A Spit in the Ocean
hellekin
hellekin at riseup.net
Sun Feb 12 17:56:16 PST 2012
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
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----- End forwarded message -----
--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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