[hackerspaces] Fwd: Hackers can’t solve Surveillance

[hellekin]

On 02/13/2015 01:38 PM, Vesna Manojlovic wrote:
> .. and this is my reply:
> https://lists.puscii.nl/wws/arc/uncivilization/2015-01/msg00007.html
> 
> Vesna
> 
*** Here it is, quoted in full for your convenience ;o)


    From: Vesna Manojlovic <be.c.ha.xs4all.nl>
    To: un.c..ivilization.lists.pus.c.ii.nl
    Subject: [unciv] Reply to "hackers can’t solve surveillance"
    Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2015 22:56:22 +0100 (CET)


Dmitry Kleiner wrote that hackers *alone* can not solve surveillance:
http://www.dmytri.info/hackers-cant-solve-surveillance/

I would go further, and say that hackers *alone* can not solve
other IT-industry problems either:
- inequality / digital divide
- extraction of natural resources used to build the gadgets
- pollution caused by waste of discarded gadgets
- enormous energy consumption used to run IT infrastructure
- constantly pursuing unlimited growth

In order to solve any of those, I agree with the end of that text:

"we need more hackers and hackerspaces to embrace the broader
political challenges of building a more equal society."

Recently there were quite a few writings that, for me, resonate with
the same message:

"we are in this together — let’s join forces and combine our strengths"

For example: beyond whistleblowers, beyond sysadmins, beyond programmers
- beyond hackers:
http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2014/12/24/beyond-whistleblowing/

"sysadmins cannot create a solution by themselves. "

"The rapidly increasing numbers of the marginalized, unemployed, and
oppressed must figure at the center of any strategy for change alongside
defectors from the programming caste.

If programmers conceptualize their interests as distinct from the rest
of humanity, and organize to defend those interests rather than to
participate in a struggle much greater than themselves, they will be
doomed, along with the rest of the species.

Programmers should not organize themselves as a class — they should
switch sides in the class war."

Or, as the guy from Tarnac9 at #31c3 points out:

"The time has come for taking sides."

http://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/Fahrplan/events/6459.html

Already at #30c3 Elenore Saita & Quinn Norton said

"The world is on fire, and there is nowhere to hide and no way to stay
neutral."
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2013/Fahrplan/events/5491.html

To some external observers, it looks like most of the "IT industry" has
taken a _wrong_ side:

* Heather Marsh calls the whole IT industry a dictatorship & a ponzy scheme:
https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/world-war-iii-stateless-ponzi-schemes-of-power/

(excerpts at
https://lists.puscii.nl/wws/arc/uncivilization/2014-12/msg00009.html )

* From the (USA) socialist point of view:
http://monthlyreview.org/2014/07/01/surveillance-capitalism/ &
http://monthlyreview.org/2011/03/01/the-internets-unholy-marriage-to-capitalism/

* The "ICT for development dark side" & failure models:
http://lanyrd.com/2014/odc14/sddyrz/
&
http://unwin.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/prolegomena-on-human-rights-and-responsibilities/


Fellow hackers keep pointing to the ethical considerations:

>From the front lines: by Eleanor Saitta (Dymaxion) at OHM2013:
https://noisysquare.com/ethics-and-power-in-the-long-war-eleanor-saitta-dymaxion/

Walter van Holst about ethics in hacker communities:
https://medium.com/@whvholst/infocalypse-now-p0wning-is-not-enough-e310cd0e4b40

However, some hackers still don’t want to be "aligned" with one or the
other political side. As if that would be possible! What it boils down
to: technical *is* political, technical *is* ethical -- no technology is
"neutral", not morally neutral, not politically neutral. We all are
taking sides every day, with every decision we make. We might not like
it when other point this out to us, and we might not agree, and we might
say that it was not a conscious choice -- but it is a choice
nevertheless, and it has consequences - for ourselves, for out
community/society, and for the planet.

Again, quoting form the text that accompanied the talk about Cybernetics
at #31c3:

http://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/Fahrplan/events/6459.html

"Being free and having ties was one and the same thing. I am free
because I have ties, because I am linked to a reality greater than me.

Which goes to show how ridiculous and what a scam the individual freedom
of "I do what I feel like doing" is.

If they truly want to fight the government, the hackers have to give up
this fetish. The cause of individual freedom is what prevents them from
forming strong groups capable of laying down a real strategy, beyond a
series of attacks; it’s also what explains their inability to form ties
beyond themselves, their incapacity for becoming a historical force."

If we as hackers don't want to be a historical force, fine. Other
historical forces will determine our future. If we want to take part in
determining our own future, we will be aligned with - or used by - one
of the sides in the "class war".


Going even further, beyond techno-fix and techno-utopism (while not
falling into technophobia) : how can hackers ethics contribute to for
the world after planetary collapse:
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/12/hackers-ethic-for-the-world-after-collapse/

"For all of us to learn from each other, we need more contact between
thinkers and doers; between philosophers and geeks. New collaborations
between programers, artists and farmers, anarchists and politicians,
atheists and yogis, activists and scientists and, yes, hackers and poets."

Because, however equal society we manage to build using political
struggle, Natural world with its laws and limitations is going to have a
last word:

https://wiki.techinc.nl/index.php/File:Nature-speaking-on-future_of_the_internet-RIPE69.pdf

Vesna

--
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to
understand the
exponential function."
http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy_transcript_english.html

-- 
 _ _     We are free to share code and we code to share freedom
(_X_)yne Foundation, Free Culture Foundry * https://www.dyne.org/donate/