View Source: Myopia Helps Dystopia

!dys·to·pi·a     P   Pronunciation Key  (ds-tp-)
n. An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror.

*!!! the inherent flaw in the military's need to exercise control over tech/info is myopic. it restricts the natural evolution of society(information gathering, transmission, developments) as a whole..

 *!Critical Art Ensemble: the ruling elite have assumed the role of a Nomadic Power thru the controlling of:
 *electronic information-cores(i.e. : electronic research, electronic money, and other forms of information power)

 *the use of Spectacle ([http://bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/1.htm#12)
=======

*!The archaic model of nomadic power, once a means to an unstable empire, has evolved into a sustainable means of domination. In a state of double signification, the contemporary society of nomads becomes both a diffuse power field without location, and a fixed sight machine appearing as spectacle.
In most cases, sedentary populations submit to the obscenity of spectacle, and contentedly pay the tribute demanded, in the form of labor, material, and profit.

*!!No longer needing to take a defensive posture is the nomads’ greatest strength.
As a result, there is a friendly pillage, seductively and ecstatically conducted against the passive population.
*Subjectively there is a feeling of oppression, and yet it is difficult to locate, let alone assume, an oppressor. In all likelihood, this group is not a class at all—that is, an aggregate of people with common political and economic interests—but a downloaded elite military consciousness.

*Nomadic power has created panic in the streets, with its mythologies of political subversion, economic deterioration, and biological infection, which in turn produce a fortress ideology, and hence a demand for bunkers.
*Not just the police, but criminals, addicts, and even the homeless are being used as disrupters of public space. The underclass’ actual appearance, in conjunction with media spectacle, has allowed the forces of order to construct the hysterical perception that the streets are unsafe, unwholesome, and useless. The promise of  safety and familiarity lures hordes of the unsuspecting into privatized public spaces such as malls. The price of this protectionism is the relinquishment of individual sovereignty. No one but the commodity has rights in the mall. The streets in particular and public spaces in general are in ruins.

!ENTER THE BUNKER
*Bunkers vary in appearance as much as they do in function. The nomadic bunker—the product of “the global village”—has both an electronic and an architectural form.
*The electronic form is witnessed as media; as such it attempts to colonize the private residence. Informative distraction flows in an unceasing stream of fictions produced by Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and CNN
* The architectural bunker is another site where hyperspeed and hyperinertia intersect.
**Malls filled with multi national chainstores, ~McDonalds is global.
**National monuments fall into this category as well.
**The Catholic Church realized during the Council of Trent (1545-63) that universal presence was a key to power in the age of colonization

!!this is an example of the struggle between the dominant tendency toward control vs the latent potential toward collectivity...

*Cybernetic systems represent transformations in our conceptions of self and reality, simulating and altering our relationship to our mind and environment.
*Both Delanda and CAE note that the develpoment of new ideas, and paradigms are inevitable in non-equilibrium circumstances. Where "struggle takes place, semiosis occurs."
*Cybernetic interaction achieves the simulation of social process itself
with intelligent apparatus ("the other", the chip, the  computer network), enabling the revolutionary to see culture and its norms as
!!artificial arrangements, susceptible to detached analysis and comparison with other possible dispositions



!!And what explosive potential can be located in the computer and its cybernetic systems for the elimination of drudgery and toil, for the promotion of collectivity and affinity, for interconnectedness, systemic networking and shared decision-making
(this, too must be defused and contained by the industries of information which localize, condense and consolidate this potential democratization of power into hierarchies of control.)
-------
Although Delanda notes that the military institution has already reprogrammed the will of it's human counterparts to give the responsibility of human destruction to smart robots,
 and Critical Art Ensemble is convinced that the elite ruling body has become nomadic in its domain
 !!the current dominant view in America exhibits a predefined, self-regulating world with no reality outside of its own boundaries,
*like CAE's zoo example;
**....simulation has altered our perception of reality, controlled the elements of aura-uniqueness/authenticity  of experience.  that change in context introducing a new system of meaning.
***Discuss:
****the concept of cyber sex. How does it alter the meaning of sexual encounter?
****the way American media shaped post 9/11 reality for its citizens.
!BEWARE! THE InterNET is THE NEXT TARGET!!...
* as more advertisers sponsor email servers, consumer reality seeps into the cracks of our once sacred personal space.


!!!NOMADIC POWER AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE

!It is now necessary to bring panic into the bunker.
 Disturb the illusion of security and leave no place to hide.
! The incitement of panic in all sites is the postmodern gamble.

As seen in the Delanda reading,  the military lost its ability to control the evolution of chip technology, due to the weight of its own bureaucratic system.
* In its need for the control of knowledge, it limits technology's  potential mutations...
"shooting itself in the foot"
!..this opens the arena for development in  civilian sectors at home and abroad..

the artist revolutionary can implement benjamin's "shock of the new" to emancipate the viewer form the acceptance of social relations and cultural forms as natural, obvious, and timeless.

*Our strength lies in the fact that today's dominant cybernetic model forgets to factor in self- sustainability into its equation. The dominant forces forget they  are part of a whole, outer system
*The unit of survival is the adaptive organism-in-relation-to-its-environment
institution of a more communal form of perception.

!! The electronic world is BY NO MEANS FULLY ESTABLISHED!
 it is time to take advantage of this fluidity through invention.
*Artists/Activists (as well as other concerned groups) have been left with the responsibility to help provide a critical discourse on just what is at stake in the development of this new frontier. By appropriating the legitimized authority of “artistic creation,”
!! using it as a
!!means to establish
!!a public forum for speculation on
!!a model of resistance within emerging techno-culture,

!!! the cultural producer can contribute to the perpetual fight against authoritarianism

                      ::putting the media back into the hands of the public::
                                          !!!GLOBAL NETWEAVING
                                           *[http://www.papertiger.org]
                                           *[http://www.indymedia.org]
                                           *[http://www.mutantfest.org]
                                           *[http://www.t0.or.at/spiral23/spiral.htm]
                                           *[http://rts.gn.apc.org/]


All text has been remixed from these sources:
*Nichols, Bill, “The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems” Electronic Culture; Technology and Visual Representation ed Timothy Druckrey, (NY, Aperture, 1996) ERES pp (121-143)
*Critical Art Ensemble, “Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance,” The Electronic Disturbance, (Brooklyn, NY, Autnomedia, 1994) PDF pp 11-30
*Manuel De Landa,"War in the Age of Intelligent Machines", ch 2.
View Source: Myopia Helps Dystopia

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