Re: <nettime> #jakegate explained ... by a Dummy

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

This is a good overview, there is an obvious need for more dummies.

The 'poor and sexy' is one product of fractional distillation of 
precarity, with low boiling point (the less sexy ones have to serve as 
drivers or taskrabbits.)

As the article states, there is no involvement from the base structure 
of the society in active opposition to surveillance and related 
manipulations. The flamboyant sexy and poor are officially designated to 
be tending the light of the resistance, it seems to everyone's 
convenience, to the point where they are being funded by their nominal 
adversaries. But the lack of structural penetration makes them more or 
less placebo-like, not just in symbolic sense, but also in the deep 
technical sense. It's all a spectacle.

Possibly the real core of Appelbaum's transgression is just that: 
realizing and uncovering the spectacle, being a traitor. The rest follows.

The monopoly of the resistance to the surveillance state has to be taken 
from the sexy and poor - those have already peaked. Ugly, unfucked and 
moderately rich need to take part, as they are also affected, or soon 
will be. The fraction of society that actually benefits from the 
surveillance is getting tinier and tinier with technological advances - 
it's very unlikely that you are in that fraction even if you own few 
houses and a stable of V8s.


> Resistance may be the answer to what has probably become the essential
> constitutional issue of our times, but I am afraid not to see a
> positive outcome evolving unless it mutates into a real law and order
> problem for the powers that be. And this is in my view exactly the
> point where the above mentioned organisations and their associates,
> supporters, and techie-activists fail to enact the effective mix of
> political strategy, street-level tactics, and technological fixes,
> usually by prioritizing the last option at the expense of the two
> others.

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