nettime: Cyberwar in digitALL Vienna

[mag@silverserver.co.at (Margarete Jahrmann)]

Cyberwar in digitALL Vienna*Krieg in Wien
Artfuckers basic Knowledge

This is an analysis of digitALL phenomenology refering to rising Net-war,
which started recently- at the beginning of this year in Vienna. It
expanded allready from its basis in the art world, from its attacks to
corroding structures towards an interesting shift of more and more affected
netprinciples, netiquettes and  netangels, who permanently try to take
influence to, causing so called security problems, where everything
started: at a small mailinglist named digit-All hosted in Vienna. Sending
rootfiles around is no security problem: it just shows general
scanning-structures of the liquid net. After the local arts-warfare, caused
by digit-All, became a bit more calmed down in Vienna, hackers are starting
to struggle between purists who are sticking to their hardly understood
ethics and dont want to make real net-tools accessible which  could not
only corrode the el-net-system itself but also harm the people themselves
who are using them. By the other hand hackers are attracted by artists who,
dont really have the efficient power but can on a certain level evolve
technolgy and make systems work intuitivly in a certain continuum.

HISTORY OF digitALL Infowar in VIENNA
When pseudo-freenetconcepts were becoming more and more institutionalised,
and the city council was enforcing to link independent websites, located on
a server funded by governmental-artsmoney, digitALL was a spontanous
reaction towards the analogical model of another digital city, Wien.at,
which is organised by the political city- officials. DigitALL was formed
immediatly and spontanously as backlash: tactical and diffuse every time
prepared to take position against political influences, fundings and
demands as well as structures. It was stiring up dust and trouble cause
there was lying so much around.

Then it became a forum for absolut inversion of communication stiles,
politcal correctness became an evident hyppocracy related to the immanent
faschiscme of the net itself, based onthe permanent demand for inner and
outer cleaning.
The protocols of the net are based on this clean westcoast idoleogy  - and
the list of contents which shall be censored only can evolve from such
attitudes - and now also in europe this ideology  is transfered into
netlife and net behaviourisme. DigitALL, was conceptualised following the
paradigms of hypermedia-dicourse (resp. CyberDADA). It was initiated by
several artists like Mamax Vienna and Kunstlabor and the small private
Silverserver. Aim of the enterprise was to establish a communicationsforum
against rigid correctness including the surplus of karthasis. DigitAll
http://www.digit-ALL.or.at/digit-ALL is an independent domain on its own
server where everybody can register its own planet in digitALL, post it
there and realize things without any restrictions. By clicking a
kill-button you can subscribe- so a certain discourse becomes transparent
from the beginning on.
The stile on digitALL is not considered as general communicationsform. But
it has also of absolut importance that such a way of talking and taking
position is allowed to happen - in a society as well as in netsociety. The
real Life effect was, that certain participating artists were no more
allowed to exhibit in a officical museum in vienna, interventions started
in analog life to kick certain people out from their positions in official
places.
The permanent force to correctness was the circumstance digitALL was
confronted. It happened especially that the medium with its own rules was
quitted and snailmails were sent to discredit certain individuals ( f.ex.
in march 96 so called media-artists sent compendiums with print outs of the
digitALL mailinglist discussions directly to the austrian minister for
arts and science, Dr. Scholten).

Speaking Publicly about Privacy

The Mailinglist is the main tool for developing strategies and netcriticism
as well as real life criticism, netideas evolvement and coevolution of
applications of and for the net.

Information Warfare is the offensive and defensive use of informationsystems.
Yes, and then netware became one of the paradigms for the Vienniese Phantom
Avantgarde. Cyberwar in Vienna started by a small website using a
mailinglist as main tool to cause radical critique on the real life
circumstances of artsworld. The stile itself became a katalysator for
developing tools which can enforce these real-life riots which happened
caused of the digitAll net exzess, activities and flames and
counter-netiquettes based on provocative talks, which where in the
beginning mainly textbased.

NETWAR became a paradigme for the digit-All Vienna cause of these
circumstances we were confronted, by using radical netdiscussion attacking
real political and governmental structures as well as netiquetts.
Permanently there was confrontation with censorship and efforts of
restriction towards the contents, brought up in the mailinglist. The effort
to intervene at official governmental sites happened and went on. So the
next step was the expansion towards individual personal development in the
digit-All by an increasing number of sites taking place in the webALL.
Hackers became interested in the sophisticated use of simple tools and the
stile of the webdiscourse based on concrete netpraxis, which was
establishing a local feedback and exitement, they were not used to or did
not cause with there activities on a much higher technical level, but
restricted to a certain secret circle.
Based on a instrumental mediapraxis the net can be transformed into a
manipulationfield for everybody. These praxis you just can get in such
flexible surroundings.  A defense to netangels and the control over net
contents and formats is happening by a friendly view towards the
net-techne. We are sharing servers, domains, accounts and making them
available as well as the knowledge and tools to handle its protocolls by
tricks and consciousness - you just have to enter your individual
Waffenlager. Ideologycriticism can be prosecuted by the concrete evolvement
of net-ethiques in technical conditions.
Everybody can take part at this coevolution of technical and content links.

"Also in the independent and media art scene, projects and sites are
currently being created which are beginning to provide the tools for these
conflicts. In the case of the DigitAll server in Vienna
<http://www.digit-ALL.or.at/digit-ALL>, the starting point was a critique
of the rules and conventions that were beginning to clogg up the
communication on the Net, and of the way in which the politically correct
variant of netiquette has turned into a tool of censors rather than of
freely communicating individuals. The people at DigitALL, as well as
others, have started creating telematic weapons, censor programmes, word
blasters, mail death and mail blaster tools which are intended initially as
a critical and playful commentary, which however could turn into the
prototypes of rather painful technological developments." ... Andreas
Broekmann - excerpt of a private mail

Safe our Children?
By controling and exploiting nettechniques, to be considered as backlash to
cyberangels, content can be developed. In the Waffenlager you can access
strategic help. Subscribers, associated members can easily have their own
domains or sites - and become their own providers. Every former user should
get his own domain, every user should have his own server.
Just small private servers are giving the possibility to gain the
instrumental media-praxis to be able to use and manipulate the net and
develop  new discourse out of this. Usermyths are distructed by this
media-praxis.

So one can disturbe netscans by encoding in your own private language and
using datajunk and junk mails as individual and more effective tool than
encryption keys.  Maildeath, deathletters and mailblasters are dissolving
any  regulated use of the net and are enerving to the borders.
Information warfare is based on the fact how secure a community can be
about its knowledge. But they are not the only ones: The digit-ALL
"HitcHike-Culture" is also taking advantage of scanned information. In the
visualisation of commandos and scripts they are even more efficient than
dogmatic cyberlawcampaigns. In subversive activities they are using Satan
more based on private jokes dealing with the feeling of the moment and
lifestile of the present time. The "media- fun-guerilla", a term Geert
Lovink coined, is exploiting net safety and the bones of the net.
Like this the enormous attraction of individual private data and the fact
that navigation through the net is based on scanned content can be
experienced as traumatic shock.

 L%%%%%&L%%%%%&L%%%%%&L%%%%%&L%%%%%&L%%%%%&L%%%%%

Webpages are increasingly classified. Beside Blue ribbons, black ones are
still accepted and red ones are recommended, etc. . Probably people in
Europe will never understand this frantic ribbon- and labeleuphoria
accompaning USculture. Everwyhere corroded campaigns and organisations are
popping up. A theocratic censorship and Anti-censorshipmovement is
established. Anyway datasecurity and private data property or privacy have
never existed in networld.
Somehow its ridicolous, that on a certain geografic location, in the San
Francisco Bay area, most names of sites and contents of the global internet
community are physically stored on the enormous mass storage sets of
several companies. The knowledge of netcommunity is collected by search
engine-companies. Gov, state, security  are obviously using this knowledge
of society.

Some negative reference-Sites are giving information - and they are
planning and offering much more and worser things we could ever say. The
FBI- Cyberwars theoreticians were delivering interesting material to give
reasonable explanations which we rewrote to get our athorisation to kill in
digitALL for example as well as John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt of the
RAND International Policy Department
<http://www.stl.nps.navy.mil/c4i/cyberwar.html>
CYBERWAR IS COMING!:

<.......netwar applies to societal struggles most often associated with low
intensity conflict by non-state actors....
...Advances in networking technologies now make it possible to think of
people, as well as databases and processors, as resources on a network.....

....The information revolution, in both its technological and non-
technological aspects, sets in motion forces that challenge the design of
many institutions. It disrupts and erodes the hierarchies around which
institutions are normally designed........
......netwar and cyberwar revolve around information and communications
matters, at a deeper level they are forms of war about "knowledge," about
who knows what, when, where, and why, and about how secure a society or a
military is regarding its knowledge of itself and its adversaries........
......Netwar refers to information-related conflict at a grand level
between nations or societies. It means trying to disrupt, damage, or modify
what a target population knows or thinks it knows about itself and the
world around it. A netwar may focus on public or elite opinion, or
both........
.......netwar may arise between governments and non-state actors...>

We are permanently confronted in our net-work with these circumstances.
Thats the reason for using individual Censoship-programms, word- and
e-mailblasters, mailbombs, irritations,  and funny netscape-games
- ah ja
and this was a second step in the digitALL development- after having a
start in the web we used frames and tables, which are completly neglecting
plain html programming - we were not subversivly correct doing this (which
was of course a problem for the hackers) - but parallel a plain version for
all browsers is coming up and is purely accessible and not necessarely
asking for Netscape, when checking the sites in different browsers (which
certain arts and commerce "hitchhike"- counters are still doing - still
just focused on the paradigme that you have to gain public acceptance,
caunting as much real hits you can get- )...and "otherwise you would see
nothing".

MAILINGLIST &PRIVACY
the modal complexity of language in social constructs like text- and
objectbased surroundings

The net which formerly allowed one of the most deregulated ways of
moredimensional communication is now becoming more and more one of the most
censored areas of cultural life- for shure in Europe, where we are not used
being censored for saying fuck. Restriction, censoring and netiquette are
encouraging the semipublic community in mailinglists. Now the question
arises if the revival of mailinglist forums has to be compared to
biedermaier-conditions where people just dared to speak in their
livingrooms, cause they were surveilled everywhere saying sth. critical
against the system in public. On infra- and infostructur commercial
restrictions and legslative regulations  can take influence to transforme
the net into a secure and profitable place. In contrast to that the social
dimension of communication in smaller individual communities can never be
monopolised.
Physical violent imageries and agressive languages are not just caused by
censorship and netiquette, but always have been aspects of virtual
surroundings, f.ex. in Muds, Moos and games. Emotional terms are used
ritually for certain social actions, which are eleminating the participant
of a communication in a group by establishing relations to real life. The
status of the set activities in the electronic environment is depending on
how far its interpretation is seen in relation to real life. Personal
experiences and opinions towards netculture and theorydevelopment are
reflected in spontanous ambient essays and private definitions, which are
made accessible for others. Independant reflection and discoursedevelopment
is evolving out of this in contrast to uncritical academic speculations and
more and more established netfundamentalisme. Out of personal experiences
and netuse radical critique is coming up, which can not be done by under or
even well informed lurkers!
Is Pretty Good Privacy at all the tool to maintain distance in cyberspace
or can a mailinglist even be compared to one of this electronic algorythms
which are defined as weapons by the law? Or is the use of mailinglists in
contrast to this even a strategy to escape analytical reflection in public
by privacy.
Every mailinglist can be considered as publicly accessible workingcircle
where individual subject-positions can be defined- this is the certain
privacy of the net.
digit-All f.ex. is a permanet field experiment on the effects and behaviour
in textbased objectorientated surroundings in the net. It is defining a
certain group of participants and establishing specific social conditions
and relations, which are making flexible forms of communication and privacy
possible. Not only terminologies like Killing, Burning and Eating
characters but also typical behaviour are used.

A INFOLIQUIDE SYSTEM
is organising parallel opinions and its manifestations on individual
universes or planets in the web. In digitALL SilverserverNet nobody would
take influence on activites or projects cause of so called security
problems of certain servers. Big commercial servers never would accept a
lot of activites you can do in such a private server-surrounding. So the
Verbund of small servers is the solution to the web. No one would control,
regulate or intervene into running processes- if he is small enough. Most
data of the unmoderated discourse are visualised and directly transformed
into real tools.

The development without any predictions went directly into the direction of
the contents and idioms regarded worth to be censored in networld. digitALL
SilverserverNet is organising a surrounding of liquid transformable
webcreations which every participant can do entering the digitALL. This is
one of the principles of this net of parallel working servers and domains
based no more just only in Vienna. These servers "im Verbund" are
dispairing focusses for attacks and are providing as well tools which are
experienced as liquid flood in interaction  with its different interfaces
and roots. At every stadium netconditions and processes are visualised and
made transparent for the visual thinker.
The infoliquide system can be regarded as well as shifting text which is