As an atheist, this kind of position really irks me, as I tend to lean more Nietzschian in how I feel about humanity’s place in the universe. It irks me even more because I would assume Dawkins would feel the same way, considering his position as an evolutionary biologist.

My position is that humans are animals. We are stupid, irrational, short-sighted, and destructive, no matter if we have religion or lack of religion.

It seems to me that this oil leak in the Gulf should be proof of this.

The oil leak in the gulf was not caused by religion. It was not caused by dogma. It was not caused by belief. It was not caused by prayer.

The leak was caused purely and entirely by corporate negligence that supported short term profit over ecological safety. BP, Transocean, et al, were all very aware of the catastrophic effects such a disaster would bring. Even in their leaked briefings on how to deal with such a crisis, one of the main points BP noted in their public relations structure was to never make any sort of promise or allusion to the idea that the ecosystem would ever be the same and/or return to its natural state.

British Petroleum is an oil company, and in dealing with searching for, finding, and extracting this product, they have invested millions (if not billions) of dollars in scientific and engineering funding. They have massive teams of geologists and engineers who (in my humble opinion) are probably not dogmatically tied to religion and think “nature will just sort itself out” or “god will take care of it.” No, it seems readily apparent that they were and are fully aware of the ecological impact of their cost-cutting, profit-booming measures. They were a group singularly dedicated to the science of the issue, as well as the business of the issue.

Of course, companies like these can be blamed for pushing an anti-scientific agenda such as the groups claiming that global warming is a myth, or that pollution in general isn’t as bad as environmental groups make it out to be, usually using the guise of religion and belief to draw larger groups of people into these groups, allowing them to continue to make ecologically risky decisions.

In that case, which is worse? Religion that allows one to believe that global warming can’t be real because the earth is only 6,000 years old or a corporation that knows full well the scientific truth of the matter but obfuscates it purely for the motive of profit.

You know, I can imagine a world without religion, and sadly, it still involves the BP/Transocean oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico that began in April 2010. Humans, no matter their creed, are fucking insipid, bullheaded, and parasitic creatures. Science did more to create the worst ecological disaster in human history than religion did. Science in collusion with big business.

So the next time one of you fucking Dawkinite yahoos wants to tell me that I should be scolding anyone I know for being religious, you can go jump in the gulf, take a swim, dunk your head under, take a deep breath, and then tell me it is all religions fault.

In contrast to this, we have the American public’s response to this disaster, which seems to focus almost entirely on one company, and in many cases, one man, the lost, lonely, and nearly utterly destroyed Tony Hayward, the wayward CEO of British Petroleum.

Of course, the massive angry response is not unreasonable. We want answers for this disaster, and we want someone to hold accountable for destroying the future viability of a safe ecosystem in the American Gulf. In our eyes, someone must answer to this situation, and who better than a CEO of the company who was drilling in the Gulf to begin with? Especially if he is obviously unable to handle this situation with grace and professional veneer, it makes him an even easier target. Every misstep he makes, even things that may not truly be missteps, the public is biting at his heels, perfectly content to psychologically hang him from the gallows.

Recently, he made the error of making the statement “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. You know, I’d like my life back,” to which there was a public uproar. How could someone who is barely affected by this disaster be demanding his life back when he is responsible for destroying the livelihood of thousands?

It is curious to me that we would lash out so violently and angrily over such a statement, mainly because it is truly a very human statement. We are all inherently selfish and self-serving, so who wouldn’t want their life to return to normalcy when suddenly saddled with such a disaster under their control?

Of course, “control” is actually core issue at hand here. How much “control” does a man like Hayward really have?

In this instance, I would turn to Milton Friedman’s stipulations on the four ways money is spent in a capitalist society.

The first and most common way in the private sector is people spending their own money on themselves. In this case, the buyer is interested in both quality (the best product or service that he can afford) and value (getting it at the best price) because he is both the producer of the wealth being spent and the consumer of the good or service being procured.

The second way is when people spend their own money on others (such as gifts). Here they are still concerned about value (it’s their money), but less concerned about service quality as they are not the consumer.

The third way is spending other people’s money on yourself. Think of the rich man’s girlfriend who buys herself the nicest dresses in the store on his credit card without even looking at the tag. She wants quality, but value is irrelevant since she sacrifices nothing.

The fourth way is when people spend other people’s money on other people. In this case, the buyer has no rational interest in either value or quality. Government always and necessarily spends money in this fourth way. This guarantees inefficient public spending because the spenders have no vested interest in efficiently allocating those funds.

I believe this fourth way of spending money is directly relative to the way capital is spent within large corporations. In most cases in a large corporation, you are spending other peoples money on a project that doesn’t directly affect you. Many of the people employed by British Petroleum live nowhere near the area directly affected by this disaster. In fact, the likelihood that many of the people that work for BP are actually sub-contracted out by different companies is very high. Considering the oil rig in question was actually owned by Transocean, and the company that was cementing and sealing the wellhead right before the explosion was Halliburton, it raises the question of how much corporate bureaucracy produces inefficient capitalist spending because of a lack of vested interest in the individuals making the decisions.

Let us consider, ignoring companies outside of BP, the fact that BP alone employs 115,000 people. That is no small change. These people are daily working together all across the world, making arbitrary decisions with the sole intent of making the most profit for the company. It is unrealistic to assume Tony Hayward has direct and authoritative control over every single decision that is made by the company at large. In fact, it stands to reason that many of the decisions are largely ill-considered responses to how other departments of the business conduct their business, and how it affects other departments, thus creating a sort of endless-feedback-loop of bad decisions based on previous bad decisions, with no progress being made because no one department is fully willing to cow-tow to another department and change the way they run their personal business. This kind of situation alone is a prime environment to create accidents, mis-communications, and in general negative corporate behavior. Combine that with a deeply ingrained corporate bureaucracy in all of the companies involved in this disaster, and how they all do business in their own way, and their employees are likely to come in conflict with one another on many occasions when trying to work around these differences, and you have to be surprised that this kind of disaster isn’t more common.

Now, none of this is to say that blame shouldn’t be laid, and that we don’t need complete accountability for this disaster, but we have to consider the words of Castro. What we are presented with is the question of, is there even any way to viably censure the corporations involved? I have noticed many people have jumped on a bandwagon of the idea of the American Federal Government taking over BP operations (much like they did with some banks recently during the American fiscal crisis of late 2008). This, of course, is a ridiculous idea in reality when you consider the simple fact that BP is a British company, and is completely run out of the UK (of course, you would think the name “British Petroleum” might clue some Americans into this whole concept, but nobody said the public was exactly brilliant.).

How does one censure international capitalism? Isn’t the core issue here that Castro is indeed correct, that this is not simply a problem with an individual company named British Petroleum, but it is quite indicative how modern global capitalism functions, and that these corporations that do indeed dictate the public’s future are simply unaccountable due to their size, reach, and our near complete dependency on them.

Some would suggest a boycott, but how does that work in global capitalism? Massive industry isn’t just supported by the consumer, it is also supported by the global capitalist network of massive industries relying on each other. Even if every American consumer stopped buying BP products, corporate America likely would continue to buy their products, and as they have much more capital than the consumer/citizen, they have much more sway in keeping BP afloat than any smattering of people who think they can simply boycott their way out of a situation anymore.

Beyond this, but considering the serious employment crisis all over the world, there are people who will be more than desperate enough to continue working for companies like BP. If you need a job to feed your family and stay afloat and not become homeless and desperate, you will make a choice to work in a morally dubious position to accomplish what you need to do to take care of family. It is no different than stealing to survive, a morally bankrupt choice in a position of complete desperation.

So, where do we stand? Is there any way to react to and censure corporations like BP, who are not just destroying the environment and countless livelihoods that depend on it right now, but also the livelihoods of future generations who will not be able to rely on our planets natural ecosystem for survival as it will be nearly completely destroyed?

The solution certainly isn’t to blame it all on Tony Hayward. The solution certainly isn’t to assume that it is only a problem with one corporation, and that things will get better if BP disappears. The beginning of a solution is to accept that the problem is with global capitalism itself, and that unless there is a massive sea change, we can expect our future to be drenched in oil and marred with chemical burn.

‘Affect’ is generally defined as ‘emotion’, and philosophically defined as ‘the ability to affect and be affected’. One has ‘affection’ for someone or something. Two of the most powerful modes of affect are love and rage, polarized, yet intertwined. One can ‘kill in a heat of passion’, a phrase that implies both love and rage as the motivator of action.

Technology is considered to be an extension of our bodies, by both philosophers of technology and neuroscientists. When we use a simple tool, our brains begin to treat it as a new part of our body. Technology can be said to be ‘prosthetic’. However, one should avoid a rationalist bias and not see technology as merely an extension of our rationality. Technology is just as much an extension of our animal passions – affect – love and rage.

Understanding the relationship between our animal selves and technology becomes more difficult when we begin to discuss more complex tools such as communication technology. Marshall McLuhan referred to such technologies as extensions of our nervous system. A global network as an extension of a collective nervous system is a complex animal indeed.

There are many examples one could choose to explore such concepts: long-distance relationships, warfare, economic transactions, etc. I have chosen American football.

A game of professional football has evolved into an incredibly complex technological situation. Communication technologies and human passions form a system in which affect is constantly being modulated, not just for the players on the field, but the fans.

When watching the New Orleans’ Saints games this season, one can observe that the team and fans seem to be coming from a place of love, forming an affective feedback loop of positive feelings. However, football requires the modulation of rage, and games are not without their outbursts in which rage can no longer be contained by the technological system. Nevertheless, the prevailing affect appears to be one of solidarity. 

Crowd noise has played a crucial role in the Saints’ wins inside of the Superdome. During the defense portions of the game, the crowd took advantage of the reflective walls of an indoor stadium by making enough noise to interfere with the visiting team’s communication technology. To no avail, Brett Favre used earplugs to improve his team’s communication technology. A technological response to a disadvantage is not uncommon, but in this particular case, noise won out. The crowd and the team form a feedback loop of larger than life communication, much like the Zerg race in Starcraft who benefit from their numbers and ability to swarm.

The philosopher Michel Serres plays off of the meanings of the French word for ‘parasite’ in his book The Parasite. The word simultaneously means parasite, host, and noise. For him, “the parasite invents cybernetics”. Noise is always a message in a communication system. Noise, like communication technologies, may play off of the rage our primitive brains, but it can also be an expression of love and solidarity.

The power of crowds was evidenced at the end of the last game, when cell phone networks were jammed by their immediate use by masses of people just after the climactic end of the game. But, that is all I can say about it for now. I think I’ve got something in my eye.

During the G20 protests, we saw the first use against civilians of the LRAD sound weapons.

Apparently this is “change we can believe in.”

Now, politics aside, I am slightly frustrated at the outrage over this issue, not because I think using weaponized sound is a good thing, but more because I see multiple ways in which to disrupt/defuse such tactics.

Compared to getting shot with rubber bullets, responding to sonic cannons seems like child’s play.

To begin with, a simple way to deal with the use of sonic cannons without making a physical response would be to buy earplugs and cover your ears with tight fitting, sound dampening headphones, further drowning out the sound to an at least bearable volume. Also, learn to communicate using sign language, which allows you and fellow protesters to be essentially “deaf” throughout the process but still able to communicate freely.

However, if you really want to get things cooking, show up in a truck with your own sound system. Get someone who is equipped with earplugs and headphones wired with a wireless mic and get them close enough to the sonic cannon to be able to get a good sample of the sound emanating from it. Have the wireless mic wired into a laptop, and have your laptop invert the soundwave, and play it back at the loudest volume possible, directly back at the sonic cannon. As the sonic cannon seems to be a repeating sound, like a car alarm, you don’t even need a very long sample, nor a long time to invert the sample. As long as you can sync the inverted sound with the origin sound, the inverted sound wave will cancel out the origin soundwave, defusing the sonic cannon entirely.

The question in that situation is, though, are they able to cite you for breaking noise ordinances? Perhaps they could, but it is likely you would be able to fight such a charge in court since they, in turn, were breaking noise ordinances themselves.

Remember kids, a hack-a-day keeps the fascist technology at bay.

So, we are introduced to the Anti-sec Movement. The question I immediately ask myself upon reading this is: are they considering the over-arching implications of destroying Full Disclosure? Are they merely hackers who are upset at script kiddies, who encroach upon their own elite hierarchy? Do they have motives other than simply destroying the current Security-Information Complex?

To begin with, the fear-mongering of the Security-Information Complex seems like a moot point to the current generation. While they use fear to induce the older generation to buy unnecessary anti-virus programs, firewalls, etc., most of the current generation knows that if they need such protection, they can achieve similar ends with either Open Source, or they can simply turn to hacking groups who have invariably produced “cracked” versions of popular anti-virus programs/firewalls/etc., effectively making them free. So, the fear ingrained in those who do not understand the technology is summarily not ingrained in the current generation, who scoff at the fear tactics of the Security-Information Complex.

Secondly, the fear-mongering used by the Security-Information Complex is not only used to sell products to unassuming consumers, even more often it is used to sell scare-tactics to government agencies, often producing reports for governments with scary stories such as a “digital Hurricane Katrina.” Using such damning language to describe such situations to a group which barely understands the technology, they are able to make massive affect in how current governance’s are responding to the internet and information technology and management. So, the consumer is not the only group affected by this situation by far.

As for their proposal that Full Disclosure needs to be eliminated to create a truly secure “white hat” Security-Information Complex, disallowing the festering masses access to such dangerous material. Do they really consider this material dangerous, or are they simply sick of script kiddies stealing their thunder by using their exploits? Do they want to stem the dissemination of information truly to stop corporate exploitation of security fears or is it more tied to a desire to regain the elite status of early hacking communities? One cannot say for sure with the scarce amount of information we are presented with, but it seems that either way they have not considered the far-reaching effects of closing off this dissemination of information.

Returning for a moment to Anonymous and their effective tactics, we have to realize that Anonymous is not a group of elite hackers. In fact, they represent what Anti-sec wants to destroy, a movement of script-kiddies who find exploits readily available via Full Disclosure and use it for their nefarious activities of producing “epic lulz.”

I personally see this as an attack on our generation’s last bastion of hope for revolutionary change in 21st century governance. In the way that Marxism often expected too much of its citizens, requiring them to not only be skilled workers, but to also be skilled philosophers and governors in their own right, needing to be intimately involved in their own government at every level as well as being intimately involved in the production of usable resources/commodities; the Anti-sec movement would have us all need to not only be thoughtful, philosophical activists, but we would also all need to be intensely skilled hackers in our own right, making our own hacktivism coalitions just to be able to find our own set of exploits to be able to spread a message.

Without Full Disclosure, we would lose a huge lifeline to our generation in terms of being able to become activist “script-kiddies.” Just as Lenin learned that the masses cannot be expected to all be so adept at evolving their knowledge to create a functioning Marxist society, we must be ready to accept that without this information being freely available, we will not be able to expect our generation to become hacktivists and activate change through the exploitation of information security.

0.5 – The Fall of Empires, the Fall of Nations (the Rise of Digital Socialism?)

I fear the success of Anti-sec and how it could change the landscape of revolutionary political activity on the internet.

Just like how the printing press broke down barriers of dissemination of information lead to revolutions and the fall of the Empire and saw the rise of Democracy, the internet stands to have the ability to topple the notion of Nation and bring us into a new epoch of thought and government. We may not have another chance like this for our generation.

Will the internet follow its predecessor or will the battle for information control be quickly won by control instead of resistance?

We only have one solution if we truly want to “Recreate ‘68.” We must embrace the revolutionary spirit and philosophical background of the French worker/student movements in 1968 and use our skills to enable the true Electronic Revolution.

What does it mean to put information to work? Information is put to work in computer models so that it might be used to predict events. The ability to predict is central to the concept of security. Analysis of information then becomes the production of security. The worldview of security, or making-predictable, recognizes that the movement of life, resources, and information is chaotic, yet it seeks to anticipate the movement of the noise by analyzing noise and patterns in a joint effort to win wars and make profits.

However, there is only so much value one can place on predictive models, and eventually, information bubbles burst.

“Desire causes the current to flow, itself flows in turn, and breaks the flows.” — Page 5, The Anti-Œdipus

Speed
The Net
The Matrix
The Lake House

Think about it. The chapter on Speed could be all about Paul Virilio’s theories on the integral accident and dromology.

The Net is about the problem of Google’s monolithic control over all information and the threat of being disappeared.

The Matrix — well that one’s been done to death in philosophy and could be easily plagiarized from Slavoj Zizek.

The Lake House — it’s got Keanu and Sandra Bullock again, so I had to include it, but I’m sure something could be said about time, communication, and information being less constrained by time in the same way that Speed has our bodies being less constrained by space because of transportation but then resulting the potential for accidents and hijacking.

And I bet if I started writing a book on it, I’d find all of these other weird connections with Keanu and Sandra Bullock and I’d eventually go insane and drill a hole in my head. Needless to say, it would be the most ridiculous shit ever.