<nettime> NO SECRETS

[Tom Sherman <twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu>]

NO SECRETS

In the mature information economy, information will be exchanged,
information-for-information, and those without information to trade will
be dirt poor.  As it is now, most people only have a tiny little bit of
personal information (raw personal material, RPM).  It makes you wonder
what will happen when they lose all their privacy.

People will get food stamps for telling others their deepest
secrets--things like how they have been having sex with their parents or
pets or their disconnected princess telephones.

Exchanges of information are economic transactions, plain and simple.  
The obsession with translating information into money, into financial
currencies or commercial properties, is only meaningful in this period of
transition, and is overrated.

A transaction is a transaction...in a mature information economy,
information is exchanged (directly) without being tethered to money.

Those without information will be poor, as is already the case, and those
who lose their privacy will be the poorest.  What will happen when people
have no information and no privacy?

In the information economy people are harvested like trees or minerals or
fish in the sea.

Right now people are being harvested like trees, but soon they will be
cultivated, planted and harvested like an agricultural product.  Then in
turn they'll be manufactured, enslaved to provide a service, and then
finally turned into outlets for the accumulation and release of something
called knowledge.

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ACCEPTABLE LEVELS OF RAW PERSONAL MATERIAL

Even though we live in a junk-food culture, where life is squeezed out of
the product before it reaches the consumer, it is also a fact that
significant levels of raw personal content will permeate the market as the
tools and means of production and distribution continue to be
decentralized and become totally ubiquitous.  Information providers work
at home.  The information factories are miniaturized--desktops and
laptops.  Such a vastly decentralized production and distribution system
cannot be regulated easily.  Raw personal material (RPM) is fast and
vibrant and abundant.  Raw personal material will continue to seep into
the streams and torrents of junk culture.

What's surprising to me is how intolerant most people are when it comes to
accepting raw personal material in their cultures.  Even though computers
have completely eliminated the differences between ordinary telephone
lines and broadcast channels, people still want to draw the line as they
don't seem to want real, ordinary humans in their entertainment and art.  
They treat raw personal material like unwanted insects in a perfect
nature.  Most people are disgusted or horrified by flies, mosquitoes and
ticks in the garden.

Closer to home, it's like finding insect parts in a jar of peanut butter.  
Government regulatory bodies determine the acceptable or tolerable levels
of insect parts in peanut butter.  Basically the insect parts have to be
imperceptibly small.  It is impossible to produce a jar of peanut butter
without including a certain amount of raw insect protein, parts of legs,
wings, bodies, etc., but if they are ground up real fine, a small
percentage of raw insect material in peanut butter is acceptable.  It has
to be.

It's like this in culture too.  It's impossible to produce culture,
entertainment or art, that doesn't have a little bit of raw personal
material in it.  People will tolerate quite a bit of RPM in their
cultures, so long as they don't have to pay attention to real, ordinary
people in their entertainment or art.  Entertainment and art formalize and
fictionalize and dress up RPM.  People still like the IDEA of a culture
springing forth from the people themselves.  Before cultures were
dehumanized and totally artificial, cultural trends used to emerge from
the people.  Today raw personal material is usually categorized as
interference or noise.  Talk shows and mailing lists feature raw personal
material groomed or organized for consumption.  With the blurring of
telephone lines and broadcast channels, governments seem content to let
markets set the limits.  I guess junk culture markets dictate acceptable
levels of raw personal material, whereas regulatory bodies set the limits
in other, more stable sectors.



Tom Sherman


-----

http://www.allquiet.org/



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