and often
opted to co-operate with them. From being free explorers they
became proficient mercenaries in the pay of companies and
governments who are out to establish a new order of things in the
digital realm.12
The 'global war' frame of mind satirized in the film, War Games has
unfortunately materialized in the realm of digital sociality. News
reach us everyday about malevolent hackers engaged on this or
that front, against white, black, yellow, or red terrorists, all with
vague, unintelligible or absurd demands. They are battling or
collaborating with intelligence services with underhand deals and
suspicious pasts. The once amusing scenarios of gnostic hackers
working with the Illuminati and Voodoo gods of cyberspace, has
now become a sinister conceit. Cyber warfare is by now an everyday
concept. The internet has become an immense resource, but also a
threat to the established order.13 The sheer quantity of computers
and their developing processing power can be used to manage
flows of malignant data in order to extract private information, or to
carry out attacks, as with the armies of zombie computers remotely
controlled by other computers (botnet). For example the computers
control by government agencies used to shutdown networks.
Viruses are created to attacks enemy targets, or to slow down or
disable military research programs. Today's wars like the one in
Afghanistan, 'in defense of democracy', are fought at a distance with
drones, operated by remote control from bases thousands of
kilometers away. The modus operandi is precisely the same as that
of videogames, only with all to real deadly effects.
Are hackers a menace in such an apocalyptic scenario? Are they
buccaneers or privateers? Are they dangerous subversives
combating the established order, or are they the hired hands of
strong powers with libertarian tendencies? Let us now take a trip to
the far North of Europe, to Sweden, where we will find a number of
elements in the farrago of hacking, piracy, and libertarianism: the
Pirate Bay site, the Pirat Partiet and WikiLeaks.
1. Richard Stallman's Free Software inspired the Open Source movement and was very
influential within the digital culture right from the beginning. back
2. The best-known hagiography, which is still a good historical reconstruction, is Steven
Levy's Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution, New York: Penguin, 1984. back
3. Gabriella Coleman is one of the few scholars who try to go beyond the stereotypes.
See: Gabriella Coleman, 'Hacker Politics and Publics', Public Culture, New York:
Institute of Public Knowledge, 2011, http://gabriellacoleman.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/08/Coleman-hacker-politics-publics.pdf. back
4. Asperger syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder, and involves socializing
difficulties and stress. It has been noted that San Francisco's Bay Area has by
percentage many more cases of Asperger’s than the US national average. In 2011,
lawyers in the United Kingdom used Asperger’s as an extenuating condition in order
to reduce the sentence of Ryan Cleary, an alleged member of the notorious 'Lulzsec'
hacker group. We will go more into the 'Lulz spirit' (Laughing out Loud) later on, it
suffices here to say that it consists of breaking into secured systems, extracting
private data and publishing it. back
5. FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), a repertoire of questions and answers that show
how to use a services, programs and tools, demonstrates in an impressive manner
this very belief, that the individual must show that she has done all she can for
herself before asking for help. This approach can take various forms, some more
community oriented through prioritizing the necessity to develop shared knowledge,
but under no circumstances should shared knowledge be seen as some kind of pre-
digested pap accessible to all. The ability to find your own way out when challenged
by a novel situation, and to apply a creative solution to the problem has obvious
parallels to the myth of the explorer, able to orient herself in an unknown territory by
reading and interpreting the clues she discovers around her. back
6. For more detail on what we are discussing here and to get to grips with what
motivates a hacker, see Phrack, one of the best independent publications on hacking
which has been active since the mid-eighties: http://www.phrack.org. back
7. See Eric S. Raymond, The Jargon File,
https://web.archive.org/web/20130827121341/http://cosman246.com/jargon.html
Despite being somewhat egocentric and a bit dated by now, The Jargon File (archived
August 27, 2013) remains a fundamental document to understand the history and
culture of hacking up to the beginning of the 21st century. back
8. See Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic
Frontier, New York: Bantam Books, 1992, http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html
 and Carlo Gubitosa, Italian Crackdown: BS amatoriali, volontari telematici, censure e
sequestri nell'Italia degli anni '90, Milan: Apogeo, 1999. back
9. Anonymous, 'The Underground Myth', Phrack Magazine, 18 April 2008,
http://phrack.org/issues/65/13.html. back
10. See our anaylsis in Ippolita, Open non è free, Milan: Eleuthera, 2005. back
11. Even today, pirates as heroes of the popular imagination embody a very specific
worldview based on liberty and equality. They were libertarians avant la lettre in the
sense of socialist internationalism. This thesis is supported with a wealth of historic
details in Marcus Rediker's research. See: Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations:
Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, London: Verso, 2004. back
12. Exemplary in this respect is the 'Tiger Team' case. This was the name of a group of
security hackers hired by Telecom Italia and the Italian secret services. The team was
involved with fraud in the 2006 election and in selling confidential information to
French, Israeli, and American secret services. See details see the investigative
documentary of Beppe Cremagnani and Enrico Deaglio, 'Gli Imbroglioni' Diario,
numero speciale 18 e film, 2007. One of the most disturbing characters in this dark
story is Fabio Ghioni, a security expert, essayist and novelist. As an instructor of
malicious hackers for several government agencies, he is the promoter of the ENOC
program (Evolution and New Order Civilization). Perhaps this is just bait for rich
people with money to burn but it may also be yet another transhumanist project,
since overcoming the human condition through technology, is a recurring obsession
for most anarcho-capitalists and technophiles. back
13. 'The Threat from the Internet: Cyberwar' The Economist, July, 2010,
http://www.economist.com/node/16481504. back
2.06 PIRATE PARTIES, OR
TECHNOLOGY IN POLITICS
In 2003 digital pirates began infiltrating Sweden's social-democratic
society. Since this year the Pirate Bay has been indexing torrent files
and saving names and addresses of shared files through the peer-
to-peer torrent protocol, a meta-data format that identifies text,
audio, and video files.1 Shared files are not stored on a centralized,
server: they are only indexed so as to make them accessible to
users. This approach enables Pirate Bay to bypass, the problem of
complicity in copyright infringement, which led to Napster's closure
in 2001, Morpheus and Grocker in 2003, and numerous other file-
sharing systems. According to the reasoning of the Pirate Bay,
violations, if they occur, are entirely the users' responsibility. The
Swedish pirates regularly publish on their site the legal letters they
receive from Microsoft, Apple, Dreamworks and Adobe, as well as
the mocking responses they send back to these tech giants.
But what, then, is the specific crime that these pirates are accused
of? Here, the concept of piracy must be seen in the context of the
conflict between big media enterprises operating like a cartel and
the practice of sharing copyright protected files. The organizations
representing the interests of big firms which produce and distribute
multi-media content make use of the 'piracy' moniker to stigmatize
the theft of copyrighted content, which lowers their earnings. Their
reasoning is that every time someone downloads a copyright
protected film (or an audio file, book, video game etc.), that person
will not go to the movies, nor will she purchase the product in
another legal form. Therefore there is considerable economic
damage resulting from this theft.
Let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that private property
should be defended when you harm the economic interests of
others. The a priori argument in opposition to this is that our
purchasing is artificially constrained while there is an enormous
proliferation of content in all mediums. In other words, if I have only
ten euros to spend on records, there is no way I will be able to
spend one hundred. But I can download music for free, usually with
a significant compromise in quality as mp3 cannot compete with a
high quality vinyl, nor can streaming video be compared with a
cinema screen. Many consumers may wish to buy more books,
films, or records yet they must limit themselves to what surplus cash
they have. In many cases if these contents were not free, they would
not 'consume' them. In this sense, there is no real loss in earnings.
But there is also an a posteriori argument that can be made with
the benefit of hindsight, the increasing turnover of the
entertainment industry globally proves that cultural content is a
source of profits. Yet greed knows no limit and the idea that profits
can grow exponentially is the dream of every boss of a major media
company.
There are also legal reasons that make this definition of 'piracy'
problematic. Theft of a digital goods that can be identically
reproduced at very low cost (memory drive plus the electricity
needed to make a copy) is starkly different from the theft of a non-
digital good.2 A copied file does not dispossess the original owner of
the file. It follows that intellectual property of this type of goods
needs to be distinguished from the property of non-digital goods.
Furthermore making file sharing illegal, under any circumstance,
tends to erase the difference between commercial and personal
use. Yet it is obvious that the re-sale for profit of a copyright-
protected digital good and the use of it without any profit-making
motives are different things altogether. In fact, it is the architecture
of the content distribution system itself that traditionally makes
extensive personal use possible. A book, once purchased, can be
given away, read aloud, or loaned to a friend. Its sentences can be
memorized, repeated, rehearsed, modified, and reproduced for
personal use. Quoting an author in another book is generally
considered a tribute to the author. In no way can this now all be
redefined as theft.3
In Europe and in the United States, not to mention the rest of the
world, the law is inadequate. Where specific, IT-related law has been
enacted it tends to limit and suppress personal usage for the
benefit of media oligopolies, which have found governments
enthusiastic assistants willing to protect and advance corporate
interests by legislative means. But far from being universally
accepted, accusations of theft are continually raised. Sites like The
Pirate Bay's are true 'repositories of collective actions', to quote the
term used by the sociologist and political scientists, Charles Tilly and
Sidney Tarrow.4 The mass use of identical duplication services leads
to the emergence of zones of economic counter-power, something
that economist John Kenneth Galbraith has dubbed compensatory
power, a concept quite close to the Post-Marxist notion of 'counter-
power'.5 These zones of counter-power forms lines of resistance
against the prevailing power in the absence of competition, and in
particularly with the case of Sweden, against the collusion of the
state with anti-market forces. The collusion of governments with
oligopolies raises serious problems for citizen-constituencies and is
discussed by critics as a kind of 'organized crime' related to a wave
of de-democratization. What makes such alliances more troubling is
the fact that file-sharing has not demonstrably 'damaged' the
creative industries as a whole, but appears to have contributed to
world-economic transformations including an increase in creative
production and an expansion and globalization of media markets.6
In a landmark decision, the operators of the Pirate Bay were
condemned in 2009 to a prison term of one year and substantial
fines. This judgment has been appealed. Apparently under the
pressure of powerful cultural lobbies, the Swedish state went for a
repressive approach. However one of the judges had an
undisclosed conflict of interests, so the case is still far from clear-
cut. After having announced a sale that failed, after a blockade, the
Pirate Bay is still indexing millions of files. The members have been
arrested and prosecuted, but it continues to inspire fear, the Italian
government, for example, decided to block access to the site. The
site is theoretically beyond reach of Italians, but indirect access is
still possible. Through using a proxy, e.g. Google Translate, or other
similar systems, users can circumvent this clumsy attempt at
censorship.7
A small group of 'netizens' deliberately breaking the law online and
therefore demonstrating their disapproval of the concentration of
economic power is not a new idea. This is clearly a vital concept,
since consumer pressure, for example net boycotts, can produce
real change. But it is much more difficult to sustain political theories
inspired by online strikes, calls for action, demonstrations, and other
networked activities, that are leading to the emergence of a new
form popular sovereignty which goes beyond the traditional forms.8
As we will see later on, online activism is often mere slacktivism, and
tends to weaken traditional forms of political commitment. The
benefit of this approach is that it redirects the attention from what
is less important, the economic aspects, in order to focus attention
on the pressing social and political issues.
It is fair to say that the Pirate Bay affair has had a significant political
repercussions. The resurgence of the anti copyright demonstrations
caused by government repression played an important role in the
rise of the Pirat Partiet in Sweden, the first 'Pirate Party' worldwide.
By asserting everybody's right to break intellectual property
protection laws it considers outdated and illiberal, the Pirat Partiet
has had major successes over the past few years, which culminated
in the election of two of its members to the European parliament in
2009. There is no doubt about the fact that the increasing number
of copyrights, patents, trademarks and non-disclosure clauses have
progressively eroded civil and personal liberties. This has occurred
with widespread indifference of the public. The creativity of authors,
inventors, and researchers has been debilitated in the process by
norms which should protect and encourage it instead of defending
big business' interests. Often, the 'total war against terrorism and
rogue states' has been used as a convenient excuse to authorize all
kinds of suppressive measures, which are intended to control the
people for the benefit and protection not only of the cultural
industries, but equally of Big Pharma and the biochemical and
military industries, in short all actors bend on the privatization of
knowledge.
In this regard, the debate around SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), a
bill proposed to the US Congress in October 2011, gives a good
summary of the interests at stake. The full title of the proposed act
reads: 'to promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and
innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other
purposes'.9 So the copyrights owners, meaning the media and
entertainment oligopolies wish to pose as innovative defenders of
intellectual property against the thieving pirate. The MPPA (Motion
Picture Association of America), the RIIA (Recording Industry
Association of America) and other media lobbies are pushing for
criminalization, in the narrow sense, for anyone who violates the
current status, regardless whether this is for personal or any other
usage. Yet, we should remember that copyright infringements are
already deemed criminal offenses under the DMCA (Digital
Millennium Copyright Act) and EUCD (European Union Copyright
Directive). Now not only is it possible to criminally prosecute all who
facilitate online tracking of copyrighted material, and that means all
search engines including Google, Yahoo, and Bing, but also all
browsers, such as Mozilla when they are used to track 'illegal' files.
Lined up on the other side are all the network intermediaries, which
do not produce and do not hold 'protected' documents, but which
are used to access these documents. But the oddity here is that
Google, eBay, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, etc., who all ostensibly fight
for the users' freedom, are in fact, as we have shown, the new
masters of the internet. Moreover, all the codes which these tech
giant run their systems on are proprietary, opaque, and protected,
yet they claim at the same time to be advocates for transparency
and openness. The two concepts foster ambivalent practices – at
the individual level at least, they are often mere synonyms for
'totalitarian privatization'. In fact, users have to adopt their
proprietary tools and contribute to their world privately. Thus we
see a transition from the old media oligopolies to the new digital
masters. Positive freedom and autonomy in the tech world seems
more and more a distant dream.
Thus, both large scale digital intermediaries and the Pirate Party
have the same enemy: the media oligopolies. Even though the
Pirate Party is not a hackers party, it can still easily pass as the agent
of progressive political demands, especially among the young, who
have little access to the paradise of compulsive consumption. In a
similar manner, the party also opposes arbitrary police checks. The
website of the Pirat Partiet stated:

We wish to change global legislation to facilitate the emerging

information society, which is characterized by diversity and
 openness. We do this by requiring an increased level of
respect for the citizens and their right to privacy, as well as
reforms to copyright and patent law. The three core beliefs of
the Pirate Party are the need for protection of citizen's rights,
the will to free our culture, and the insight that patents and
private monopolies are damaging to society.10

This program may appear excessively minimal, coming from an

opposition party. Yet, at the local elections for the Berlin 'Land'
parliament, in September 2011, the German Pirates polled almost
9% of the votes, entering into the local parliament. But to go back to
Sweden, it soon became clear that these self-professed pirates do
not have very little interest in social policies, and are mostly
concerned about their own private interests. In 2010, with a media
storm raging, the Pirate Partiet hosted on its servers the WikiLeaks
site for free, openly backing the project and challenging the Swedish
state to support the 'struggle for liberty' by the charismatic Julian
Assange and his associates.11 And thus we are return to the issues of
hackers, conspirators, and the global war against the enemies of the
freedom of speech.

1. Since 2009 p2p sharing systems have increasingly shifted towards the use of magnet
links, the traces (hash) files rather than names and addresses, substantially reducing
the flow of metadata and hence the bandwidth required. The Pirate Bay, like many
other similar services started to promote the use of DHT (Distributed Hash Table)
and PEX ((Peer Exchange) as substitutes for traditional centralized trackers. Their
main benefit is to avoid the need for users (peers) to refer to one single server
keeping and distributing the names and traces of torrent files. Combined with the
use of encryption for incoming and outgoing data flows at the peer level,
decentralized protocols strengthen the network, making it both safer and more
reliable, and, of course, much less prone to interception. back
2. The common distinction between tangible and intangible goods is misleading as well
as incorrect, and only serves to strengthen the vulgar mass media interpretation. The
files are not immaterial, they are precise sequences of electrical impulses stored on
 enchanced silicon supports. Moreover, without computers and networks they are
inaccessible, and the computers and networks are very obviously material. back
3. Nonetheless, this is exactly what happens with proprietary software. The Windows
'shrink-wrap' user license states that you are not the owner of the digital good, but
that you are merely allowed to use it, without modifying, copying, or sharing it. The
same is true, perhaps to an even worse extent with Apple, since it uses the lock-
down software previously distributed under a BSD license. back
4. Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics, Boulder: Paradigm Publishers,
2007. back
5. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Anatomy of Power, Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1983. back
6. Leon Tan, 'The Pirate Bay: Countervailing Power and the Problem of State Organized
Crime', C Theory, November 2010, http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=672. back
7. See, http://piratebayitalia.com/. back
8. Leaving aside the more militaristic visions of multitude opposed to empire, see:
Alexander R Galloway's and Eugene Thacker, The Exploit: A Theory of Networks,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. back
9. H.R. 3261 (112th): 'Stop Online Piracy Act', October 2011,
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3261/text. back
10. Pirate Party Declaration of Principles 3.2,
http://docs.piratpartiet.se/Principles%203.2.pdf. back
11. 'Swedish Pirate Party to Host New WikiLeaks Servers', Piratpartiet Presscenter,
August 2010, http://press.piratpartiet.se/2010/08/17/swedish-pirate-party-to-host-
new-WikiLeaks-servers/. back
2.07 THE WIKILEAKS AFFAIR: A FUTILE
CHALLENGE OR SENSIBLE DEFIANCE?
Like the Pirate Bay, the WikiLeaks affair is still unfolding. Since this is
a Spectacle, in the Situationist sense, a new plot twist is always on
the cards. However everything that has been written about
WikiLeaks betrays a disturbing lack of critical analysis. There is little
beyond the trivial standpoints of the 'Like/ Don't Like' variety. Left-
wing groups, especially in Europe, consider WikiLeaks a champion of
the oppressed daring to challenge corrupt governments. The logic
here is once more borrowed from the battlefield; the enemy of my
enemy is my friend. Seen from the perspective of governments, or
those taking a patriotic or conservative position, WikiLeaks is viewed
as a project threatening international diplomacy. It endangers the
lives of soldiers of 'the forces of good' who are engaged in peace
keeping operations and the war on terror, as well as discrediting
governmental institutions. In our opinion, WikiLeaks, despite
involving people in good faith, from the point of view of the
Spectacle is ultimately part of the libertarian galaxy.
Lets briefly summarize the facts. WikiLeaks was founded in 2006, as
a site that publishes classified and secret documents. Until 2010
WikiLeaks used the same interface as Wikipedia and described itself
as a place where confidential documents may be posted
anonymously. The WikiLeaks site then publicly releases the
documents once they have been screened. In the beginning of
WikiLeaks, posting documents on the site was neither risk free nor
very anonymous, and it was only in a later phase only that the
WikiLeaks team setup a relatively secure system. The site won
acclaim from the international press in 2007. By this point Julian
Assange had proclaimed himself editor-in-chief. Assange, born
1971, is an Australian hacker, and his technical skills are impressive.
His contributions to a range of free software coding projects are
highly original.1 Assange was condemned in Australia for what
federal institutions deemed to be crimes but his prison sentence
was commuted to a fine. Julian Assange made the front-page of
newspapers worldwide in November 2010 when WikiLeaks
published secret diplomatic documents exposing the US
government.
It is not so much the content of documents published on WikiLeaks
that is problematic because it is preferable that news circulates,
rather than be censored. But the aims and methods of WikiLeaks
which come dangerously close to those of Facebook. The idea is to
achieve radical transparency, but now at the level of governments:
exposing the evils of corrupt governments, and seeking out the
underside of the powerful just as we like to do with our 'friends'.
Millions of secret documents are then presented to the general
public, generating a phenomenon of mass voyeurism that results in
mass indifference. We are confronted with staggering revelations:
wars are not intended to export democracy, but instead to control
oil, uranium, and access to precious earth resources. More shocking
perhaps is that the public has become accustomed to believing
outright lies such as 'the war for freedom against the axis of evil'.
Julian Assange is the public face of the white knight hackers, who
pose as the guardian priests of a liberating technology, and
dissidents who are willing to defy the system even at the cost of
their own freedom. There are some contradictions of course, but it
is all for our own good. The most obvious contradictions is that this
battle for transparency demands a semi-secret, opaque
organization, run by a clandestine elite with equally secretive
funding, and with a single public leader, a charismatic figurehead
able to attract the attention of television cameras and who is
prepared to argue with presidents and world leaders, in a media
war. There is no mediation possible, no work to be done, no
commitment to be shown. There is one only truth to consider, the
documents made available to us by WikiLeaks. Yet, as we have
shown in the case of Big Data, having a massive storehouse of data
at your disposal oppresses rather than liberates people, stirring up
a feeling of impotence, and making them think the whole issue is
futile. Corruption, violence and news about the shocking behavior of
the powerful are hardly surprising for anyone who is not totally
oblivious to the world around them.
Moreover, the methods of WikiLeaks appear quite unsuitable to
other contexts of information censorship. Attacking the United
States while being protected under the constitutional liberties
granted by European social democracies like Sweden, with the
support of libertarian extremists opposed to any form of
government, and large Western newspapers, is far easier than
confronting, authoritarians states like China, Burma, or North Korea,
Cuba, Iran, Syria, or Belarus.2 The emergence of structure like
WikiLeaks is simply inconceivable in modern authoritarian regimes,
for the simple reason that these regimes exercise an increasingly
effective control on network infrastructures and access to networks.
Even if something like WikiLeaks were to occur in these societies,
authoritarian governments have many options to manipulate public
opinion and rid themselves dissidents without dirtying their hands.
The work of Evgeny Morozov describes these methods of
manipulation in detail.
In Russia, one of the countries most tolerant of piracy, in a manner
that is anti-Western and anti-American in particular, young
consultants of the regime influence the opinions of the public with
great skill. Russian government propaganda often users the exact
same manipulative techniques as American spin doctors: blogging,
newspaper articles, entire social networks devoted to pro-regime
stances, and to vilifying dissidents – with verbal intimidation often
preceding physical aggression. In China we have the 'Fifty Cents
Party', a moniker referring to the money allegedly paid for each post
supporting the government. Armies of pro-government bloggers
busy themselves with tweaking Wikipedia entries, and boosting
traffic and pro-regime background noise, drowning out the already
feeble opposition voices in the process. Saudi Arab princes regularly
hire IT experts to monitor the net for information harmful to the
regime, which should be refuted, discredited or obscured. Within
the 'international community', states behave exactly like individuals
when it comes to their digital profiles: they do their best to identify
embarrassing behavior among their peers, while trying to hide their
own and glorifying their own achievements without any critical
perspective. It is both absurd to suppose that populism and greater
transparency can really support democratic debate. Authoritarian
and democratic regimes both benefit from transparency; but only
when applied to their own citizens. The one who manages their
information the best wins.
Let us return to the WikiLeaks affair. The choice to publish the
classified documents on the war in Afghanistan on July 25th 2010, in
five major newspapers (The New York Times, The Guardian, Der
Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais) displays the signs of a confused and
contradictory strategy. By publishing the leaks in this sensationalistic
way, WikiLeaks are largely following the logic of the tabloid and the
Society of the Spectacle. Dispatches were continually released for
several months until the end of September 2010, when WikiLeaks'
German spokesperson, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, left the
organization, or was expelled, due to a personal disagreements with
Julian Assange. The latter is now subject to an arrest warrant on for
a double charge of sexual assault in Sweden, and which was
converted, as per the Schengen agreements, to a European arrest
warrant in November 2010.
The allegations of rape do not shed a very favorable light on the
already controversial figure of Julian Assange, but it is important to
note the entire debacle was part of a media spectacle. By delving a
little deeper into the matter, we can understand the issue in its full
complexity. According to Swedish law, consensual sex without
protection may afterwards be interpreted as sexual assault if one of
the parties asks for a test for sexually transmitted diseases (STD)
and the other party refuses. Since Julian Assange so far refused to
submit to a medical checkup, the accusation has been upheld. But
refusing to submit to a blood test is different type of issue
altogether from sexual assault.3 On December 7, 2010, Julian
Assange turned himself over to the London Police. That same day,
under pressure of the US Government, Bank of America, VISA,
MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union blocked all money transfers
to WikiLeaks and froze its accounts. Julian Assange remained in
prison until December 16. Almost one year later, Britain agreed to
the extradition request by Sweden, who still want to prosecute
Julian Assange for sexual assault. Meanwhile, in the United States,
several prominent conservative politicians accused Assange as an
enemy of the state that must be apprehended, Sarah Palin wished
him dead, and many others asked for a reward to capture Assange
dead or alive. Even the more progressive politicians the dominant
view was that Assange is a dangerous terrorist.
Perhaps the allegations of sexual assault have been fabricated, but
what we know for certain, is that Assange has been widely
described as an authoritarian, paranoid and inflexible personality.
He has been characterized as a person who cannot stand the
hassle of human relationship and is totally committed to his own
crusade. So we appear to have another fanatic, and more obsessive,
who is representative of nerd supremacy. If you need more
convincing, just read his unauthorized autobiography, which came
out in November 2011.4 Having spent all the money of the advance
on legal costs, Assange subsequently attempted to terminate the
contract with his publishing but was refused.
Another thing worth noticing in the WikiLeaks affair is what Julian
Assange had to say in an interview with Forbes Magazine in
November 2010. He states that he does not consider himself an
enemy of the United States nor of global capitalism in general. On
the contrary, WikiLeaks disclosures are meant to improve markets'
information, since perfect markets demand completely truthful
information. This way, people are free to decide on which product to
focus. He went on to declare his faith in libertarianism: 'It's not
correct to put me in any one philosophical or economic camp,
because I've learned from many. But one is American libertarianism,
market libertarianism. So as far as markets are concerned I'm a
libertarian, but I have enough expertise in politics and history to
understand that a free market ends up as monopoly unless you
force them to be free. WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism
more free and ethical.'5
Of course, Assange is ultimately a victim in this sad story, since has
self-imprisoned himself for several years in the Embassy of Ecuador
in London in order to avoid arrest. For some he has become a
martyr of free speech Yet, WikiLeaks' war has caused collateral
damages, and has at least one other obvious victim: the young
American soldier and IT specialist Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning,
who was accused of downloading tens of thousands of secret
documents and passing them on to WikiLeaks while he was serving
as computer intelligence analyst in Iraq. From November 2010,
Bradley Manning was first detained for 10 months in particularly
inhumane military prison in in Quantico, Virginia before being
transferred to Fort Lavenworth, Kansas. Activists, lawyers, and
notable personalities in arts and culture have staged protests
worldwide against the barbarous treatment of the 'spy' Manning,
whose culpability is still a matter of a debate.6 Some people have
called Manning a hero, and her name forward for the Nobel Peace
Prize in 2012. Manning's sad story shows that blatant confrontation
against authorities has harsh repercussions in the digital world just
as it would in the real world. Opposing the obscurantism of the
powerful in favor of transparency by drawing upon the logic of war
and the spectacle is the exact opposite of what should be a tangible
struggle for freedom, understood as the expansion of personal and
collective autonomy. Disagreements within the WikiLeaks
organization and Julian Assange's incarceration led to a split and the
foundation of OpenLeaks, a project under development that aims at
correcting the organizational imbalances of WikiLeaks.7 In order 'to
foster whistle-blowing and make it safer', OpenLeaks attempts to
use shared tools, managed co-operatively by a group having
recognized expertise in data gathering. The goal was not to directly
host leaks of information but rather to provide technological tools
to the holders of the classified information, which gives them the
means to act autonomously. In this sense, OpenLeaks avoids an
approach that is explicitly opposed to governments, and hence
differentiates its position from the rhetoric of libertarianism.
Before the advent of WikiLeaks, sites publishing confidential
documents did exist, for example the aforementioned site
Cryptome. But the WikiLeaks format had a large impact. After
WikiLeaks, a growing number of local leak websites developed in
France, Bulgaria, Indonesia and Venezuela. Beyond the simple
WikiLeaks clones, different approaches were also tried, such as
Wikispooks and Israelileaks. Meanwhile, mainstream medias got
busy trying to set up secure communication channels in order to
receive anonymous leaked material. Including Al Jazeera, The Wall
Street Journal and The New York Times among others.8 There are
also agencies specialized in spying services and companies
developing methods of anonymous internal information disclosure.
None of them are very much public. Globaleaks.org is the only
project set up to study the issue from a technical and philosophical
perspective and analyses how these structures could be run on a
global scale by hackers, while remaining trustworthy, secure,
anonymous and free.
But whichever system is used, the main point is still transparency
and exposure, which implies the existence of one single truth, since
'the data speaks for itself'. All this would be unnecessary in a society
where everybody used Facebook and followed Mark Zuckerberg's
radical transparency doctrine. But would we be more free in such a
society? The many critiques of Facebook and its underlying
libertarian ideology suggest otherwise. Jaron Lanier, one the
inventors of virtual reality and a longtime hacker, has pointed out
the risks associated with this drift towards nerd supremacy.9
Lawrence Lessig, liberal jurist and inventor of the Creative
Commons licenses, has reservations about WikiLeaks' defense of
total exposure, which he considers as a dangerous perversion of
the principle of free speech so dear to Americans.10 Of course these
are interventions that attempt to legitimate the status quo. But the
question then becomes, how can hackers fight for freedom with
radical interventions, but without sliding down into libertarian
rhetoric?
1. Perhaps his most interesting contribution was 'Rubberhose', a hidden encryption
program he developed together with other hackers. Rubberhose, which is now
outdated, provided a way of denying the existence of the part of a hard-drive where
encrypted data was stored. Since decryption is basically only a matter of computing
power, at least in theory, hiding the existence of encrypted data itself is a clever
strategy that considerably enhances the safeness of data. The technique is known as
steganography, meaning concealing the very existence of what you wish to keep
secret. It is curious that the technique was specifically devised to safeguard human-
right activists operating in autocratic states. back
2. Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens, 'Twelve Theses on WikiLeaks,' Eurozine Magazine,
July 2010, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2010-12-07-lovinkriemens-en.html. back
3. The story is complicated, due to the fact that the two women filed a complaint
together. The full allegations against Julian Assange was published by the Guardian.
See: Nick Davies, '10 Days in Sweden: the Full Allegations Against Julian Assange', The
Guardian, 17 December 2010,
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden. back
4. Julian Assange, The Unauthorised Autobiography, Edinburgh: Cannongate Books,
2011. back
5. Andy Greenberg, 'An Interview With WikiLeaks' Julian Assange', Forbes Magazine, 29
November 2010, http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-
interview-with-WikiLeaks-julian-assange/5. back
6. Bruce Ackerman and Yochai Benkler, ‘Private Manning's Humiliation’, The New York
Review of Books, 28 April 2011,
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/28/private-mannings-
humiliation/. back
7. The founder is the former German spokesperson for WikiLeaks, Daniel Domscheit-
Berg. See http://leakdirectory.org/index.php/OpenLeaks and Daniel Domscheit-Berg,
Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous
Website, New York: Crown, 2011. back
8. See the 'Leak Site Directory,' a directory of official and community based sites that
actively support whistleblowing and leaks about various topics.
http://leakdirectory.org. back
9. Jaron Lanier, 'The Hazards of Nerd Supremacy: The Case of WikiLeaks', The Atlantic,
20 December 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/the-
hazards-of-nerd-supremacy-the-case-of-WikiLeaks/68217/. The first analysis of the
phenomena is Patrice Riemens, 'Some Thoughts on the Idea of "Hacker Culture"',
 http://cryptome.org/hacker-idea.htm; original article: 'Quelques réflexions sur la
"culture hacker"', Multitudes 1:8 (2002): 181-187. back
10. Jonathan Zittrain, Lawrence Lessig, et al., 'Radio Berkman 171: WikiLeaks and the
Information Wars', MediaBerkman, 8 December 2010,
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman/2010/12/08/radio-berkman-171/. back
2.08 ANONYMOUS, OR OUT OF THE
BOX ACTIVISM
Before making the headlines worldwide, that is, prior to the
cablegate documents on Iraq and Afghanistan, WikiLeaks had
already published a lot pressing news. Some notable examples
being the American secret services' plot to assassinate the Somali
prince Hassan Dahir Aweys in 2006, the totally inhuman treatment
of Guantanamo inmates by American authorities in 2007, and the
rampant corruption of former Kenyan president Daniel Toroitich
Arap Moi's close circle in 2008. Also in 2008, as noted by Daniel
Domscheit-Berg, members of Anonymous approached WikiLeaks
with internal documents of the church of Scientology. These
documents were immediately published.
The case of the church of Scientology interests us precisely because
it relates to Anonymous, which has become the most talked about
hackers-activists group over these past few years. Though the
Scientology church is a powerful adversary its activities are far
easier to uncover than many clandestine dealings by traditional
institutions. The cult had managed to silence quite a number of
people who attempted to make information about it public. Threats,
intimidation and outright persecution, have been their fate
especially in case of former members of the church. Anonymous'
Chanology Project started in January 2008 in response to the
church's attempt to remove a Tom Cruise interview that revealed
the inner workings of Scientology. Before involving WikiLeaks,
Anonymous posted on YouTube a video-clip with a 'message to the
Church of Scientology'.1 The two minutes clip's conclusion have
become the motto most characteristic of Anonymous: 'Knowledge is
Free. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do
not forget. Expect us!' Anonymous then launched several rounds of
DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks to paralyze the sect's
servers by overloading them with requests, a type of attack that
requires a certain amount of technical competence.2 The common
thread connecting WikiLeaks and Anonymous is transparency,
conceived as the ultimate weapon in the fight against opaque,
repressive powers. The need to remain anonymous and the practice
of hiding behind the masks of Guy Fawkes, the famous early 17th
Century English catholic conspirator – made famous by the comic 'V
for Vendetta', is another element that illustrates the similarities in
method shared between Anonymous and WikiLeaks.
From the perspective of the media, the reaction of the church of
Scientology, and that of all Anonymous victims, was to portray the
members of the group as computer fanatics, cyber-terrorists and
ultimately dangerous hackers. It is not easy to define Anonymous in
terms of ideology, but one aspect cannot escape notice: what is
bubbling to the surface from all of the nodes of Anonymous is a
very peculiar interpretation of freedom of expression, which is
described as 'non-negotiable'.3 As can be seen with the OpBart
operation, Anonymous often appears when censorship shows its
face.4 Anonymous' and WikiLeaks' paths crossed again on December
the sixth and tenth, 2010 during Operation Avenge Assange (aka
Operation Payback), when several DDoS attacks were mounted,
many successful, against a dozen banks and financial institutions
which had blocked donations to WikiLeaks.5
Exposing the enemy's misdeeds while keeping a mask on,
challenging opacity through transparency while remaining
anonymous, attacking the powerful actors (churches, armies,
governments and banks) through interventions pairing technical
competencies with mass media engagement, and adopting an
attitude of war or sabotage, are the features Anonymous and
WikiLeaks share in common. But the similarities end here. Unlike
WikiLeaks, one cannot identify Anonymous with one really existing
person because it is does not exist as a singular form but always in
plural. In theory, anybody can be part of Anonymous, whereas
passing on classified information to WikiLeaks does not result in any
affiliation with the person leaking it. Anonymous in its turn, is made
up of a great number of individuals, networks, and operations.
Can The Pirate Bay, WikiLeaks and Anonymous be considered as
different manifestations of the same hacker spirit? It is clear that the
environment that gave birth to Anonymous is, at least partially,
connected to the high-level world of hacking, as can be seen the
from participation of various Anonymous groups to a number of
operations conducted by Lulzsec.6 The hacker motto 'just for fun'
finds its expression in the Lulz spirit, which is a transformation of
the acronym LOL (Laughing Out Loud), used in online chats. The
channel b of 4chan is definitely part of the culture of the first people
to call themselves Anonymous, for the simple fact that most of its
contents is still posted anonymously.7 A number of people, arrested
during the attempt to suppress Anonymous, were users of 4chan. If
you are not familiar or curious about manga, anime, video games,
TV series, strange acronyms, black humor, borderline porn, LOLCats
(photoshopped cats with captions), culture jamming, etc., then
4chan is definitely not for you. It may seem like a madhouse of
macabre and surreal imagery, the meeting place of kids who use
incomprehensible terms and the paranoid observer may see it as a
breeding ground for cyber terrorists.
The mass media have focused on Anonymous hacking operations,
but actually there have been many different types of Anonymous
interventions, on multiple networks. There have also been public
demonstrations of the more traditional kind, with Anonymous
activists donning Guy Fawkes masks. With the politicization of real
life actions, Lulz online attacks have become less numerous, and the
group became more politically oriented. Until the emergence of
groups within Anonymous, who openly called themselves
anarchists, for example the A(A)A for Anonymous Anarchist Action.
But what kind of anarchism are we talking about here? Is it the
anarcho-capitalist variety, bent on the total triumph of the free
market, and extreme privatization facilitated by a liberating
technology? Or is it anarchy understood as an anti-authoritarian
practice and the struggle for a society made up of 'free and equals'
individuals, where competition takes a step back for solidarity? Sure,
there are members of Anonymous who are active within genuinely
anarchist organizations, but there are also among them those who
espouse liberal capitalist or even libertarian tendencies. The fact
that journalists hailed 4chan as the Web's most anarchist site
should raise some doubt. The views of the founder of Moot, the
New Yorker Christopher Poole, provide a good benchmark for
evaluation. Poole has declared himself in favor of radical opacity,
and absolute anonymity online, which give everyone the
opportunity to behave 'badly' without worrying about offending,
disturbing or being punished. Therefore Pool surely would be
opposed to the radical transparency of Facebook. But this is a bit
unsubstantial for claiming the subversive anarchist label. Canvas, a
site that needs to be authenticated through a Facebook account, is
part of the evolution of a showcase format that allows for
modification of online images.8 This is an innovative system for the
creation collaborative visual content. But this project is certainly not
in the spirit of revolutionary anarchy or anti-authoritarianism. On
the contrary, it is a project funded by venture capital, without in any
way diverging from the advertisements-based business model
already successfully operated by Google, Facebook, and all other
Web 2.0 actors extracting profits from digital sociality.
Sociality and politics work in the same way: online practice is
narrowly connected with real life practice, and cross-fertilization
occurs all the time. Anonymous' initiatives attracted major media
attention, which in its turn attracted the unwelcome attention of the
police on the group. During the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations,
inspired by the occupation of Spanish plazas by the 'Indignados',
Anonymous brought in its technical expertise. Twitter and Facebook
apps were created to improve communications between protesters.
On many occasion, transparency became an defensive weapon
against the police, e.g. to identify agents who had beaten protesters.
However, the same face identification technology was repeatedly
used against the demonstrators themselves.9
As already mentioned in our discussion of WikiLeaks, practices of
informing only work within a democratic context and where a
certain amount of liberties and citizen rights still exist, where civil
disobedience has a recognized value, and state-sponsored
repression rarely endangers the lives of citizens. In all those cases,
appeals, claims, and criticism can be much more effective when the
actions are carried out in a creative way, like in the examples of
Anonymous. However, it is during the construction phase that the
inherent weaknesses of mass movements are revealed; yet
Anonymous unambiguously claims to be a mass movement by
profiling itself as a 'legion' that nothing can stop. To shout out 'Que
se vajan todos!' as the Argentinian did in 2001, is a lively equivalent
to the methods of digital sabotage but it is still a petition of sorts to
the authorities. It asks the ruling powers to loosen their grip, the
banks to stop behaving like banks, the governments to stop waging
wars and the military to stop killing. All this is legitimate, it is even
fair but it is not adequate when considering the concrete reality of
these propositions. It is even counterproductive, since the request
for change is addressed to the very people who are responsible for
repression, and in fact, and in this sense legitimizes their authority
in the process. So it is precisely in the construction phase that we
should be acutely aware and make a radical shift in perspective. The
macroscopic lens of the opposition movement against a corrupt
and oppressive power, and proposes alternatives in the name of all
is doomed from the start, as it falls within the logic of
confrontational which is typical of hegemonic discourse. Once they
have had their fun ridiculing banks, churches, corporations and
governments, the Anonymous organizers who do not share
WikiLeaks' nerd suprematist style, should really start concentrating
on the constructive aspects of their technical power.10 Otherwise,
they will end up being co-opted to-morrow by the very powers they
ridicule today.
Anonymous' anomaly lies in the fact that its activists hold a great
power: the power of technology. They know the intricacies of digital
networks and know how to make their existence work to their
advantage. They can choose to use this knowledge-power to
reinforce the network of already existing organizations.
Governments are organizations trying to expand their chances to
exercise control, sometime with the benevolent purpose of
assistance and aid to the most members of society: in which case
they surely need such skills. On the other hand, companies
especially the large corporations providing social media services are
in desperate need of strengthening their organizations' networks,
that is to make them more secure, which means to make them
more impenetrable to unwanted elements. But other modes of
action are also possible, for instance investing in the organizational
capacity of networks in development, which do not have a position
to defend, or interests to protect, or copyrighted materials, patents
and trademarks but which aim to a create a shared systems for
exchange and interaction.
In this sense, perhaps the most interesting common trait between
Anonymous and Occupy movements is the way they profile
themselves as constitutively devoid of leaders and with a strong
tendency to self-organization. It is the size of these small organized
networks which is the truly innovative aspect of Anonymous and
Occupy. The lack of a leader figure or a fixed agenda makes it
almost impossible for hierarchical, institutional organizations to
engage with such movements. Yet, the Manichean and militaristic
caricature of Anonymous as soldiers fighting for the greater good
also has to be carefully avoided. Political practices and ideas do not
ineluctably arise from the adoption of appropriate technological
tools.

1. http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ. back
2. The propagation of the LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) software, originally a proprietary
program to test servers' capacity, was essential for lining up the computer networka
necessary to launch DDoS-type of attacks, a kind of voluntary botnet. back
3. An Anonymous member appropriated the notorious phrase 'the American way of life
is non-negotiable’ from a George W Bush speech where he attempt to justify 'total
war against terrorism'. back
4. See the video: http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=MlsLmDOhQ5Y. back
5. See Thesis 6 of Geert Lovink, Patrice Riemens, 'Twelve Theses on WikiLeaks,'Eurozine
Magazine, July 2010. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2010-12-07-lovinkriemens-
en.html. back
6. From May to June 2010, the hacker group declared '50 days of Lulz,' hitting targets of
various types (FBI, Sony, Fox, Twitter) and also publishing login and password details
of users, simply, ‘because we can do it’. The pirate vessel of Lulzsec has left a deep
 mark in the ocean of the Net; the torrent of operations and compromised sites is still
available in the mirrors. back
7. 4chan Showcase was started in 2003 by Christopher Poole (then 15 years old, he
managed to stay anonymous till 2008) and takes its inspiration from similar Japanese
sites. In early 2011 4chan had the staggering number of more than a half million
unique hits a day. back
8. See, https://www.facebook.com/canvas. back
9. In Rome, after the riots of 15 October 2011, the mass media named and shamed all
the suspected Black Bloc members. Many could be identified thanks to the help of
‘honest citizens’. In another context, and on a different scale, the same procedure
was used in Iran during the riots of June 2009. The authorities requested the
participation of citizens to identify the insurgents, who were marked with a red circle
on a government site. See: http://www.gerdab.ir/fa/pages/?cid=407. back
10. Lulz's latest exploits, involving attacks against the security firms Stratfor and
SpecialForces.com, were highly politicized. Here's what the online press release,
LulzXmas, said on December 27, 2011: ‘Continuing the week long celebration of
wreaking utter havoc on global financial systems, militaries, and governments, we are
announcing our next target: the online piggie supply store SpecialForces.com. Their
customer base is comprised primarily of military and law enforcement affiliated
individuals, who have for too long enjoyed purchasing tactical combat equipment
from their slick and ‘professional’ looking website. What’s that, officer? You get a kick
out of pepper-spraying peaceful protesters in public parks? You like to recreationally
Taser kids? You have a fetish for putting people in plastic zip ties?’ See Richi Jennings,
'Anonymous Antisec hacks STRATFOR in Lulzxmas operation', Computerworld, 27
December 2011, http://www.computerworld.com/article/2471899/cybercrime-
hacking/anonymous-antisec-hacks-stratfor-in-lulzxmas-operation.html. back
PART III: THE FREEDOMS OF THE NET
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic.

Arthur C. Clark
3.01 ONLINE REVOLUTION AND
COUCH ACTIVISM: BETWEEN MYTH
AND REALITY
The media coverage of the Occupy movement and the logistical and
technical support of Anonymous bring us back to considering
perspectives and practices of participation, democracy and digital
organization. The success commercial social networks have is due
to the possibilities of forming and maintaining contacts that is
potentially global in extent. However, it is not up to the user to
choose how to relate to others, but the service provider which,
through exercising 'default power', determines the details of this
shared environment. Digital participation assisted by commercial
platforms is easier than the commitment required by self-managed
analogical organization. The ease of creating a Facebook group to
collect funds for refugee or environmental catastrophes etc., is of a
totally different order than the resource mobilization required of
non-digital, off-line activism. Digital activists feel a false sense of
power from being on the net and can conveniently ignore the
bureaucracy, dead end group discussion and material problems of
their analogical counterparts. The main advantage of armchair
activism is that it offers a simulacrum of participation, with 'likes' and
'share this 'link'. The armchair activist can give free reign to their
indignation while remaining safe behind their screens, using
software produced and managed by tech corporations.
The Western media's enthusiasm for the 'Arab Spring', and the
earlier Iranian Green Movement, and others present and future so-
called digital movements is the result of the technophilic and
internet-centrist perspective we discussed in the first section of this
book. At an even deeper level, it reveals a blind faith in information
as expression of absolute truth. Activists, and citizens of Western
democracies are so ignorant of reality that they are convinced
merely removing the cloak of censorship will enable a blossoming of
democracy. From this perspective freedom is merely the result of a
proper use of appropriate technology, and free information is the
host of the democratic gospel. Therefore if the Chinese were
allowed to communicate freely, the party leaders would be wiped
out, just like the Soviet politburo in 1989. We can always bet on the
fact that all coming insurrections will be read through the distorting
lens of liberating technology. We should remember Gil Scott-Heron's
words: 'you will not be able to stay home, brother.[...] Because the
revolution will not be televised'. We have been asked by reporters to
comment and analyze digital movements, and our views on
Anonymous attacking the IS or similar headlines news – we can only
answer: no comment. We do not want in any way legitimize the
mythical, militaristic, dualistic (online vs. offline) tale starting with
'once upon a time, the army of Good composed of masked hackers
fighting for a better world attacked the armies of Evil'. The
Situationists have already explained how The Society of the
Spectacle works, we can not help but look for ways of subtraction
and desertion.
The technological patina that covers everything these days allows
critics to indulge in the same 'cut-and-paste' analysis regardless of
social context. According to this view social oppression is the result
of communicative misunderstandings and inaccurate information.
This is precisely the same discourse of the technocrats who shape
communication tools, and develop political marketing strategies.1 A
free society demands an intensification of the circulation of
information by accelerating transactions and improving network
connections. Here again, technology plays a reassuring role by
convincing 'honest citizens in the West' that their attitudes are fine.
The sense of emotional closeness that develops in observers who
witness acts of repression in real time, helps strengthen the support
for the freedom of the people. However, the walls that must fall to
achieve this are not technological firewalls, but social, political, and
cultural barriers.
The most common objection to the progressive radical critiques of
social media technology is that every tool can be put to use in a
revolutionary way. However, inside the Facebook aquarium we are
constantly bombarded by information stimuli. In this deluge of
information, political content is confused with all other subjects, and
does not have, nor ever will have, an autonomous space to itself.
The relationship of one to many, the illusion of 'spreading the news'
at a mouse click has to contend with the white noise of perpetual
chatter. The revolutionary event shall be forgotten, buried in the
eternal present of digital ephemera, without testimony or memory.
Technology is indeed neither good nor evil in itself but must be
analyzed in the context of its specific functioning. Technology is
power, and power cannot be neutral.
In this sense, Facebook has been extremely successful in realizing
it's economic and political project of radical transparency. This
technology works when the aims of the users coincide, or at least
are compatible, such as in social media marketing, public relations
or events planning. But it does not mean that this technology is
good in itself. The fact that Facebook and Twitter were used as
communication tools during the revolutions in North African
'revolutions' and the uprisings in the Middle East and Asia does not
ipso facto transform them into revolutionary devices. People make
revolutions not technologies and they rebel by using whatever
instruments are at their disposal. In this case rebels used corporate-
owned social networks. Each case should be analyzed in a specific
fashion: languages, histories and backgrounds are different,
territories and populations are distinct and not comparable. If to
delve beneath the news about spectacular technology-enabled
uprisings, we often discover a much more mundane reality.
In 2011, the West quickly concluded that the Mubarak regime had
fallen due to its powerlessness against the popular uprising enabled
by the internet. The new wave beginning in Tunisia, was supposed
to rapidly spread through the Mediterranean, or at least up to Syria.
In reality, the only thing that became clear is that superannuated
autocrats like Mubarak were not secure, especially not if they left
opposition groups free to galvanize opposition on Facebook for
months on end. If we now focus a bit more on the Mediterranean
basin, we see no movements in Algeria, whereas a full-blown civil
war has erupted in Syria. Meanwhile, Egypt and Tunisia were
democratically handing themselves over to extreme Islamist parties,
which unlike the previous regimes are far more savvy with social
media. Libya also appears to be taking the road to Islamic
fundamentalism, following a bloody civil war backed by the West for
control of oil resources. Its difficult to be optimistic , but
commentators continue to be near unanimous in judging the crucial
role of social media.2
The techno-enthusiastic interpretation of events in Iran is possibly
even more disturbing. The vast majority of Farsi tweets posted
during the 2009 street protests in Iran, were overseas based Iranian
dissidents using their twitter profiles from the safety of the United
States or the UK rather than from the streets in Teheran.3 In April
2010, Moeed Ahmad, Al Jazeera's director, reported

I believe Twitter has been used far too often, including by

news channels which have broadcasted videos and tweets on
 this issue without first checking the source. We did identify a
hundred dependable sources, sixty of which proved really
useful. But in the days following the start of the protests only
six of them continued to pass on information. I think it is
important to realize that on Twitter only 2% of the information
is first-hand. All the rest is re-tweeted. So the only strategy
where you are going to use social networks purposefully in a
journalistic context is to identify the real source of the
information and to work with that source only.4

We do not very much know yet about how effective Twitter's role
was in the Green protest movement in Iran, save that it was
doomed to fail from the outset. There is little we can say about the
immediate future, as the Iranian theocracy remains in power and
taking steps to purge opponents, including on the technological
front. Many activists including those who managed to have their
voice heard remain skeptical.5 The fact that there were so many
tweets circulating in the West about the revolt in Iran does not
mean that many Iranian dissidents were on Twitter. The concrete
result was that the Iranian government, monitoring pro-rebel tweets
by American and European politicians, brutally censored everybody
in Iran who had been in touch with 'Western media', starting a
campaign of threats via SMSs and bringing together a special
information police force. Bypassing the censorship of social media
in Iran has now become a lot more difficult.
Modern securitarian states, in the Middle East and in the rest of the
world already exercise control on the two main instruments of
power: weapons and money. They are now learning to live with the
flow of digital information – as long as this information does not
translate into concrete political actions that might threaten the
ruling elites. Rami Khouri, foreign correspondent for the Lebanese
newspaper Daily Star fears that the global impact of new
communication technologies on the political conflicts in the Middle
East will ultimately be highly negative. He argues that 'the new
media' will function as a mere palliative to the stress of
powerlessness rather than an instrument of real change: 'Blogging,
reading politically racy Web sites, or passing around provocative text
messages by cellphone is equally satisfying for many youth. Such
activities, though, essentially shift the individual from the realm of
participant to the realm of spectator, and transform what would
otherwise be an act of political activism — mobilizing,
demonstrating or voting — into an act of passive, harmless personal
entertainment.'6
So it is all again about spectacles – the spectacles that the
authorities allow. Dictatorships are not led by clueless autocrats,
easily dislodged by the pressure of free social media. On the
contrary, these rulers learn very quickly all what they need to apply
technological innovations to their own advantage, to the point that a
rebellion which even makes use of these tools becomes dangerous.
The most well organized repressive regimes know how to make use
of the same methods as their dissenters; something that yet again
demonstrates that technology is not neutral. DDos attacks, one of
the one of the 'weapons' popularized by Anonymous was also used
by the Saudi government to impose censorship. Philosophy has
been banned for years in the Sheiks' universities, since it urges
individuals to think for themselves. Western thought is forbidden in
Saudi Arabia, furthering the country's schizophrenic position as
both a privileged trading partner to Western governments and one
of the largest funders of Islamic fundamentalism. In 2006,
Tomaar.net was launched by the Saudis to discuss philosophy and
share forbidden links and resources which were officially prohibited
but still accessible online. Being in Arabic, it had also many non-
Saudi followers. But surveillance technology is always improving and
it became increasingly easy for the government to trace each visitor
of the site. The Saudi government first blocked access to Tomaar
from internet terminals in its own territory. Users responded by
using anonymization software and anti-censorship proxies. An arm
races ensued. The Saudi government launched DDoS attacks
against the US server that hosted the forum. Now Tomaar.net is
dead.7 Dissident sites and activist webpages have also been
subjected to DDoS attacks from Burma, Belarus, Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, and Russia. The resulting feeling of powerlessness
among dissidents is heightened by the fact that Western
government, while eulogizing internet freedom and condemning
censorship and repression, still back authoritarian governments
through economic, financial and military agreements. This only
serves to strengthen such governments at the expense of the very
dissidents the West claims to support. We also should not forget
that democratic governments also practice censorship, including
through DDoS attacks, to prevent their own citizens from accessing
content deemed.
Although the role of social media in politics is praised by the
Western media, the triumph of democracy is unlikely to be the
outcome of corporates-owned technology. In well functioning
dictatorships like China, Facebook access is blocked not so much
because of the party leaders aversion to radical transparency, but
because it is considered as a product of American imperialism. The
much criticized collaboration between Google and the NSA in 2010,
Google's complaints about attacks from Chinese hackers, Google
openly pulling out of China in protest of government censorship,
didn't improve things either. Who could blame China for viewing
these firms as spies in the pockets of Washington? In China, the
Facebook, Twitter and Google clones are directly controlled by the
government, rather than through the secretive, high-level
agreements and collaborations in the United States. In the future
the laboratories of consensual dictatorships will greatly improve on
this arrangement, and nobody will worry any longer about being on
Facebook and Twitter. Everybody will know everything about all the
obscene things taking place in public or private – and nothing will
change. Anyone will be allowed to become part of the Spectacle.
Since everybody will be an accomplice in banality and vulgarity,
there will be no more scandals. It is likely that in a near future there
will be full cooperation between social media enterprises and
governments in the realm of surveillance. In the case of democratic
regimes, preventive censorship of users and removal of contents
under institutional pressure will be presented as a defense of the
common interests against hate speech. In totalitarian regimes,
private corporations have zero interest in defending dissidents'
anonymity, since that will attract the unwelcome attention of the
people in power and such users generally do not generate any
substantial advertisement revenue.
The push for transparency, combined with the fragmentation of
digital messages and the underlying decrease in attention favors
posts that are simplistic sound bites and makes it more difficult to
articulate complex arguments or nuanced views. The harsh laws of
mass culture are enormously amplified by commercial digital media.
Catastrophes get higher view ratings than good news. Crass
spectacles and melodrama are more successful than challenging
works. After all, what people want is to be entertained rather than
challenged. Two millennia ago, Roman emperors already knew that
the answer to social strife can be summed up in the famous
formula 'panem et circenses '(bread and circuses) where the
circuses were bloody massacres between gladiators, wild animals,
slaves and opponents of the regime. Today's globalized media circus
is played out on television newsreels, blogs, YouTube videos and
tweets. It is a convenient and dis-embodied way to experience
reality in real time, without any effort, without the dirt and the
blood, skimming over the tragedy with our eyes only. Distant
tsunamis are explained in plenty of detail, while almost nothing is
mentioned about what happens in our immediate surroundings.
What is not on Google does not exist; and if you leave no tweet
behind, you aren't worth anybody's attention. Even when voyeurism
turns into political indignation the protests has barely any notable
consequences and is quickly reduced to sterile claims often even
before further repression.
Sound policies cannot be expressed in the one hundred and forty
characters of an SMS or a microblog. This is equally the case for
posts on a Facebook group, and even on a blog, despite the fact
that the latter offers more opportunities for interaction. Instead
thanks to these formats, sectarian message such as incitement to
racial hatred, can rapidly propagate, as was demonstrated with the
SMS terror campaigns against ethnic minorities in Nigeria (targeting
Christians in 2010) in Kenya 2007, (against Kikuyus) and in Australia
in 2005 (against the Lebanese). Somali pirates co-ordinate their
operations on Twitter and Mexican drug traffickers glorify the
murders they perpetrate on YouTube. Muslim fundamentalist use
blogs to praise Sharia law, threaten infidels, execute innocent
people, while Neo-Nazis around the world use social media to
spread their noxious messages. Western evangelist in favor of
internet freedom, particularly social media, perhaps should pay
attention to these developments before blinding celebrating
internet activism.8 The world is far more complex than is shown by
the mass media, driven by the logic of the spectacle and
advertisement. Yet, as the freedom of speech is eulogized – an
abstract freedom devoid of concrete content and knowledge-
sharing methodology – at the same time authorities demand more
rights to regulate and suppress content by those who think
differently, triggering a wave of censorship and surveillance.

1. Spin doctors are the sophists our time, the professionals of manipulating public
opinion. They orchestrate huge campaigns of disinformation to cover up scandals
and arrange publicity stunts for the promotion of their clients, usually politicians. A
backbone of the US lobby system, spin doctors have now started playing an
increasingly important role in Europe also. They are a ultimately a byproduct of the
development of the advertisement industry and of its logic. If policies are simply
products put up for sale, democracy will appear more and more as a Hollywood film
or a bad sitcom. back
2. A collection of sources on the role of social in the Arab spring.
https://socialcapital.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/twitter-facebook-and-YouTubes-
role-in-tunisia-uprising/. back
3. 'Oxfordgirl', for instance, was a Twitter user who posted thousands of tweets during
this period, sharing informations about the protests. But she is an Iranian journalist
based in Oxfordshire, UK. back
4. 'L'intervento di Moeed Ahmad', Al Jazeera e i nuevi media, 27 April 2010,
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xd3jl5_al-jazeera-e-i-nuovi-media-l-
interv_news%20[. back
5. 'Vahid Online', an Iranian activist blogger who posted from Teheran in 2009 before
taking refuge in the United States, stated on several occasions that the influence of
Twitter and Facebook inside Iran had actually been near-zero, even though
Westerners believed they were actually participating in the uprisings in real-time.
See: http://vahid-online.net. Also the blogger Alireza Rezaei pointed out that the
chaotic unfolding of the protests did not conform to the idea of a Twitter-organized
uprising. See: http://alirezarezaee1.blogspot.com/. back
6. Rami G. Khouri, 'When Arabs Tweets', International Herald Tribune, 22 July 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/opinion/23iht-edkhouri.html. back
7. See: 'Free Speech Case Study: The Demise of Tomaar.net', Anonymous Proxies,
February 2011, http://www.anonymous-proxies.org/2011/02/free-speech-risks-
demise-of-tomaarnet.html. back
8. The Italian artist duo Liens Invisibles have created a tool specifically for couch
activism. See: http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/05/repetitionr-com-tactical-
media-meet-data-hallucination/. back
3.02 ORWELL, HUXLEY, AND THE
SINO-AMERICAN MODEL
Freedom on digital networks is counterbalanced by the demand for
greater security, which in turn leads to a demand for more control.
The wish to be anonymous is at odds with the will to seek out and
prosecute those who threaten social stability. In democratic
regimes, this may be pedophiles, serial killers, drug traffickers,
terrorists, subversives, etc. The wave of emotions caused by some
sensational crime can trigger an irrational response: the passing of
laws that violate the most basic civil liberties. But ultimately the
potential perpetrator is aware that he is under surveillance. In this
sense that he is aware of this, a potential criminal may actually be
freer than the rest of the population, which is subjected to an
increasingly pervasive digital surveillance and control. Not to
mention that fact, which we have already pointed out, that this
control does not prevent crime. At most it simply eases the system
of punishment, at least in theory, by strengthening the logic the
judicial and prison systems.
The pressure to regulate the Web coincides with a demand for
more transparency, traceability, and recognition of what is
happening in digital worlds. Such requirements also allow for the
formation of very heterogeneous social categories. Parents
associations are worried about the dangers their children may be
exposed to. Lobbies of big media copyright owners (Hollywood, the
music industry, publishers) all want to make investigation and
removal of protected content easier. Banks wish they could have
more effective ways of verifying their account holders' identities in
order to reduce online fraud. Harassed ethnic minorities want to
find out the identity of their tormentors. Xenophobic nationalists
(who, once in power, will give a totalitarian twist to our already
security-obsessed democracies) want to identify and register all
foreigners in order to vent their frustrations and strengthen their
reactionary group identity in ritual pogroms. Victims of violent
incidents want to be able to denounce their oppressors without risk
of retaliation, by on the one hand protecting their anonymity, while
at the same time identifying criminals more effectively through
stricter control measures. Outraged citizens want to see the income
tax returns of corrupt politicians published so as to name and
shame them in the media. Even authoritarian regimes like more
transparency since they want to keep a close eye on their citizens.
Transparency increases the opportunities for surveillance and that
makes it desirable to almost all political powers.
The 20th century saw two major dystopias profoundly influence
Western thought in the matter of surveillance: George Orwell's Big
Brother in his novel 1984' (1949) and Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New
World' (1932, followed in 1958 'Brave New World Revisited'). Both
authors represent opposite dystopias: Orwell, the Englishman, was
worried about total 'optical' control, whereas Huxley – English born,
but writing from the California – saw an upcoming emotional
lobotomy generated by unbridled consumerism.
For Orwell, the emergence of totalitarian systems marked a new
phase, reminiscent of the Inquisition, in which technology was used
to abolish the privacy of citizens. The omnipresent eye of Big
Brother's exercises a power that is both sadistic and oppressive. Big
Brother is able to change reality itself through Newspeak, the
language specifically designed to limit the range of possible
expressions. Every personal move must be completely predictable,
and everybody must obey. The protagonist in '1984', Winston Smith,
discovers that neurologists working for the regime are attempting to
eliminate orgasm, in order to completely suppress desire, that
dangerous moment of psychophysical instability, which could
potentially trigger revolt.
In Huxley's vision, technology, on the contrary, is used to maximize
pleasure, as part of a cycle of continuous consumption. In the world
of Huxley's Fordist consumerism, throwing away is preferable to
repairing, and citizens have no incentive whatsoever to think in an
autonomous and critical way, since their pleasures find satisfaction
even before having been formulated. Of course, not everyone's
desires are identical: a rigid system of castes, from 'Alphas' to
'Epsilons', is managed through eugenic control. Different categories
of consumers exist, which are preassigned to consume specific
goods and services. But desire is diminished through excess with a
system of compulsory sexual promiscuity. Family bonds are deemed
pornographic because they are privileged links. Social interactions
are organized in a fully transparent way, to the extent that women
are forced to wear a contraceptive belt, which signals their
immediate sexual availability. Individuals are consumer goods like
any other, must express who they are without ambiguity.
With Orwell, there is a higher level of conspiracy in which some
freedom is possible, at least among the oppressors. In the world of
Huxley, nobody is free, not even the 'Alphas'. They too must perform
their duties of daily consumption, just like those they command.
Conformity is the supreme good, docile obedience is necessary to
have the entire population reduced to a state of infantile bliss. A
daily dose of the drug 'Soma' and hypnopedia (indoctrination during
sleep) wards off such mortal sins as the desire for solitude,
autonomy and independence.
It is precisely these forbidden desires that we will have to return to
in order to imagine a new expression of social networks. The only
way to escape induced desires and conformity is the rejection of
social performance. One cannot deny that both Orwell's fearful
dystopia and Huxley's enforced entertainment provide insights into
our own contemporary societies. Evgeny Morozov stresses our
tendency to underestimate the number of Orwellian elements in
democratic regimes (with the reality TV show 'Big Brothers' the fear
of control has become a joke) while at the same time discounting
the Huxleyan elements present in dictatorships. Most dictators
prefer to distract and entertain the masses rather than dominate
them with terror, because in the long term overt repression tends
to generate violent riots. Hedonistic consumerism on the other
hand, may strengthen consent, or at least gain some acceptance
from the oppressed.
Better yet, 'panem et circenses' politics may even encourage the
masses into supporting a despotic regime. Why should a Chinaman,
a Turk or a Cuban not praise the government in exchange for some
gift? Ultimately, the internet does bring to many authoritarian
societies exactly the type of entertainment people need to escape
from their disappointing reality: pornography, gossip, innocuous TV
series, quizzes, gambling, video-games, online dating and
government supervised discussion forums. In fact, this is also
exactly the same type of entertainment that allows citizens in
democratic societies to escape from their daily reality. Naomi Klein
correctly points out marked similarities that exist between China
and the West (and more specifically, between China and the United
States), a successful combination of Orwellian control and Huxleyan
distraction: 'China is becoming more like us in very visible ways
(Starbucks, Hooters, cellphones that are cooler than ours), and we
are becoming more like China in less visible ones (torture,
warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, though not nearly on
the Chinese scale).'1
Profiling techniques used by Google, Facebook, and others can be
applied to improve the relevance of individually targeted
advertisements just as it can be used to refine individually targeted
censorship and repression. If your friends are fans of a certain
band, chances are that you will like this kind of music too, and are a
potential customer by association. And if your friends read the same
subversive blog as you do, then they too are potential dissidents,
just like you. The algorithms used to arrive at these results are
precisely the same. The Chinese and American social formats have
in common the drive towards increased transparency. The Clinton
administration in the nineties was failed in its attempt to realize the
'information superhighway', but nothing proves that the Chinese
Communist Party may not be successful in its attempts to create a
great Peoples' Republic. With assistance from the American military-
industrial complex, China is busy creating the prototype of a high-
tech police state. The plan is to give every Chinese citizen an email
account, a profile on government-owned social networks, an
account for online purchase on authorized sites, and storage space
to store personal data on regime servers. A kind of nationalized,
Chinese Facebook, integrated into a Chinese email, storing data on
the Chinese iCloud, and able to suggest what to purchase next from
the Chinese clone of Amazon. This scenario highlights the fact that
the policies of the IT giants, and especially of those which require
ever more sophisticated profiling to boost their profitability – as is
the case with the four largest: Facebook, Google, Apple, and
Amazon – is totally compatible with authoritarian control systems.
These technologies correspond perfectly to the needs of modern
dictatorships.
The general acceptance of this profiling is what makes the coming of
this social model possible. Chinese authoritarian capitalism, proves
perfectly reconcilable with American democratic capitalism. Indeed,
the two systems actually support each other. From a financial
perspective they are totally interdependent, since the Chinese
sovereign wealth funds includes a large part of America's public
debt, and thus China could, given the amount of its US Dollar
reserves, destabilize Washington. From the economic point of view,
American high-tech companies could never amass the kind of
extraordinary profits they make without low-cost industrial inputs
from China. To take just one example if iPods, iPhones and iPads
were manufactured in the West rather than in the industrial district
of Shenzhen, their cost would be astronomical. The FoxConn factory
workers, who put together these alluring objects of desire, are
forced to sign contracts in which they pledge not to commit suicide,
an event which is not uncommon, given the inhuman working
conditions. Business practices that these workplaces depend on
would be impossible to implement in Western countries.
Both these systems share a need to more effectively identify their
own population. The United States must supply consumer goods in
order to guarantee the happiness written in the social contract
while at the same time detecting and neutralizing potentially
subversive threats to the system. China needs to improve the
material life conditions of the people without allowing the
development of democratic politics, at the same time it needs to
restrain ethnic and religious tensions. Unlimited growth is of course
the basis common to both approaches. The rest of the world,
meanwhile, does not sit still, and every country participates as much
as it can in this competition. Some countries go for the Orwellian
approach, others prefer a more sophisticated model with subtle
profiling, the Huxleyan way. The social network thus morphs into a
trap where flat individualities, also known as pancake people, split
up by profiling, trash around. At that stage it becomes increasingly
challenging to convince these people to buy stuff because they are
not even able to consume a fraction of what they have already
accumulated, while they produce extraordinary amounts of
industrial waste. They waddle around in search of personalized
commodities, passive entertainment and collective identities.

1. Naomi Klein, ‘China's All-Seeing Eye’, Rolling Stone Magazine, 14 May 2008,
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/05/chinas-all-seeing-eye. back
3.03 ON ANTHROPOTECHNICS:
REACTION AND SURVIVAL
Not all is lost, it is possible to remove data and to vanish from
commercial social networks. We can ignore the revelations from
WikiLeaks' for what they are, and in the meanwhile build up
alternatives free from control, like Lorea, the Diaspora Project or
OpenLeaks.1 It is possible to build profiling-free search engines,
cloud computing services, and more general communication
networks that are owned and managed by the users themselves. In
the spirit of curiosity, typical of the hacker, we could start make it
building physical networks for autonomous communications.
Everything is within reach, and independent tools are a more
desirable option than to outsource digital sociality to private
companies. But at the same time, we need to realize that no
alternative is going to be totally free. Even if we manage to define in
concrete terms what it means to be free, and are able to mobilize
the necessary energies, the most difficult task still remains: to the
actual construction of new tools. The challenge is not to rebel for
the sake of rebelling, but to imagine ways to develop autonomy and
to put these into practice, here and now.
The first method to escape the effects of radical transparency is the
adoption of encryption and anonymization tools. Any encrypted
email is unreadable for whoever does not possess the appropriate
decryption key. All searches we perform on the internet can also be
anonymized, as well as our connection to computer networks and
data stored on our computers, and smartphones. There are very
powerful hybrid encryption algorithms available, such as GPG (Gnu
Private Guard).2 Anonymous web browsing is possible, through
making use of software such as TOR, a system first developed by the
US Navy, but now an independent project.3 TOR allows users to hide
their requests by connecting them, first to intermediary nodes
(proxies) or to other randomly selected TOR nodes, from where they
finally reach their desired site. Protecting your privacy whenever
possible is always a good idea. The use of cryptographic
instruments should be the rule, not the exception.
It is also advisable to become more familiar with our everyday tools.
However, one should always keep in mind that protection is always
relative, never absolute, but provides a reasonable level of security
with regard to the current state of technology. With sufficient
financial resources and computing power, decoding an encrypted
communication is only a matter of time. As far as anonymization is
concerned, blocking of proxies is always an option in a system of
diffuse surveillance: we have seen that this practice exists both in
democratic and in authoritarian states. If the user has been marked
as dangerous by the surveillance system, the use of physical
coercion is always another option. But the most counter-productive
aspect of these technologies is that in a world where everybody
trusts everybody else, and use their real name in digital interactions,
those who behave different and use encryption or anonymization
are assumed to have something to hide. The simple fact of using
these systems make us self-evident targets. Similarly not having a
Facebook account or a mobile phone arouses suspicion in others.
Cryptography is not easy to use, and requires a reasonable level of
technical competence, which is a major obstacle to its widespread
adoption. As a specialized form of knowledge power, cryptography
reinforces the emergence of a hierarchy of more or less trustworthy
experts. Also, it does not really protect against profiling, since it is
perfectly possible to profile users of cryptography, as soon as they
communicate with less wary users: by tracing the group 'fingerprint'
it is possible to reconstruct the history of user out. The paradox
being that the more I try to protect myself, the more I stand out
from the crowd, and hence become increasingly more recognizable.
If your browser uses extensions to prevent profiling and enables
anonymization and encryption, and if your operating system is of a
particular type like GNU/Linux, you become much more visible to
prying electronic eyes than a user with less sophisticated and more
'mainstream' systems.4
Finally cryptography has attracted a lot of criticism by those who
consider that it shares the same idea of unlimited growth – always
increasing speed and power – as libertarian turbo-capitalism. The
increase in computing power and accelerating network speed,
increases the effectiveness of the latest cryptographic systems: but
this also rapidly renders older systems obsolete. This dynamic of
innovation-obsolescence is reminiscent of military confrontation,
with a logic of attack and defense, espionage and
counterespionage. We should recall that these were systems that
were originally designed for military purposes and that they were
intended to prevent communication interception by the enemy.
Ultimately, encryption is a good practice, especially for technology
geeks who enjoy logical puzzles, but its basic approach is not
satisfactory.
The second common reaction, which is especially tempting for
those who detest hacking culture, is Luddism. The Luddite is
convinced that information and communication technologies
should be completely rejected or even destroyed. Their reasons
include the fact that these technologies are a threat to personal and
collective liberties, they provide democratic or authoritarian
governments formidable instruments of repression and they tend
to create structures of technocratic domination. In fact there are
both technophobe and technophile luddites. The former are more
consistent with themselves, they are not at ease with appliances,
especially digital ones. They often idealize a mythical, natural past
world, which never existed, where humans were free from the yoke
of machines. Their mantras are 'things were better before' or 'in the
past this would never have happened'. They are not entirely
mistaken: Ivan Illich's criticism of industrial technology tools is still
relevant today. Technical systems become counter-productive when
they develop beyond a certain point, and once they have passed the
threshold of usefulness, they become harmful. Cars within cities are
a slow, polluting and dangerous means of transport. The same
appears to be true of the social internet, which more and more
resembles a system that makes us feel alone while being in
company, with everybody being individually connected to the big
network without physical contact with the other people on it.
But the technophobic luddite is not consistent in his desire for
nature-based purity; human history is cultural history, made up
from the development of technical ideas, which become
materialized in technological tools. The problem resides in
domination practices, not in technology itself, which does no more
exist anymore than the concept of nature in itself does. The most
extremist luddites advocate the destruction of all technical systems.
Anarcho-primitivists like John Zerzan, for example, would like to
abolish not only the internet, but also agriculture, art, language, all
being considered tools of oppression. But who wants to live in such
a world? Fundamentalist luddites worship the inviolability of nature,
and are fanatics in the religious sense of the term: they even
promote the total extinction of the human race as the sole remedy
to the impending catastrophe.5
Technophile luddites have a rather more schizophrenic attitude.
They appreciate the convenience and opportunities offered by
technological developments, especially those that bring them in
contact with others. But they refuse to take an interest in the way
these social networking tools actually work. They make no effort to
understand, self-manage or tweak these technologies, since it is so
much easier to outsource these problems. They have great
confidence in the experts and call them up as soon as they
encounter a problem. With this type of careless behavior they
contribute to the emergence of technocracy. This does not prevent
them from complaining bitterly that they do not understand
anything about these irksome devices and to furiously attack the
experts when they realize that nobody is going to manage their
instruments free of charge and that even experts are not able to
solve their problems once and for all.
Perhaps the most common practice is to deliberately embrace
technocracy and to and to surrender to outsourcing problems. It is
natural, when bombarded with contradictory messages and the
chaos of information, to think that these issues are so huge that
they can be resolved independently. The internet is global and some
digital technologies are more pervasive than others. The
technological patina that covers everything makes us believe that
the problem is universal. Techno-enthusiast argue that to manage
this knowledge independently because human beings are by nature
selfish and greedy, ready to go to war. They believe in Hobbes'
famous dictum, that man is a wolf to his fellow man. For the greater
good, it is better to delegate to some capable figure and overcome
the typical human inadequacies. Technophiles believe that it is
necessary to setup institutions and organizations responsible for
addressing these technological issues, and preferably at a global
scale. These organizations should ensure citizens' liberties and
rights, and of course an adequate level of consumerism.
Technocracy is inherently scientific and it is difficult to oppose
without being accused of obscurantism, opposition to progress, or
simple naivety. Technocrats want to regulate every aspect of the
internet through setting up systems of control. These technocrats
are therefore in favor of expanding the panoptic model. Within the
Matrix, users live under the guidance of experts forming the
disembodied great collective intelligence, a society of total
knowledge, a kind of fantasy replica of Teilhard de Chardin's
'noosphere'.6 Technocratic extremism finds its realization in the
post-humanist and transhumanist movements; but even the
moderates demanding global regulation of the internet actually
contribute to the advancement of radical transparency and global
profiling.
The assumption underpinning the technocratic position is that
technologies are inherently good and the outcome of scientific
objective and disinterested research. The machines do not lie
because they are not capable of lying and would have no interest in
doing so. This may be the case, but let us not forget that machines
are programmed by humans, who have many personal interests at
stake, and they are perfectly capable of lying, even to themselves.
Technocracy is based on the delegation of technological knowledge-
power to others. With the absence of mechanisms of shared
delegation, hierarchies tend to be structured in an authoritarian
manner and to lose touch with their historic background, which is
the outcome of social conventions and agreements. There is a large
difference between acknowledging the authority of someone as a
competent person in a certain field and giving this person a
mandate, which is verified regularly and revocable, to blind trust in
the supremacy of a technocrat. In the latter case the experts-
priests' power becomes unassailable and unquestionable. Naturally,
it will always be presented as redeeming, and this often in
millenarian terms; if you do not choose the right technician, you are
lost.7 The IT expert, even more than a medical doctor, is the shaman
of our contemporary age. Will my computer recover from this virus
that infected it? Is there any hope for recovering the data I lost? The
authority of the expert leads to the paradoxical situation in where
every action becomes a request to the principle of an external
authority, and simultaneously, a statement of self-disparagement.
First we have to confess to our own ignorance and inadequacy,
make amend for past errors and humbly ask for assistance, only to
discover that experts are not at all custodians of objective
knowledge. Sometimes these disappointed techno-enthusiasts can
become disillusioned technophile luddites.
Technolatry is the inevitable consequence of technocracy.
Technology becomes an idol to worship. Confidence turns into faith,
and into the belief that there exist miraculous solutions that will
solve social problems. We expect technical solutions to a whole
range of problems like pollution, global warming, world hunger and
new, fanciful mythologies are being devised: green fuels, clean
technology and genetically modified crops. These quick fixes to
pressing problems are almost magical. Like any hegemonic
apparatus, technocracies dull critical capacity as they demand blind
collaboration from people and claim a range of identities in, a social
chain without apparent beginning or end. Everything is connected
because everyone is involved and no one can opt out. All forms of
consumerism, and especially those inspired by techno-enthusiasm,
are tributes to technocracy. They confirm that there is no alternative
to the present system, because they avidly buy the latest gadget put
on the market as the magic key to happiness. Personal desire has
been expropriated by advertising itself and is now reduced to the
predatory search for the best deal. As then individual ever more
transparent, technical mediation progresses in an increasingly
opaque way, making the development of knowledge-power totally
impenetrable. Technocratic society is the society of Mega Machines,
in which nobody is responsible, but where everybody is a tiny cog in
the global mechanism – at least as a consumer. The top of the
hierarchy is just as elusive as its bottom, and to escape the system
is simply inconceivable.8
Peter Sloterdijk asserts in 'Rules for the Human Zoo' that, what he
calls, humanistic anthropotechnics is in crisis.9 The project to breed
and train citizens through public education has collapsed, the
project to develop mass literacy could be replaced by eugenics to
engineer are more civilized race. There is no need to resort to
genetic engineering; social engineering is already more than
enough. We have already seen how the use of invasive social
technologies leads to automated forms of obedience which are
then portrayed as necessary and beneficial. Observing this process,
we can easily detect the anthropotechnics of Facebook. In this way,
the biopolitical control of both bodies and minds is decentralized as
much as possible towards the individual, who becomes answerable
for her own subjugation to technology. The transparent individual
already lives outside of herself, in the technological sphere, and no
longer has any secrets or any other space to retreat to. Such an
individual increasingly loose confidence in their autonomy because
they have become less competent, and they surrender to the
incomprehensible vastness of the global network. It seems for them
that there is no longer any way to make things work.
Finance is a good illustration of this type of mechanism, where the
mouse click of amateur investors and uncontrollable forces are
capable of wiping our entire economies. Technocracies themselves
are portrayed as the rational solution to all social problems, but in
fact they are ultimate expression of the irrationality of the economy.
Anthropocentrism tends to lead us into believing in a rational
intentionality present behind every event, so it becomes obvious to
see a correlation between the uncontrollable power of technology
and natural forces, something made near-explicit in everyday
language, with terms like 'financial tsunami', information deluge,
innovation waves, etc. Merging technology with nature results in
attitudes bordering on mysticism and produces absurd vacillations
between the will to power and the desire to rebel. The perfect
individual within a global technocratic regime is docile and
apathetic. Obedient to the rules decreed and by her enthusiastic,
defeatist or passive attitude, she forces potential rebels to conform.
Such an individual is neither a charismatic leader nor an exceptional
figure, but a supporter of technical banality, in other words a little
Eichmann of contemporary techno-totalitarianism. In the words of
Lewis Mumford: 'In every country there are now countless
Eichmanns in administrative offices, in business corporations, in
universities, in laboratories, in the armed forces: orderly, obedient
people, ready to carry out any officially sanctioned fantasy, however
dehumanized and debased.'10

1. Lorea is a self-managed, autonomous social network. See: http://lorea.org/. back

2. In asymmetric cryptography, every actor involved holds two keys, a public key, and a
private one. The public key can be distributed (or public on a repository) and is used
to encode a document that is sent to a receiver who holds the corresponding private
key. The private key is individual and secret and is used to decrypt a document that
has been encrypted with a public key. In other words everybody can send us a
message, encoded with our public key, but only we can open it. With symmetric
cryptography, on the other hand, there is only one key and one code. GPG is a free
software project using exclusively non-patented algorithms. As prescribed by the
OpenPGP charter, it is a hybrid system, where each message is encoded with a
 symmetric key, used for that message only, which is in turn encoded with the
receiver's public key. See: https://www.gnupg.org/. Various plugins are available for
easy OpenPGP to add-on to email clients, such as Enigmail:
https://www.enigmail.net/home/index.php. back
3. Each TOR node negotiates asymmetric keys with other nodes. In this way the overall
security of the network increases with the total number of nodes connected because
analysis and decryption becomes increasingly difficult if not impossible. To properly
use TOR you can download a browser already configured specifically for anonymous
surfing directly from the project site. See: https://www.torproject.org/. back
4. The Panopticlick project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
https://panopticlick.eff.org provides not only a way to examine the search engine
one uses, but also demonstrates how digital fingerprints in email and social media
are used and what we can do to prevent this. EFF's initiative also points out that
those who excel the most in their use of digital tools are the most easily detectable.
An explanation of the methodology used can be found in the article: Peter Eckersley,
'How Unique is Your Web browser?', Proceeding PETS'10 Proceedings of the 10th
International Conference on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Springer, 2010,
https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf. back
5. For an excellent refutation of the absurd logic of extinctionalist nihilism csee the
article: Marco Maurizi, ‘Che cos' è l'antispecismo’, Liberazioni, no 4, February 2008,
http://www.liberazioni.org/articoli/MauriziM-06.htm. Note 7 reads: 'Extinctionism is
utter nonsense because of its absurdity from a purely logical point of view. If
humanity could gain collective awareness of their own radical evil and ultimately
choose to self-annihilation, it would mean we have achieved such a high moral level
that it would call into question this very evil and in fact we would become the most
altruistic animal ever seen on the face of the earth! So it is either the case that
humanity can consciously speed up their own extinction (and then all the more
reason to think that we are able to accomplish ethical feats of a very different
nature), or not (in which case the entire movement for voluntary extinction is
meaningless). Obviously those who flirt with the idea of extinction mostly do so for
the sake of provocation. But then I cannot see the point of this provocation, since it
prevents any sensible analysis of the relationship between nature and society.' back
6. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) uses the term noosphere to describe the
stage of human evolution when the earth will be enshrouded in a layer of
interconnected thinking, just before the advent of Cosmic Christ, or Omega Point.
Teilhard de Chardin's futurology- and technological mysticism has a large influence
on transhumanist movements. The Roman Catholic hierarchy was initially opposed to
Teilhard de Chardin, but he was subsequently rehabilitated by Pope Benedict XVI
(formerly Jozeph Cardinal Ratzinger), who in a vesper homily at the Aosta cathedral
on July 24, 2009 said that ‘St Paul's vision is the great vision that was also shared by
 Teilhard de Chardin: in the end we shall have a truly cosmic liturgy, and the Cosmos
shall become a living Host’. See: John L. Allen Jr., 'Pope Cites Teilhardian Vision of the
Cosmos as a 'Living Host', National Catholic Reporter, 28 July 2009,
http://ncronline.org/news/pope-cites-teilhardian-vision-cosmos-living-host. Eric S.
Raymond is also at home in the noosphere and believes hackers are simply
colonizing it. See his essay: Eric S. Raymond, 'Homesteading the Noosphere', The
Cathedral & the Bazaar, California: O'Reilly, 1999,
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading. The spiritual
noosphere is the future point of convergence for the Roman Catholic Church and
anarcho-capitalism. back
7. A striking example of this taking place in Italy is the phrase ‘a technical government’,
which describes the government that was formed in November 2011 and made up
of experts not coming from politics but entrusted with the task to save the
country. back
8. The criticism of techno-bureaucracies can easily be applied to the domination of the
IT sphere, which Donna Harraway denounces in ‘A Cyborg Manifesto, Science,
Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the late Twentieth Century’ in Simians,
Cyborgs, and Women: the Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, 1991, p. 161.
Available at: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/donna-haraway/articles/donna-haraway-a-
cyborg-manifesto. Aggregative hierarchic systems have a tendency to develop
coercive social formats, irrespective of the time period. The personal competencies
required to function in such systems are inversely proportional to technical skills. See
the analysis of the Soviet power system in Cornelius Castoriadis, La Societé
bureaucratique, Paris: Bourgois, 1990. back
9. Peter Sloterdijk, 'Rules for the Human Zoo. A Response to the Letter on Humanism',
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 27 (2009): 12-28,
http://rekveld.home.xs4all.nl/tech/Sloterdijk_RulesForTheHumanZoo.pdf. back
10. Lewis Mumford, The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine, Vol. II. New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970, p. 279. back
3.04 BEYOND THE NET OF EMPTY
NODES: AUTONOMOUS INDIVIDUALS
AND ORGANIZED NETWORKS
Becoming a member of a commercial social network costs nothing.
Therefore, digital involvement has become an integral part of the
global spectacle. The underlying issue, once again, is the articulation
of individual and collective identity. Just like relationships that
require zero effort, identities that have zero value fall apart at the
first gush of wind. This of course costs, only in terms of necessary
skills, invested time, and a passion to share something, not in terms
of money. In more 'Huxleyan' societies, where consumerism is the
task of every citizen, not only goods, but also the social groups to
which people belong, signal their social status. Digital activism, more
often than not is a way to impress friends rather than to realize
deeply held political convictions. Membership of special interests
groups is also largely brought about by narcissism, need for self-
promotion, and the requests for attention that are manifest in the
creation of personal profiles.
This dynamic is not new and is not exclusive to digital networks.
Impressing peers by defending noble causes, such as protesting
against a genocide going on in a remote country or campaigning to
save baby seals, is one of the many ways to understand social
commitment. Analog activism is corrupted by this same
phenomenon of group fetishism which draws an individual into
participating in as many groups as possible, following more training
courses, committing themselves to any cause that presents itself,
only to suffer information overload and feel deflated. The real
driving force however if often a lack of personal identity coupled
with a need to feel part of a larger whole, a collective identity that
gives meaning to the exhausted single person. We now will focus
our attention on this individual subject, the hero of the free market
cheered on by anarcho-capitalists. As Castoriadis points out,
privatization has nothing to do with individualization. We need true,
different individuals, not interchangeable atoms. The individual
subject is not a rational given, realized in a single identity, but a
permanent ongoing process, shaped by her relationships with the
surrounding environment.
In the era of profit maximization, co-operation among free people
who respect each other may seem like an obsolete idea. Not to
mention friendliness; who still has the time, or wish, to comfortably
chat, make plans, be creative or simply spend time with like-minded
people? Setting up a place of conviviality has nothing to do with
becoming members of a group supporting some common cause
without direct face-to-face contact. Conviviality presupposes the
existence of a stable 'we' that would be at least able to tell its own
history, to represent and to take care of itself by building up
collective spaces and sharing common moments of life. But now,
when it corresponds to something more than a generic 'like', as
soon as it is not in the service of some identity-based reactionary
statement, the pronoun 'we' becomes almost an insult. It evokes a
community in the old-fashioned sense, the provincialism of small
quarrels. It is far better to deal with gossip and to 'manage' a mass
of non-demanding contacts, than to waste time with just a few
interpersonal relationships.
It is a very flat 'me' that takes the center stage in the performance
society. The successful 'me' does not need strong ties with any
particular community. All that is required is personal ambition,
sustained by appropriate skills, e.g. the ability to sell oneself well.
These personal resources have been accumulated during the
continuous disruptions the self has experienced and adjusted to
during our working life: corporate restructuring, work overload and
stress, followed by periods of forced inactivity and lifelong learning.
The time outside of work reflects perhaps and even greater degree
of structural instability, with serial relocations to 'seize the right
opportunity', and friendships maintained on Facebook or by instant
messaging. These are the experiences that have shaped the flexible
'me'. No wonder then if, after thirty years of 'weak ties', angst,
euphoria and depression follow each other in quick succession.
'Holiday' is not a valid concept in our performance society.
The internet, which enables this type of flexibility, is also the favorite
metaphor of the gurus of mass participation, who praise flexibility as
the universal cure for social ills, and also for those who pontificate
on the endless opportunities of the digital. Today's managers love to
use terms like 'networking', 'decentralization', 'horizontal',
'interconnected', 'outsourcing', 'crowd-funding', as if networks have
the sole goal of raising profits and lowering costs.
But there is a big difference between 'networked organizations' and
'organized networks'. A hierarchical organization can benefit from
networking, because removing some power from the top and
distributing responsibilities can help leverage employees' passions,
appealing to their sense of belonging in the group and their sense
of autonomy. Flexible capitalism still remains hierarchical and
authoritarian, but uses 'networks' with bonuses and back-scratching
recreating the false sense of an otherwise disparaged 'we'.
Free networking platforms are the latest invention of capitalism to
enhance productivity. Each and every minute spent on corporate
social media is actually work time. Users are rewarded for their
continuous activity with complimentary services. While LinkedIn and
similar services are explicitly used for professional life, Facebook is
also used for work-related activities. It is a kind of office where we
are all guests, full of entertainment that serves to make us spend
more time at work. It comes as no surprise that a lot of marketing
applications are developed and launched on social media, the aim
being to combine production networks with kinship ones, with the
merging of the two as the ultimate aim. But it is important to at least
enjoy sometime not working and free from the imperative of
constant productivity. Furthermore, there is a psychic wage.
In reality the majority of time spent on so-called networking is made
up of 'down-time', misunderstandings and attempts at reconciling,
or at least managing the differences that arise from conflicts.1 In
short, most a network is not productive unless it is hierarchically
organized. Decentralized and autonomous networks on the other
hand, are neither suitable for work, nor for unlimited growth. A
networked organization may be more productive but an
autonomous network will not since it does not distribute resources
in a market-efficient way, especially when the entire relationship
interface is virtual. Digital mediated collaboration is challenging and
often tiresome if there is never any meeting in real life'. Online work
can be extremely inefficient and slow because it requires more
listening and patience than work done offline.
In addition to this, and contrary to networked organization which
can count on solid and well-established links with technocratic
structures, autonomous networks encounter great difficulties in
getting recognized by institutions. This is the case with entire
sectors like literature, the arts, and academic research. Participatory
science is an area of great interest for the development of
collaborative dynamics. We are not talking here about sharing one's
computer or bandwidth for the benefit of astronomic or genetic
research, but to take real interest in the world around us. People
curious and passionate about a specific topic could collaborate with
experienced scientists and academics to develop a rigorous study
that would still be intelligible to the non-initiated. Experts, confined
in their specialist knowledge, are rarely able to express themselves
in a simple but non-trivial way. Often, for these experts, sharing this
knowledge amounts to giving away their hard-earned knowledge.
Conversely, the curious non-expert, who does not have a position at
stake, could translate the discourse of their expert friends, making a
complicated issue more approachable. Naturally, this translation of
specialists jargon into a language more accessible to a lay audience
risks a certain amount of approximations and simplification, but this
is necessary for widespread scientific education.2 For this reason,
the process of building a shared knowledge should be made
transparent. Genuine participation requires interested people being
directly involved in the process of spreading knowledge.
In politics, this fact is even more obvious. The Indignados
movement, Occupy and Anonymous show once more than
institutions really hate to dealing with amorphous structures,
without (explicit) leaders and hierarchy, because, from their point of
view, when nobody is responsible then everyone is.3 In which case it
becomes easy to approach the institution under a false pretense, by
devising a fake identity, as an association, etc. Yet for an
autonomous network, the bureaucratic burden associated with a
public identity is a heavy one. Who wants to go through all the
administrative and financial bureaucracy just to obtain public
recognition? The alternative then is to cast a leading individual, who
can pass of the creation of the group as their own. This is the
WikiLeaks approach: one person claims to be responsible, the
author or leader, so the media have a 'success story'. For this
scenario to work, mutual trust is essential, and it still remains a
double-edged sword, especially for organized networks with a
radical orientation. This is because, in these radical organizations,
the person cast as the leader is likely to be targeted by the
authorities or become a notorious figure in the public eye.
Finally, if an autonomous networks wishes to maintain a really
horizontal organization without flattening out, it cannot grow
beyond a certain limit. To maintain the empowerment that comes
from varied work, every participant needs to be heard, with the
consequence that the number of 'human nodes' must remain
relatively low. This means it is unlikely that these autonomous
groups will achieve the critical mass required to be considered
proper movements. But these groups generally have to become
hegemonic. They do not make use of advertising techniques since
even the most subversive publicity stunt will immediately be
recycled by the society of the spectacle. Instead, they are more
concerned about each other, their relationships and their projects.
The time of the autonomous network is a time non-work and non-
productivity.4 It is free and freedom is not productive. Freedom can
be creative in certain circumstances. But then it is essential that
each node in the network is as autonomous as possible. Nodes
need to be competent and therefore relevant to other nodes but
also keen to share. This the exact opposite of Huxley's Brave New
World of obedient citizen. Socialbots will not be able to infiltrate an
autonomous organized network, the way they do on social media, at
least as long as it remains impossible to reduce every members to
their digital profile.
Conversely, social networks like Facebook's are the ultimate
example of network capitalism, which manages to make even the
time spent on playing Farmville productive. When playing in the
digital space offered by Facebook we are not engaged in a creative
activity, but rather an activity that creates more profits through
profiling. By participating in the mass construction of a privately
owned world, we become mere guests who get their work tools for
free.
The conversion of libido into profit is a process that already began a
long time ago. There is a sort of psychic wage one can earn by using
connected digital tools. Proponents of the gift economy on the
internet always neglect to mention that the real gift is the one that
users bring everyday by spending their time on the platforms of
private companies who profit from their data. A gift that perhaps
millions of individuals are quite unaware of but that has enormous
economic value. They become mere biomass to fuel the myth of
unlimited growth.

1. The phatic function, in Roman Jakobson analysis of communication, is used to

establish contact and verify that the communication channel is not broken. Saying
'Hello' when picking up the phone is a phatic function. All preliminary arrangements
that need to be made when calling a group meeting with its complex communication
requirements (arranging a venue, making up the agenda, etc.) are similar to the
phatic function. When groups make use of digital technologies, verification of the
systems often take much more time than in 'analog' situations. back
2. Beatriz da Costa, 'Amateur Science: A Threat After All?', 2005,
http://rixc.lv/reader/txt/txt.php?id=149&l=en and Brian Martin, 'Grassroots Science',
Sal Restivo (ed.), Science, Technology, and Society: An Encyclopedia, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005, pp. 175-181,
http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/05Restivo.html. back
3. In fact, this impossibility to assign responsibilities is the real reason for the massive
occurrence of networked, virtual interface organizations. The call centers tasked with
monitoring consumer satisfaction are the most blatant example: if your internet
connection is broken, you phone a call center for assistance, where nobody is
actually responsible for the failure of the connection. It will always someone's else
fault: for instance another company did the cable-laying, etc. Hence, networked
organizations present themselves to users as if they had no leadership, as if they
 were for all practical purposes amorphous structures, where nobody is answerable
(especially when they go bankrupt) whereas they are, for the institution which finance
and own them, very reliable and well-structured. back
4. Geert Lovink, The Principle of Notworking: Concepts in Critical Internet Culture,
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005,
http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/the-principle-of-notworking-geert-
lovink/. back
3.05 MASS PARTICIPATION
The most well known example of mass collaboration is Wikipedia,
the universal encyclopedia, now numbering several million entries in
dozens of languages, and which was created by the contributions of
millions of volunteers worldwide. It is a astounding experiment, that
has many innovative features compared to traditional participatory
models. It is also unique that as one of the most widely visited
websites on the net, it does not finance itself through
advertisements, but depends exclusively on donations. Wikipedia's
principal virtue lies in the fact that it puts special emphasis on the
non-economic incentives which inspire web users to collaborate on
a project that goes beyond the stale rhetoric of the 'gift economy'.
We can better describe it as an economy of attention and
recognition. What really motivates Wikipedia collaborators, is the
acknowledgement they receive from their peers, and the desire they
have to see their skills recognized on a larger scale.1
Nonetheless, numerous elements of criticisms can be leveled
against Wikipedia. Core contributors to the site start to behave like
censors and wish to distinguish themselves from the mass of users
(instead of helping them to build their own role in a creative
fashion). Symptoms of hierarchy and domination appear within
Wikipedia. There have been many conflicts among 'Wikipedians',
and mass participation has given way to complex techno-
bureaucracies which play a gatekeeping role. By now it is possible to
dismiss the myth of Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia that is the
outcome of the collaboration of human beings all united by the
same ideal. It is, even in absolute terms, mainly the collaboration
between human beings and bots. Bots are small programs
performing fully automated tasks without human intervention.
Rambot, for instance, created over thirty thousand entries on cities
in the world, extracting data from the CIA-published World Factbook
and from US civil registries. As of now, bots account for 20% of the
Wikipedia entries.2 Wikipedia is better viewed as a highly complex
socio-technical phenomenon, which is reminiscent of Bruno
Latour's, notion of a 'parliament of things'.3 Fans or detractors of
Wikipedia, must both admit that social interaction in these systems
is mediated through coded and automated processes, so that
sensitive issues, such as the reliability of knowledge, are increasingly
entrusted to machines. Then how does the hierarchy work between
reliable and unreliable knowledge, human and 'bot' contributions?
Source validation, protocols to resolve conflicts and common
resource allocation are all pressing issues awaiting resolution.
Ultimately, despite the enormous differences, Wikipedia's modus
operandi is still the same as that of the four giants of the digital
world: Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple. They all use the logic
of accumulation, large numbers and the power of the masses. Even
though they do not broadcast like traditional media they too aspire
to hegemony. They compete fiercely because they want to win over
a larger public and achieve a higher level of consensus.4 When they
praise the virtues of the 'long tail' made up of the millions of
individuals who are dissatisfied with mass communication, they
actually act as aggregators more interested in quantity than quality.
Their ideal is the oxymoron of 'mass elitism'.
So, if it is essential to limit the number of participants for a space of
conviviality to function properly, does that mean that the masses
are condemned to triviality, self-promotion and self-exploitation as a
consequence? The author of 'The Wisdom of Crowds', James
Surowiecki, disagrees. In 'The Wisdom of Crowds', Surowiecki
attempts to demonstrate that a randomly selected large group of
people collectively possess superior skills to a small group of highly
intelligent and well-prepared people. The concept of the wisdom of
crowds does entail that a large group will always provide a better
response, but that, on average, it will tend to produce a better
solution than one individual alone could alone. In other words, a
mixed crowd is, on average, apt to make better decisions than one
expert. We have emphasized the need to question the role of
experts, and even to turn their power back against the experts
themselves. When technical knowledge is reserved or outsourced to
specialized experts, they quickly lose the ability to realize their
responsibility in the use of their knowledge-power. Each one of
them relates exclusively to their own vested interests, their clients
and their lobby's interests. At the same time access to knowledge is
lost for the citizens and the common people.
There are several necessary conditions required for the collective
wisdom of crowds to be expressed. Not all crowds are wise.
Consider, for example, mobs or frenzied speculators in a stock
market bubble. According to Surowiecki, these are the key criteria
required to separate wise crowds from irrational ones: Diversity of
opinion (Each person should have private information even if it's
just an idiosyncratic interpretation of the known facts).
Independence (People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions
of those around them). Decentralization: (People are able to
specialize and draw on local knowledge). Aggregation (Some
mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective
decision).5
Suriowecki emphasizes the importance of diversity ('as a value in
itself'), and of independence, because the best collective decisions
are the outcome of disagreement and discussions, not of pre-
arranged consensus or compromises. By discussing very convincing
examples, among them the development of the GNU/Linux
operating system and the collaboration between laboratories
worldwide leading to the discovery of SARS (Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome), Surowiecki shows that, as paradoxical as it
may seem to the conventional approach where the majority is lead
by a minority representative, the intelligence of the group is
superior provided that everyone in it acts in the most independent
way possible. Individual autonomy is essential to a well functioning
collective, provided that there is an agreement on the rules for
sharing and the division of tasks.
But when one observes the concrete activities of an individual
engaging with a social network, we see immediately that decision-
making is not the only issue at stake. What is more important is to
being on a common trajectory, spending time together, exploring
the unknown in shared projects, meeting other people, and
encountering the other. The crowd only becomes interesting when
we get close up and discover the differences that make the many
personal histories and form a collective narrative. Seen from afar,
people are merely statistical figures or insignificant dots.6
Participation is only worthwhile if individuals are part of a process of
personal growth. On this issue there is no difference between the
'real' and the 'virtual' world. Surowiecki is useful to consider for the
purposes our argument, in part because we do not share his
exuberant faith in the masses, nor his concern for business.
Diversity is in fact more important in small groups and in informal
organizations than in larger collectives, such as markets or
electorates, simply because of the sheer size of most markets and
the fact that anyone with money can enter them. This means that a
minimum level of diversity is always ensured with a sufficiently large
group.7
The issue of size is closely linked to the economy. There is a long
tradition of thought shows that the project of economics, literally
'rule-norm-law of the house-environment' (and by extension,
habitat) is irreconcilably at odds with 'ecology', which is the
'discourse on the house-environment-habitat'. In other words, a
discourse that has the economy as its starting point cannot have
social well-being as its aim, even if it pretends the contrary, because
the social and the economic are grounded on different premises.
Yet there has been no lack of attempts to appropriate the practices
of social ecology in the economic sphere. Developing a new
technology that has the potential to become highly profitable and
widespread, is generally an effective way to gain access to energies
and resources.8
In any case this belief is central to the 'Wikinomics' of Tapscott and
Williams, and also the 'Socialnomics' of Qualman.9 These new
economic and social theories are based collaboration rather than
competition. The main idea, touted as an epochal discovery, is that
social collaboration generates more added value than competition.
Outside the business world this observation would be deemed
trivial at best but in the corporate sphere it was considered cutting
edge. Wikinomics is based on four principles: openness, 'peering'
(organizing 'independent' people within a company), sharing (firms
must put their know-how at the disposal of their 'ecosystem' which
is made up of clients, suppliers, and partners, in order to foster
synergic growth), and acting globally (ignoring physical and
geographical boundaries).
The most interesting concept in this is that of openness because it
reveals the transformation of dynamic ecological equilibrium into
economic exploitation. This is the logical outcome of the neo-liberal
idea of freedom. In a similar manner the freedom of Free Software
was quickly transformed into the profitable business of openness
through the invention of Open Source. We discuss the difference
between the two approaches in our first book, Open non è Free.10
Like neoliberal companies, digital communities based around
hacker ethics and global markets, realize their alleged freedom by
opening up to the market. Hacker ethics, sharing and co-operation
practices are used by the market, which has adopted hacker
communities' developing methods in order to recover from the
speculative trick of the net economy. The new words sound like the
old ones, from 'free software' to 'open source', but the sense has
completely changed: curiosity about new changes into permanent
training; web fluidity into absolute flexibility; permanent connection
for easy communication into a 24-hour work life. Everything is
defined in terms of the global market's simple and effective slogans.
The open society is being praised as an automatic product of the
libertarian openness of online sociality. To be clear: we do not want
to be open, we would like to be free, or at least freer. For example,
we do not want to be open to fascism, sexism, racism,
authoritarianism of the left or right... in fact, openness has strictly
nothing to do with a radical posture. Also philosophically speaking,
as Karl Popper's works demonstrate, the Open Society is a liberal
dream.
The boundaries of companies are now becoming increasingly
porous and less secure. Outsourcing is commonplace, and the strict
separation between work and leisure time is waning, not because
technology takes time away from work in favor of socializing, but
because every moment is now devoted to profit earning. Firms will
hand out their employees mobile phones for free, unlimited call
plans included, so that they are always reachable, always in touch
with each other, and always productive even outside their paid
working hours. They are in fact actors on permanent call, but not
acknowledged as such. They are the true slaves of self-exploitation
unleashed by the Wikinomics, automata who seamlessly write the
immense serial novel of digital culture's while considering
themselves as the stakeholders in the Internet's Collective
Intelligence. They then feel compelled to adopt an absurd, totally
Huxleyan posture, and to participate in the commonwealth by
exercising their power as consumers. But if growth is mandatory, it
might take little time before not going into debt will be considered
immoral, and that calls for de-growth will be considered as a
subversive activity.
If the masses are so intelligent and so eager to collaborate, then
one could imagine that keyboard activism, dubbed as clicktivism and
slacktivism, would be a residual phenomenon, and that mass
democracy is just around the corner. But this is not the case, simply
because a group does not necessarily function better than a single
individual. The sum total of individuals with low skills, a lack of
critical engagement, and little time to contribute to the building of a
common world, will help generate a great number of clicks on
banners ads, but give little hope to a rise in true collective
participation.
Before the Silicon Valley hype about the wisdom of crowds, social
psychologists had discovered that the performance of individuals in
a group is often less efficient than working alone. Synergy is not a
conditioned response. In 1882, the agricultural engineer Maximilien
Ringelmann conducted the following experiment in the French
countryside: four people were asked to pull on a rope, firstly all
together, then one after the other. The rope was attached to a
dynamometer (to measure the tensile force exerted). Ringelmann
was surprised to discover that the sum of the individual tensile
forces was significantly higher than that of the group. Several
subsequent studies have confirmed this 'Ringelmann effect', and
have shown that individuals of a group will generally become less
productive as a group size increases. This non-synergic effect is
most notable with simple, repetitive tasks, in which every link in the
chain has an important role to play but easily is replaceable by
anyone else. Applauding at a theater, voting, clicking on 'like', etc.
follows the same dynamic. When individual differences are not
highlighted and there is an increase in the number of participants,
the results often become progressively worse. Why should we
commit ourselves when anyone can click 'like' in our stead?
In a mass group we have no reason to distinguish ourselves since
the identity of group is based on the norm, not by the exception.
That is to say, an atomized individual, permanently taught to be
interchangeable with any other 'atom', must develop standard
characteristics to be attractive in the global market, in an endless
repetition of the identical, with minor variations already included in
the profiling system. Conversely, an autonomous individual will be
more interesting because they are unique and possess specific
characteristics, a particular mixture of different qualities and
experiences. It is logical to think that such an individual will join
various groups, not for the sake of self-promotion, but for the
pleasure of sharing and meeting with other, like-minded individuals.
To belong to a community, to an organized network functioning like
a 'we' means to feel represented, not because you have the right to
veto or vote, but because you have a direct influence on the
network, because you can influence others and in turn be
influenced by them. We swap experiences and make changes by
building a common history together. This is a necessarily complex
and dynamic equilibrium where mutual limits and boundaries are
constantly renegotiated.
It is not possible to imagine individuals that are static and
completely determined by the absolute principles of the libertarian
market, acting perfectly and totally pre-programmed, fully complying
to a group manifesto or mission statement. On the other hand,
even an individual's extraordinary skills must find ways to harmonize
in an organized network, because the mere size of the group does
not necessarily result in decreased control. On the contrary, control
at the minute level also exists in small group, and perhaps it is here
where it reaches its peak intensity. A single person's error can
determine the fate of the entire group. The discontent of one
member can infect all others; conflicts then can grow out of
proportions and overshadow any positive vision.
There is however, a big difference between control managed by
automated systems with profit as motive, as in the case of mass
profiling, and the mutual control exercised by members of a small
group. In an affinity group the ties that form the network are also
relationships based on trust. You know that you can have
confidence in the judgments of others and use the group as a
sounding board. Social control can then also function as a
guarantee for individual autonomy, especially in times of
discouragement and apathy, when an individual is no longer lucid
and starts acting in ways that are reckless or destructive. As keepers
of a shared history, and therefore also our own history, the others
are the ones who can remind us that we have not always been in a
state of suffering and despair. In the past we made significant
contributions and there is no reason why we will not continue to do
so in the future. Attention and recognition of individual creativity is
the currency that circulates in an organized network. It is the time
that we spend weaving these bonds that makes the experience
invaluable.
1. Felipe Ortega and Joaquin Rodriguez, El Potlach digital, Wikipedia y el triumfo del
procomun y el conocimiento compartido, Madrid: Catedra, 2011. back
2. See: 'The Shadowy World of Wikipedia's Editing Bots', MIT Technology Review,
February 2014, http://www.technologyreview.com/view/524751/the-shadowy-world-
of-wikipedias-editing-bots/. back
3. There is a wide range of issues, which are particularly difficult from a technical
perspective, but central to the political and social debate, and are usually delegated
to experts as they are considered too complex for ordinary people. The development
of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Internet governance, nuclear energy and
the morning after pill are all products of techno-science and they play a substantial
role in the construction of our reality. These products are created from scratch and
create problems previously unthinkable (the ozone hole, the collaboration human-
bots, fowl pest, one day the vaccine for AIDS...). Yet they still do not occupy a place in
our imagination, since we have outsourced the technical management of these new
phenomena. In this respect, Bruno Latour's work has been prophetic. See: Bruno
Latour, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods, Durham: Duke University Press,
2009. Also see: Laura Bovone, 'Dai fatti ai fattici: conoscenza scientifica e senso
commune oggi,' Studi di Sociologia, 2008, pp. 137-157. back
4. The enthusiasm surrounding the war for technological supremacy is staggering. It is
in a continuation of the most perverse aspect of capitalist competition, the idea that
users benefit from fierce competition and should side for this or that charismatic
leader. See the analysis of Farhad Manjoo, 'The Great Tech War Of 2012 - Apple,
Facebook, Google, and Amazon Battle for the Future of the Innovation Economy, Fast
Company, 19 October 2011, http://www.fastcompany.com/1784824/great-tech-war-
2012. back
5. James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of the Crowd, Rome: Time Zones, p. 32. back
6. See the discussion on the value of human life in Carlo Reed's The Third Man (1949).
On top of the ferris wheel in the Prater in Vienna, Orson Welles tells Joseph Cotten,
that from this vantage point human beings resemble dots that are interchangeable,
and it would be insignificant if a few of them stopping moving forever. back
7. James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of the Crowd, p. 51. back
8. For an overview of the ambiguities in the technological framework of social ecology
see: Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of
Hierarchy, Palo Alto: Cheshire Books, 1982. Especially chapters 9 and 10. back
9. Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes
Everything, New York: Portfolio, 2006. An even more embarrassing analysis can be
 found in Erik Qualman, Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live
and Do Business, New York: Wiley, 2009. back
10. Ippolita, Open non è free, Milan: Eleuthera, 2005. back
3.06 BEYOND TECHNOPHOBIA: LET'S
BUILD CONVIVIAL TECHNOLOGIES
TOGETHER!
Worldwide tribal chatter, the 'global village' imagined by McLuhan
has now been realized. Our world is now Balkanized, fragmented in
individual circles managed by corporate mega-machines. Technical
apparatuses are presented as empowering extensions of our
human body because 'technology is now part of our body' and it is
impossible to do without it or to break free. McLuhan's analysis
should be taken as a warning when faced with such a threatening
system of domination:

Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems

to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit
from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't
really have any rights left.1

Even before the issue of civic rights, it is firstly an issue of losing our
personal autonomy, in terms of skills lost or ones that now will
never develop. Forty years after such lucid insight by the Canadian
sociologist, when the costs of this ubiquitous incapacitation should
be obvious, the technological drift has enveloped itself around us in
its ever more stifling coils. We are all sentient terminals of a global
network and this integration process doesn't look like as it could be
stopped. Even when we recognize the enormous problems the
adoption of these technologies causes, there are very few
possibilities to opt out. The escape routes considered by various
commentators are not very convincing.
But we should not be deceived by the pressing demands for viable
alternatives, especially when the demand is for alternatives that
work immediately and are suitable for all. We should examine
personal users need and whether an individual's desire, real or
imaginary, can be satisfied. It is obvious that no alternatives exist if
the quest is to for entity as large and powerful as Google. Only
another Google could work as fast and efficiently as Google, just as
an alternative social media platform that functions in the same way
as Facebook would merely be a Facebook clone. Instead what is
required are many niche alternatives and many local and diverse
solutions. Gigantism simply does not work, nor does the ideology of
unlimited growth and radical transparency will not set us free.
McLuhan's most famous dictum 'the medium is the message'
cannot be taken seriously enough. The same message disseminated
through different media undergoes change. The fact is, that in the
digital society, we are the medium, and therefore message. Having
debated about digital technologies we lost track of the depth of the
changes that have occurred in the meanwhile. We have to return to
the body, and that if our memories are stocked on line, our bodies
will tend to materialize in those same places. To adapt oneself to
the virtual world means, literally, to be absorbed and relocated
elsewhere, often in the so-called data Clouds. The intangible
lightness of being digitally connected cannot be dissociated from
the server-banks' heaviness – data centers strewn around the
planet, preferably in its colder regions, as computers heat up and
need chilling.2 Data centers are gigantic sheds with interconnected
hard disks stacked up to the ceiling. These fragile monuments of
total memory consume phenomenal amounts of electricity (3% of
the US' total consumption in 2011), taking an equally phenomenal
toll on the environment. Cloud computing will do nothing to
mitigate this problem, since the exponential growth in data will
undermine any attempt to reduce waste.3 Each time we log into our
digital profile to check whether we exist, somewhere another
computer lights up, connecting our request over thousands of miles
of cable, all so that we can 'connect' to our digital body.
The rapid transformation of millions of users into sentient terminals,
incapable of surviving in a world without the web was made
possible by the extraordinary adaptability of the human body. Until
the middle of the 20th century, physical strength was an important
criterion in a person's employability. The technological promise of a
world free of physical burdens has been realized for the richest part
of the planet, who have adapted to a life between screens and
keyboards. Meanwhile, the rest of the world aspires to participate in
the pleasures of choosing between thousands of types of
commodities. The consumer cult demands that we constantly use
commodities as a form of identity and expression. Even the space
occupied on remote servers is a status symbol and mark of identity.
Occupying a lot of digital space results in having to manage a 'body'
that stretches beyond the limits of physicality. In the context of
corporate social media this body is subjected to default power, that
is it is subjected to mandatory, unrequested influence. A digital body
does not belong to users and can only be managed according to
the rules imposed upon from the outside. Furthermore, the digital
body has been shaped by the demands of the technological world
which privilege brain power over physical strength. Google Earth is
our all-seeing eye, but we may only use it, for free, within the limits
granted to us. Meanwhile, our eyesight deteriorates as we keep
sitting in front of a screen.
Theories of the brain, just like the theories of the body, have
undergone dramatic change in recent years. Until a few decades
ago the general idea was that, once its growth phase was over, the
brain had become a static as an organ. Now we know that, on the
contrary, the brain is extremely plastic and retains its plasticity
throughout our life. Even though neurons keep dying, they continue
to create new connections between existing neurons. The
sensations we feel through repeated experience form new neuronal
circuits, while neglected circuits eventually deteriorate. Even the
thought of performing an action, to experience or re-experience a
specific situation causes physical change on the neuronal level.
Once these neuronal pathways are established it is nearly
impossible to reverse such a change. In the case of social media,
predominantly the eye and visual cortex is used, while the rest of
the body becomes weaker. The brain adjusts accordingly, and so
does our perception of the world.4
The brain is a muscle that when fed with too many superficial
connections atrophies and loses other disused capacities. Just as
junk food is a drug that upsets the metabolism, 'junk
communication' pollutes the brain and overtime it is difficult to
recover lost capabilities.5 The concentration necessary to deep
thinking requires quiet and attentiveness. Research has also
demonstrated that cognitive capacities increase when in a natural
environment.6 More complex imaginative faculties, like empathy and
compassion, need time and attention to develop and hone. The
sight of another person's physical pain stimulates a response of
empathy much more quickly than perceiving psychological pain,
which is a more complex phenomena to grasp.7 In terms of
creativity, developing a common moral and aesthetic vision
demands considerable time and an enormous listening capacity. It
is easy to be angered and outraged by the injustices of the world,
but it is near impossible to share dreams and utopias with
technological tools that only generate distracted attention...
Our social dimension is not necessarily defined by current
technologies. Mobile phones have become indispensable and the
same is slowly happening with mass social media. But this is not
necessarily inevitable. We could decide that we do not want to
become dependent on Facebook or Google+ or any other social
media platforms managed 'for our own good'. Instead we could try
to find out together something better to nurture our social life, just
as some people improve their diet. Our communication life could
then become a deeply satisfying banquet instead of a void that
becomes increasingly more difficult to fill.
A convivial information regimen is possible which favors the
realization of individual freedom and empowerment within a society
adequately equipped with efficient tools. The logical outcome of this
critique of domination-oriented information is inevitably 'small is
beautiful'; because size matters. Beyond certain numbers, a fixed
hierarchy becomes a requirement to manage the relationships
between human beings and other living beings in general. This is
because everything that is in a relationship is 'relative'. If, instead of
maintaining relationships with ten people, in a circumscribed space,
we have to do with thousands or millions of people, relativity gives
way to homology. To have one thousand friends does not make any
sense at all since we do not have the time and energy to maintain
all these so-called 'friendships'. Significant relationships require
time, attention and competence and cannot be satisfied, with the
distracted attention or indifference characteristic of social media.
Human beings can only effectively keep in touch, meaning here to
know where are, what they do there etc., with a few dozen people at
the same time.8 In a project that has too high number of
participants, people start to identify categories of gender, 'race',
wealth, resources, age, expertise, etc., in a fixed hierarchical manner.
The standard white male discourse leaves no room for evolution
other than through a radical break resulting in shocks, violence and
disruptions which inevitably returns us to the question, what to do?
This notorious Leninist question, 'What is to be done?' lacks any
libertarian response without beginning yet another totalitarian
revolution, from either the left or the right of the political spectrum.
Megamachines involves chain of both capitalist and despotic type.
They create dependency, exploitation, and powerlessness, reducing
humans to the function of enslaved consumers. This is not a
question of property issues, since:

The collective ownership of the means of production does not

alter anything in this state of affairs, and merely sustains a
Stalinist despotic organization. Accordingly, Illich puts forward
the alternative of everyone's right to make use of the means of
production, in a 'convivial society', which is to say, a desiring
and non-Oedipal society. This would mean the most extensive
utilization of machines by the greatest number of people, the
proliferation of small machines and the adaptation of the large
machines to small units, the exclusive sale of machinic
components which would have to be assembled by the users-
producers themselves, and the destruction of the
specialization of knowledge and of the professional
monopoly.9

The real question to ask then is how to do this? What are our
desires in relation to digital technology? What kind of digital social
networks, appropriate to our desires, would we like to build? Which
tools will we use? Which modes of participation and of exchange
would we like to draw upon?
We need to reverse the logic of radical transparency and apply it to
the technologies we use, and to those social media platforms that
promise immediate interaction but are in fact non-transparent
intermediaries. It is absolutely essential for an individual to retain a
private sphere and to nurture a secret, personal inner world that is
not subject to profiling. It is vital to learn to spend time alone, in
silence, and to learn to like each other, by facing the fear of the void,
which social media tries to fill in vain. Only individuals that possess
self-esteem and are happy with themselves, despite their flaws, will
have the energy to build up sensible spaces of communication
where they can meet other people. Only individuals who have
acquired a know-how that goes beyond mere self-promotion skills,
have something interesting to communicate and to share. Effective
communication demands each person can listen to themselves,
before even being able to listen to others. Algorithmic logic is both
inadequate and degrading. It is not up to the individual to be
transparent to technology; rather it is technological mediation itself
that should be made to be as transparent and intelligible as
possible. The process of constructing shared worlds must be
explained.
Expressing desire is not an automatic process. Nor is the
transmission of skills a spontaneous process. To formulate desires
is not without risks. Relationships are based on trust and on the risk
that this trust might be broken or betrayed. Stratification and depth
are essential elements in a relationship. All forms of authentic
communication are complex acts of sharing personal imagination.
Misunderstandings are possible, and so-called radical transparency
will not prevent conflicts from arising. It does not make sense to
split up these processes into logical cycles and to submit them to
the perfect algorithm. The automatic satisfaction of desires merely
means outsourcing everything to technology, including the
imagination. Welcome then to the desert of the automatic, induced
desires, where there is nothing left to imagine.
There is a need to give an account of the communicative processes
and of the technologies that implement them. We need to explore
them with the help of texts and practices enabling us to extend, re-
trace, and re-assemble the social, by making visible the mesh of
connections between the social actors who are its protagonists.10
This way it should be possible to cut across the now blocked
instituted imaginary, and get it moving again. The net is the trace left
by the flow of social assets and made visible by the constant
translations performed by actors. Following these actors is certainly
slower and more difficult for all-encompassing globalizing answers
and main-streamed, standardizing theories, but it is a risk that must
be taken in order to capture the complexity of the real. This book's
ambition was to start sketching out the map of an area only partly
explored, by following the connections between actors and their
respective translations and betrayals. Naturally, the map does not
always correspond with the territory, there are many empty spaces
left, which may give rise to new associations.11
An actor carries out actions that are intended to achieve something.
In this sense an actor is much more than a simple intermediary,
since she is neither a neutral support nor an anonymous channel
for external communication that does not result in any reaction or
change. Quite on the contrary, an actor is a mediator who translates
and modifies information, according to her own characteristics, and
therefore is able to transmit messages in an effective way. Thus,
when two friends have a banal conversation on Facebook chat, this
not only involves the linguistic skills of two people, but also the
ideology that underpins Facebook. The communication protocols of
Facebook are layered in extremely complex networks and the
mutual expectations of those who interact on the network, and
many other aspects of interaction, are not all reducible to the
catchall term 'information'.
It may appear strange to associate neurons, individuals, emotions,
membranes and circuits, the macroscopic social world with the
microscopic one of molecules, but in reality all these elements are
connected. If anything it would be more unusual to dissociate them,
strictly limiting individuals to the domain of sociology and
anthropology, neurons to brain science, emotions to psychology,
membranes to biology, and circuits to engineering or computer
sciences. At this point it becomes impossible to identify the links
between all these different elements, without resorting to an
omnipresent essence, a deus ex machina of the social bond in the
paradigm of informationalism. In other words, without speaking of
imaginary 'social forces', or unidentified psychic forces, or history's
'manifest destiny' etc. Communication, however, does not transmit
information, but requires the creation of spaces of interaction, in
which heterogeneous actors are summoned together.
Collaboration can progressively evolve into convivial technology
when it stops being part of the ongoing chatter and aims to create a
shared space. Personal space can be developed both in an
individual and in a collective sense.12 If a space succeeds in giving
individuals a sense of fulfillment, then it might be visited, shared,
and used. Such a territory is a collective one; it represents a
different system with regard to individuals. It is something that has
not existed before, a radical creation, in the words of Castoriadis an
imaginary institution, directed by a magmatic logic.13 Using a
convivial technology together means to change, to alter reality, to
modify one's own reality, and in a broader sense, to change the
world around us.
In the study of group dynamics, the largest problem, which may also
sometimes be a strength, is the limits of the collective.14 In all
collaborative activities, the limits can be formulated in qualitative,
quantitative, and temporal terms. Certain qualitative limits are self-
evident, since collective work does conform to a specific individual's
expectations but rather to the individual self as unfolding
development within a collective self. It is, in a certain sense, less
precise, as the perceptions of a single individual subject are not the
same as those of the collective subject. Both subjects are in a
process of coming-into-being and require a continuous and
controlled exchange. For this reason doing things alone is much
easier and less troublesome than doing them as a group. To
operate within a group is painful in so far as you have to renounce
having the final word, your own identity is under continuous re-
assessment. The individual has to entrust a portion of their own
self-expression to others. If one individual attempts to control
everything, he stifle the collective and takes up a dominant role, he
will be a constant point of criticism, even in those case where
people end up agreeing with him.
It is essential to be exacting but there is a risk of becoming a 'guru',
and even a censorious critic. Therefore it is essential to keep the
group method in mind as a positive limit, which will also function as
a quantitative limit with respect to the time and the energy that can
be used sensibly in a collective activity. It will be even more difficult
to achieve harmony in a project when there are large differences in
the levels of personal investment in a project. Those who put in the
most effort into a project are subsequently unable to do more and
to compensate for the others' presumed or real failings. There are
two reasons, related yet opposed, for this state of affairs. The first
reason is external, the more you invest in a project the greater the
risk that you will overshadow over participants and thwart
autonomy within the collective. The second reason is internal; when
an individual member takes on a disproportionate amount of
responsibility, it becomes a source of frustration and they often
demand compensation. 'I am doing all the work here' and 'nothing
would happen without me' are the typical complaints of such an
individual. But the others are unwilling to recognize these
complaints, in order to not debase their own personal contribution
or the collective. Seen from an economic perspective, doing more is
not necessarily always a good a thing, cooperation demands the
continuous renegotiation of the limits and the rules governing a
collective.
Pure voluntarism is blind and often counter-productive. A sensible
and constructive imbalance that tends towards chaos and the
unexpected often requires us to step back in order to redistribute
our energies in favor of others. This is not a matter of altruism, but
simple tactic. Excessive imbalances should be avoided but on the
other hand, we must also avoid adapting to the rhythm of
participants who show the least enthusiasm and effort. Tempering
enthusiasm often amounts to imposing a conservative viewpoint, in
the sense of one that is already well established and not useful in
overcoming difficulties. Enthusiasm should be encouraged with
trust and trust must be balanced by a critical mindset, or in other
words, by reflexivity. Mutual efforts should be directed towards
developing a space of autonomy, and be fueled by pleasure rather a
sense of duty or obligation. Otherwise frustration and resentment
will gain the upper hand. The desire to dominate others is fed by
the desire of others to be dominated, and vice-versa. This is why the
balance needs to be dynamic and capable of drawing upon the
energies of individual members, avoiding the crystallization of
hegemonies and hierarchies. Stasis can only be overcome by
appealing to the 'residual chaos', the imbalance regulated by shared
procedures.
The compulsive tendency to return to the group must be restrained
in a positive way. A group sometime needs to wind down, either to
reconfigure itself or simply because it has spent all of its energy.
Refined theories, flawless experiments, conducted by a collective
without critical sense, are as beautiful as they are useless. Theories
devoid of any critical relevance are merely ornamental and certainly
not valuable tools. Perfectionism must be shunned when making
room for the autonomy of what is to come. Instead we must
embrace a contingent realism, defined by what technologies are
currently available. The word games must stop when the mood has
changed and the pleasure of playing and sharing have disappeared.
Facebook and similar social networks push us into disembodied
mass elitism, which is synonymous with global totalitarianism
organized in small, autarchic groups. Even though it is a complex
laborious task, we prefer to take a risk and dare to imagine a world
of convivial technologies. Everything is still possible; nothing is set in
stone. We are here, with our desires and our time available to satisfy
them. It is the right time to create something different. The moment
has come to log out of social media, to go out on the streets and to
start building different social networks.

1. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Cambridge: MIT

Press edition, 1994, p. 68. back
2. Iceland, due to its massive geothermal and hydro resources, has become a location
of choice for big IT players to build their data treatment centers. See:
http://www.itworld.com/article/2735848/data-center/what-s-behind-iceland-s-first-
major-data-center-.html. back
 3. See the report by the independent analyst firm Verdantix, 2 June 2011: Carbon
Strategy Benchmark: Internet Sector.
http://www.verdantix.com/index.cfm/papers/Products.Details/product_id/238/carbo
n-strategy-benchmark-it-services-sector. back
4. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Amir Amedi, Felipe Fregni and Lofti Merabet, ‘The Plastic
Human Brain Cortex’, Annual Review of Neurosciences, 28 (2005): 377-401,
http://brain.huji.ac.il/publications/Pascual-
Leone_Amedi_et%20al%20Ann%20Rev%20Neurosci%2005.pdf. back
5. See the overview in Nicolas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our
Brains, New York: WW Norton & Company, 2010. back
6. Marc G. Berman, John Jonides and Stephen Kaplan, ‘The Cognitive Benefits of
Interacting With Nature’, Psychological Science, December 2008: 1207-1212,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19121124. back
7. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Andrea McColl, Hanna Damasio and Antonio Damasio,
‘Neural Correlates of Admiration and Compassion’, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 106:19 (2009): 8021-8026. back
8. Robin Dunbar, ‘Coevolution of Neocortical Groupsize and Languages in Humans’,
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16 (1993): 681-735,
http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/papers/others/1993/dunbar1993a.pdf. back
9. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 'Balance Sheet-Program for Desiring Machines’,
Semiotexte, 2:3 (1977): 117-135. back
10. This what we have tried to achieve in this text, using a methodology that in roughly
following the sociological approach of Actor-Network theory. See Bruno Latour,
Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005. back
11. Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in
Contemporary Feminist Theory, 2nd Edition, New York: Columbia University Press,
2011. back
12. Writing is a form of communication which build spaces of asynchronous interaction.
Unlike speech, it does not require the simultaneous presence of the people being in
communication. On the other hand, writing requires the use of various technological
implements: a pen, a printing press, a computer, etc. Computer-mediated forms of
collaborative writing, wikis for instance, or chat, mailing lists, etc., is a writing practice
that can provide investigative methods to describe parts of reality in the making. In
addition to this writing is also able to bring spaces into being where certain issues
can acquire the degree of legitimacy needed in order to be asked. Convivial social
 spaces specifically built with this goal in mind, are places where individuals can meet
each other, argue, possibly understand and influence each other, create together -
and evolve in the process. See: Carlo Milani, Scritture conviviali, Tecnologie per
participare, 2008, http://www.ippolita.net/sites/default/files/Scritture_conviviali-
Carlo_Milani-2008.pdf. back
13. See Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen
Blamey, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998. back
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THANKS
We thank Monique Slodzian, Mathieu Valette and all the researchers
at INALCO. Miguel and Virus Editorial for our tour in Spain, where
this text got started, and all those who contributed from Barcelona,
Pamplona, Madrid, Seville, Zaragoza, Bilbao, Santander, Oviedo,
Xigon. Lidia. The Vogogna patio, La Scighera, Au Canut le 26,
Alekos.net, Alberto, Carla, CEDRATS (Lyon), Mimmo & Christian, and
the House of Baires for logistics support. LSH, Vivien, Pino, Maria,
Saretta, Casanostra, Martarossa, Catecara, Spaziogiorgio, Patrice
(+4D - now 5!), Spideralex, Fascema, Lorenzo, Korta. V.
+++++++++++++++++
You'll Never Walk Alone
Geert Lovink, Giovanna Cosenza, Vecna, Apuleius, Peter Sloterdijk,
Donna Haraway, Boris Vian, Luciano di Samosata, danah boyd,
James G. Ballard, Carl Off, Rosi Braidotti, Ivan Illich, William Gibson,
Biella Coleman, CAE, Andrea Salsedo, Christa Wolf, Moebius, Paul K.
Feyerabend, Marion Z. Bradly, Manuel Castells, Robert Nesta, Gilles
Deleuze, Ursula Le Guin, Italo Calvino, Cornelius Castoriadis, Assata
Shakur, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, François Laplantine, Maja Gimbutas,
Michel de Certeau, Freddie Mercury, Moacyr Scliar, Elias Canetti,
Maurice Ravel, Aphex Twin, Roberto Bolaño, Ilya Prigogine, Hannah
Arendt, Tomàs Ibañez, Michael Ende, Humberto R. Maturana, Darth
Vader.
Please address all your queries, comments and complaints to
[email protected]
Translated (Q&D) by Patrice Riemens. This translation project is
supported and facilitated by the Institute of Network Cultures,
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
(http://networkcultures.org/), the Antenna Foundation, Nijmegen
(http://www.antenna.nl) and Casa Nostra, Vogogna-Ossola, Italy.