A Spit in the Ocean I'm going to reach 1000 followers soon. To all of you, I want to say thank you for the conversations we've had and the attention you gave to me. But I'm going to close my Google+ account, as well as my GMail account, because I don't like the idea of having a corporation, however well intended it could be, have me as a Guinea pig for their social mass-surveillance. I'm referring to the upcoming privacy policy of Google. I know that I'm alienating myself by doing so, by refusing what seems like an evidence nowadays. I have no Facebook account, no car, no phone, no TV set, not even a bank account. Now, I'm gonna have no Google. G+ is a great product. But it's not worth the trade-off. I am the enemy, the marginal, the terrorist, the fool. I'm a spit in the ocean. Hopefully others will follow and realize that "the profit motive" is not the right way to look at life on Earth. I wish there were more people willing to stand by their heartbeats, follow the intuition of the blood pounding hard from within. I find it shameful that we know how to send people in deep space and are unable to deal with poverty, with war, with corruption, with the other. Who really wants to measure the success of their life to the size of their TV set or the ability to travel to foreign countries where people live a year with your monthly spending in chewing-gum? In the few thousands of years of civilization, human morality barely evolved. Humans should be the most beautiful living things on this planet, because of their ability to become: but we're the most hideous, for our infinite capacity to look away, cherish our own stupidity as the best manifestation of genius, and refuse to embrace powerful visions that cannot bear a listing price. By participating in this mass-surveillance system, be it Facebook or Google+, we leave the space for evil people to get the grip and break the most beautiful things apart, we allow them to exist and thrive. By not participating, we take the risk that only people like us don't participate, and that society evolves to make us the next Roms, the next Jews, the next generation of non-conforming humans that need to be eliminated. I will continue working on alternate communication systems that take privacy as a design requirement, not something obsolete. I will continue to use the Internet for end-to-end purpose, with people I cherish. But I won't participate anymore in so-called social media that don't proceed from actual communities nor nourish them. Facebook and Google+ nourish like baby milk: with poison inside. Stop smoking before cancer strikes. ----- End forwarded message ----- I'll add some things You make an interesting association between the current state of "social networking" (and more in general, the use of the "social" word) and the general expectation of profit. As Internet is sanitized, the places where "sociality" can happen, have indeed a ghastly presence of profit-minded reasoning, something still between the lines, but for how long this will be implicit? Let me suggest, as it might just help to avoid confusion once and for all, we stop using the "social" word in association with the Internet. Today we could just consider the Internet as a market place, where even what we have formerly considered as net-art is now the craft of ready-made souvenirs. Yes. we knew this moment would come my friend. If you have a look in what I2P or the ".onion" network of Tor are nowadays, you'll find a way to shrug off these delusionary feelings and enjoy a taste of the Internet as it really looked back 15 years ago. They are beautiful places :) And even just analyzing the language used, there could be so much to say about it. What strikes me the most about them is how anonymity can make intimacy possible. Does this sounds like a paradox? in fact, it is not. Anonymity is a form courtesy, a (forgotten?) tradition in hospitality, a condition to make an environment truly public. Today we have lost the good manners. There is no netiquette on the Internet, no voluntary courtesy, just policy. Ultimately now I really understand why you are leaving Hellekin, because you do love the good manners. ciao -- jaromil, dyne.org developer, http://jaromil.dyne.org GPG: B2D9 9376 BFB2 60B7 601F 5B62 F6D3 FBD9 C2B6 8E39 # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE