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

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

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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