On Fri, 29 Sep 1995, Duncan Frissell wrote:
[Note: Whenever I do one of my longer pieces, it seems to drop into the void. Perhaps they are so well written and complete that no one can think of any comment to make on them. Perhaps not. Read this one and comment. You won't regret it.]
In honor of the Second Annual Conference on Information Warfare a few weekends ago, here is my proposal towards a paper to be presented at next year's conference.
A couple of things jump to mind: Though I know you only used War as a metaphor, even that rubs me the wrong way. I don't like wars or people who fight them--namely States, bullies (BIG bullies), and other Territorial Gangsters. It's an authoritarian, hierarchical model, even though I realize you're using it loosely. Your piece is very short on details, but the few you give all employ the War metaphor: "neighborhood defense," sensors, video cameras, etc. I have no problem with some of these things per se, especially if they're targeted against the State, but I also have no interest in living in a kind of permanent war zone. This strikes me as a negative approach versus the more positive approach of, say, mutual assistance groups like the "tong." (Hakim Bey wrote an excellent essay on tongs and their applicability to modern anarchist groups, btw. If anyone's interested, send me an email message with subject "TONG PLEASE" and it'll be sent to you automatically.) Anyone attracted by the idea of urban warfare should read Mike Davis's excellent "City of Quartz." He's talking about the modern city (specifically, L.A.) as a war zone pitting _haves against have-nots,_ but the idea is the same, and it's scary as hell. I'm ambivalent, to say the least, about the mania for getting everything in the world WIRED, but if you want to convince me you'll have to come up with a model that offers me something _constructive._ Cheers. --Dave. -- Dave Mandl dmandl@panix.com http://wfmu.org/~davem