<nettime> hackers + and - digest [dominguez x2]

["nettime's_mail_h4x0r!!!" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

From: "ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>
     Subject: Re: <nettime> Hackers: the political heroes of cyberspace - 
From: "ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>
     Subject: Re: <nettime> Hackers: the political heroes of cyberspace + 

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From: "ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Hackers: the political heroes of cyberspace - 
     reply by Paul Mobbs
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 13:25:00 -0500

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Mobbs" <mobbsey@gn.apc.org>
To: "ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 1:24 PM


>
> I actually couldn't give a damn for media or book deals (I find the first
> of these two tedious to deal with, and the last one completely unavailable
> to people like me, at least in the UK). I'm not an academic - I've been a
> community activist for nearly 20 years, but one who also happens to have
> been using computers as part of that work for around 15 years. And with
> regards to 'hacktivism starting in 1998', what I said was that it wasn't
> until 1996 to 1998 that there was a 'critical mass' of the public online to
> make a broad-based online protest a viable and truely effective
> proposition. People have been actually hacking code (albeit hardwired code)
> since the Colossus (one of those wonderful British inventions, later
> appropriated by the USA).
>
> I just want to have the open debate. I think people in the UK are now
> waking up to this in retrospect.
>
> Unless we have the open debate so the public can understand the issues
> involved in hacktivism then all hackers will be subjected to the same
> bullshit we have had in the UK over the past year. The only reason Jack
> Straw, the Home Secretary, was able to get the Terrorism and RIP
> legislation through Parliament was because nobody knew about the issues.
> Consequently they just believed the bullshit he peddled them about the
> risks to the public from people bent on 'disrupting electonic networks'.
> Now suddenly we can be classed as terrorists for planning online protest
> action.
>
> Unless the public understand hacking/hacktivism they're going to regard all
> hackers/hacktivists as a 'breed apart'. Consequently, hackers will always
> be fair game for knocking down in the media. It's then only a matter of
> time until politcians use the law to criminalise us. Attacking hacktivists
> with new laws is SO EASY. The majority of the public are not hackers. So a
> politician can talk up the "menace", and then make new repressive laws on
> the use of electronic.
>
> The towers many hackers sit in may be made of silicon and plastic rather
> than ivory, but they're just as remote to the general public. I have no
> problem with some people wanting to sit in remote towers and hack code,
> often because it produces things that the rest of us can use beneficially.
> But I think hacker culture is completely screwed up if it thinks it can
> live in a little reality construct of its own making.
>
> Unless you engage the general public about the use of electronic networks
> for protest, and the development of civil rights around the use if IT and
> networks, then there's a lot of vested interest out there who will give
> politicians all the excuses they need to criminalise us. I think you only
> have to look at how the new RIP and Terrorism laaws enacte din Britian in
> 2000 are now being proposed, using Britain as an example, in Australia,
> Japan, Korea and some European countries (even the Germans are talking
> about this now in their Justice ministry).
>
>
> <RANT>
> It's very easy to be radical in order to be a radical. Being radical for a
> purpose takes commitment, and a willingness to pay for your screw ups. I
> think a lot of people involved in hacktivism need to decide which of these
> chat rooms they're in.
> </RANT>
>
>
> Peace 'n' love
>
> P.

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From: "ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Hackers: the political heroes of cyberspace + 
     URL target for NeTstrike
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 13:44:39 -0500

----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrice Riemens" <patrice@xs4all.nl>
To: <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 6:25 AM
Subject: Re: <nettime> Hackers: the political heroes of cyberspace + URL
target for NeTstrike


> Quoting ricardo dominguez <rdom@thing.net>:
>
>  > > So all in all, we are faced with a new threat, much worse than
>  > > net.art, Hacktivism becoming the latest media item of affection and
>  > > people like THEM becoming known as leading protagonists in this
>  > > oh so very exciting field where technology, art and politics merge...
>  >
>  > Damn!! Now Hacktivism is dead.
>  >
>  > r
>  >
>  > p.s. i know...it always/already was...
>  > p.p.s. i know...it was only bad idea gone wrong
>  > p.p.p.s i know...it should never have been attempted
>  > p.p.p.p.s i know...never mix technology, art and politics
>  > p.p.p.p.p.s i know...i forgot something else that is very important...
>
>  Yes Ricardo, you did forget the most important thing: the personality cult
>  that you created around the icon Ricardo Dominguez (and accessorily Stefan
>  Wray), and how you made the whole concept of hacktivism, which,
>  unsurprisingly, you guys did *not* invent, and which, in itself, was a
>  good meme, into a media dud to be from the very moment you laid your hands
>  on it.
>

Hola patrice and Mister Diiiino!

I think, patrice and Mister Diiiino, that you give me "icon" Ricardo
Dominguez and "icon" Stefan Wray (let us not forget super "icons" Carmin
Karasic and Brett Stalbaum) far too much power. The power that I find
happening under the signs of hacktivism - is that of the Cult of the SWARM
-- and not that of any one single individual or group. The event horizon of
"hacktivism" is that it has become a generalized phenomenon whose
historical outcome is still ahead of us. It is still an empty term that can
grow in multiple directions - sans media or qua media.

The issue of our electronic actions connecting our data bodies with our
real bodies, which were then sutured into the "icon" EDT - is that we chose
to be transparent. This semantic gesture created syntactical disturbance
among those who wanted the Cult of Anonymous and Tech_efficiency to rein on
the networks. EDT felt that transparency would also allow us to speak to a
great many more individuals and groups than a code of secrecy would have
permitted. Transparency allowed a minor degree of control over the media
spin that was needed for the of symbolic efficacy to occur.  Lo-fi
hacktivism is also about side_loading as much information about the context
for the action as possible. I would say that a good 78% of the media
articles that have appeared world wide about EDT and FloodNet - always
mentioned the Zapatistas and the conditions in Chiapas, Mexico as the basic
reasons behind these actions. Those who have very little must use what
gestures they have to have their voices heard under thick wall of noise
which neo-liberalism is constructing. Lo-fi hacktivism as it has emerged
via EDT is indeed about injecting information into the media about an issue
that is important enough to call attention to it.

EDT is not against those who have the knowledge to build autonomous
infrastructures and create filters that cut down the noise, or those who
create via critique - we see them as part and parcel of the history of
hacktivism, as well as its future. We have never said that hackers should
desist from doing what moves them. But, we do not feel that "hacking" , as
defined by you both, to be the only proper form of hacktivism that should
be allowed to exist on the networks.

The hacktivist disturbance will continue.

ciao,
"icon" ricardo dominguez

p.s. dont forget about the NetStrike on March 15th, 2001
p.p.s. yes EDT did not invent "hacktivism" - Al Gore did!

<<<>>>
NETSTRIKE AGAINST TRADING
ON LINE

>From the 15th until the 17th of March, the tyrannies of globalisation will
partecipate to the third Global Forum about e-government in Naples.
At the same time thousands of peoples will fill the roads and the squares
of the city to protest against this international summit.
The sense and the goals of the counter-Global Forum are the same that
characterised the mobilizations of Seattle, Melbourne, Prague, Nice, Davos,
and that we will find another time in Genova.
In Naples, as well as in the other occasions, we want to contrast the
neoliberalist globalisation with the globalisation of the rights and of
the social movements.

But we also think that it's right and necessary to enter in the contents of
the Global Forum about e-government: for this reason we want to oppose the
actual function of thecnologies, used to grow speculations and social
control, with an antagonist use of the new technologies.
So we are organising a netstrike against the trading on-line for the first
day of the Global Forum, and our goal is to block, also if only partially,
the highways of globalisation, the main points of the global economy.
We want to block a part of the immense financial mass that weighs 24 hours
a day on the earth, billions of dollars that going from Tokyo to Wall
Street, cause the growth of the poverty of the poor peoples and the growth
of the Riches of the few powerful patrons.

The character of this initiative, that will be done in the virtual
dimension of cyberspace, but that will be strictly connected to the
concrete initaitives that we will organise in Naples during the Global
Forum, won't be only symbolic because it will cause the blocking of one
within the many bank services which offer trading on-line.
In that day, the many little Soros won't use internet to buy and sell, and
perhaps they will decide to go for a walk on the beach or in the park, or,
why not, to come to protest with us against the tirannies of globalisation.
To make of internet a means of struggle and not of exploitation, let's
partecipate to the net-strike.

Target http://tradequote.fineco.it/
Time 15.00-17.30
Date thursday 15th of March 2001
Info: www.noglobal.org
IRC : #hackit99


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