<nettime> Facebook's Mood Study: Orwellian newspeak 2.0

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift at gmail.com> -----

Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 12:26:20 -0500
From: Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift at gmail.com>
To: nettime-l at kein.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> Facebook's Mood Study: Orwellian newspeak 2.0

On 07/09/2014 12:53 AM, nettime's avid reader wrote:

> It turns out that one of the researchers who ran Facebook's recent
> psychological experiments received funding from the U.S. Department of
> Defense to study the contagion of ideas

So why should the crossover of one researcher be so suspicious? Are we
being told that DOD's Minerva project itself contagious? Isn't this
just more aimless paranoia from the crazies?

Check out David Price, the author of Weaponizing Anthropology:

"When you looked at the individual bits of many of these projects they
sort of looked like normal social science, textual analysis,
historical research, and so on, but when you added these bits up they
all shared themes of legibility with all the distortions of
over-simplification. Minerva is farming out the piece-work of empire
in ways that can allow individuals to disassociate their individual
contributions from the larger project."

That's it, right down to the banality and the over-simplification. The
crucial technique used by DoD to exploit civilian research is the
concept of "dual use" - the professors see the civilian, peace-time
use (a salve for their conscience) and the military planners see the
research as small pieces in a larger effort that they coordinate. The
best book I know about this is Mind Wars, by the bioethicist Jonathan
Moreno (with that unforgettable first chapter, Darpa on Your Mind).
But in the meantime, definitely read the two Guardian articles by
Nafeez Ahmed that describe the Minerva project and its backgrounds:

http://tinyurl.com/pentagon-mass-civil-breakdown

http://tinyurl.com/climate-change-energy-shocks

Ahmed's key conclusion is this: "NSA mass surveillance is partially
motivated to prepare for the destabilising impact of coming
environmental, energy and economic shocks." They want your info so
they can model, influence and shape your behavior. Big data = social
control.

There's no use sticking our heads in the sand. The military is right
that massive disorder lies on the horizon, because it started three
years ago (with Fukushima, Tahrir, Occupy and right now, Isis). The
question is, how do we guide ourselves through the breakdown of the
neoliberal order toward a more viable way of life? Whoever thinks
there will be a spontaneous "return to normal" is ripe for the
manipulations of militarized social science, delivered via the giant
corporations.

That nexus (big science-corporations-military) is as old as WWII, and
its tradition is unbroken, despite the scandals of the 60s and 70s.
The covert force of miitarized social science will act, it _is_ acting
on society right now. We need to massively recognize that our whole
oil-based civilization is currently on a disaster course, and that
course is having immediate consequences. We need to find the ways to
make this into a fully public preoccupation, so that the efforts to
steer the ensuing chaos are not guided by the single aim of preserving
the plutocratic status quo and the capitalist exploitation of society.
Efforts to maintain the status quo inevitably worsen the problems we
are facing. And one-off protests, occupations and revolts, valuable as
they may be, will not change the dynamics of an entire social order.

Civil society has tremendous resources to deal with the problems of
the present. On the basis of transformative processes that have
already begun, over the next thirty years we could leave the petroleum
economy behind for alternative energies, transform the food system
into healthy fare for all, end massive inequality and the hatred,
oppression and terrorism that comes in its wake, and find a new ethos,
a new culture, a new art of living. But none of that can be done if
you think your own life won't change. What's missing is the public
recognition that the current form of society can't last. It will end
in authoritarianism and bloodshed, or it will end in far better ways,
with people you can love and air you can breathe. What we have in our
lives is not some unbearable nightmare, but the chance to be part of
the transition.

so let's go further, Brian


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