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Dear Media,
Do you really think Wikileaks is behind the DDoS attacks? Do you really think there is any kind of centralized organization behind the attacks, or even any organization at all? Some bored people got mad at the extra-legal attacks on Wikileaks, started talking big on IRC, and now it's happening. That's it! I'm sure it makes for more dramatic copy to imply that Assange has created some doomsday hacker army, but in what model of the world does that make any sense? No one is control, no one is giving orders. It's not even lunatics in charge of the asylum -- the lunatics have wandered off and built their own place that is half Barter Town, half Ewok treehouses, and half Logan's Run. And you hang out there most the time with the rest of us, because it's pretty awesome.
Ten years ago, your utter lack of understanding of the internet was understandable. Now, however, I cannot but help feel it is a studied, cynical pose. Yes, it was kind of cute when you pulled this crap over Napster. When you used to talk about Shawn Fanning as if he mattered. When you thought that destroying the corporate entity of Napster would have any effect at all on file sharing. You kept talking about Napster for years after it was even slightly relevant, and I thank you for the regular amusement this provided. But it's very nearly 2011 now and this is getting kind of twee, like in high school when I used to feign complete ignorance of any and all knowledge of how these mysterious sports-type activities worked. You live in this world with the rest of us, please stop pretending to be some unworldly visitor. It's all just bored people doing stuff for the hell of it and you know it.
Bored people with the ability to do things and talk about it with a supportive community are powerful. This has always been true, but the barrier to entry is now much, much, much lower. You only have to be a little bit bored and a little bit interested to join in. Sometimes bored people write new operating systems or encyclopedias. Sometimes they build fantastical cities in the desert. And sometimes they spitefully attack those who anger them. Basic animal needs like food and shelter used to be the driving force behind human interactions. Then higher level concerns of power both political and zero-sum, scarcity-based economic. We're moving into the age were boredom is a major motivator. We're not post-scarcity by any means, but increasing numbers of people lead lives that increasingly approximate it. Forget communism vs. capitalism, corporations vs. governments vs. NGOs, Guelphs vs. Ghibellines, whatever. The future is centralized vs. decentralized. It's going to be weird. Get used to it.
Yours in mutual perplexity,
Fish
Do you really think Wikileaks is behind the DDoS attacks? Do you really think there is any kind of centralized organization behind the attacks, or even any organization at all? Some bored people got mad at the extra-legal attacks on Wikileaks, started talking big on IRC, and now it's happening. That's it! I'm sure it makes for more dramatic copy to imply that Assange has created some doomsday hacker army, but in what model of the world does that make any sense? No one is control, no one is giving orders. It's not even lunatics in charge of the asylum -- the lunatics have wandered off and built their own place that is half Barter Town, half Ewok treehouses, and half Logan's Run. And you hang out there most the time with the rest of us, because it's pretty awesome.
Ten years ago, your utter lack of understanding of the internet was understandable. Now, however, I cannot but help feel it is a studied, cynical pose. Yes, it was kind of cute when you pulled this crap over Napster. When you used to talk about Shawn Fanning as if he mattered. When you thought that destroying the corporate entity of Napster would have any effect at all on file sharing. You kept talking about Napster for years after it was even slightly relevant, and I thank you for the regular amusement this provided. But it's very nearly 2011 now and this is getting kind of twee, like in high school when I used to feign complete ignorance of any and all knowledge of how these mysterious sports-type activities worked. You live in this world with the rest of us, please stop pretending to be some unworldly visitor. It's all just bored people doing stuff for the hell of it and you know it.
Bored people with the ability to do things and talk about it with a supportive community are powerful. This has always been true, but the barrier to entry is now much, much, much lower. You only have to be a little bit bored and a little bit interested to join in. Sometimes bored people write new operating systems or encyclopedias. Sometimes they build fantastical cities in the desert. And sometimes they spitefully attack those who anger them. Basic animal needs like food and shelter used to be the driving force behind human interactions. Then higher level concerns of power both political and zero-sum, scarcity-based economic. We're moving into the age were boredom is a major motivator. We're not post-scarcity by any means, but increasing numbers of people lead lives that increasingly approximate it. Forget communism vs. capitalism, corporations vs. governments vs. NGOs, Guelphs vs. Ghibellines, whatever. The future is centralized vs. decentralized. It's going to be weird. Get used to it.
Yours in mutual perplexity,
Fish
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And the military's doing even worse than the media in terms of Internet understanding, and they developed it. "Return all copies in your possession!" What exactly do they think they mean when they say that? And when they're actually clueful enough to remember that we're talking about digital documents, they add: "And delete any copies you retain," or something along those lines. Do they really advocate destroying evidence (of you, the wrongful possessor's crimes)? Do they mean that you have to erase it such that it could not be retrieved from your hard drive by forensic methods? What if you donate your computer to some school and someone finds these supposedly-still-classified documents in the Recycle Bin™ or something? Since they're so concerned about proper handling of classified material, I believe they would have to accept hard drives which have had this classified material mishandled on them for shredding.
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Normally I'd totally agree, but I think it is a little more than that in this case. I think there's some malice.
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HOW COULD THEY?
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Brilliant, this... :-)
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Remember that the media sources broadcasting the least accurate interpretations, loudest, are corporate structures -- they are not capable of disseminating a perspective that doesn't take a central and most likely profit-motivated organization for granted. Anything else is automatically suspect, no matter what its activities are. And that's before you package their conclusions into headline-length clips.
Clay Shirky posted this video (http://parkerspitzer.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/07/wikileaks-arrest-politically-motivated/) of himself, Naomi Wolf (!!) and some CNN
toadycommentator debating the legality of releasing the cables; the structure of the discussion is revealing.