Re: <nettime> So, What Do We Do Now? Living in a Post-Snowden World

["michael gurstein" <gurstein@gmail.com>]

Andreas,

Given what we now know (and remember that this evidently is only a tiny
fraction of what we still might learn... my reading is that my formulations
are at least in outline correct (but I would be delighted to have someone
with the technical knowledge prove (or even argue) that I was wrong). 

Certainly there is much droppage between cup and lip but as I understand it
the overall capabilities I pointed to are there. Whether they can be
effectively executed, directed in any usefully targeted way (but of course
that is one of the problems--cf. the wedding goers/drone victims syndrome),
operated by sufficiently intelligent beings (are bots beings?) to actually
do what they are intended to do is either a very practical or a deep
philosophical question neither of which my post was intended to resolve.

Rather my post was a quite personal expression of the dilemma that I see as
someone trying to be active/effective (as a civil society person) in the
evolving space of global Internet governance.

Best to all for the new year,

Mike

-----Original Message-----

From: Andreas Broeckmann [mailto:broeckmann@leuphana.de] 
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2014 9:21 PM
To: nettime
Cc: michael gurstein
Subject: Re: <nettime> So, What Do We Do Now? Living in a Post-Snowden World

dear michael, dear friends,

Am 02.01.14 06:06, schrieb michael gurstein:

> Whether we will live in a world where one country and its 5 allies 
> have access to all worthwhile information which allows them to control 
> any possibility of dissent (even before it happens), control the 
> inputs into and outputs from elections or any form of political 
> campaign, control financial markets and bank accounts, control the 
> behaviour of individuals and ultimately groups and that's for 
> starters-those are things we can interpolate based on what we know, 
> not as would surely be more realistic, interpolating from what else we 
> can foresee-these guys as we all know, have access to effectively 
> unlimited financial resources and the brainpower that goes with it.

i am wondering about the "all" in your formulation "all worthwhile
information", the two "any"-s and the two "control"-s, and then about the
"brainpower that goes with unlimited financial resources". - is this really
the issue, and is it such a vision of totalitarian surveillance what we
should be most, or ultimately concerned about?
 <...>


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