<nettime> BORED PEOPLE ARE DANGEROUS

[Tom Sherman <twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu>]

BORED PEOPLE ARE DANGEROUS

People want to be mindreaders, they're nosey, they want to invade other
peoples' consciousness.  They want to control mindshare.  Ultimately they
want to remote control people.  Exploitation is constantly being redefined
by advancing technology.

On the question of how to leverage eyeballs to your website, what are we
really looking at?  We're looking at a mob of exhibitionists dying, vying
for your attention, constantly upping their levels of exposure.  They're
playing chicken with the very real probability of psychological implosion.

Plucking eyeballs out of the skulls of the on-line masses is disgusting,
by the way.  This obsession with attention is sick.

Once they have the attention they so desperately seek, then they'll turn
aggressive and want to grab ahold of audiences and shake them down.  
They'll flip from desperate exhibitionists into control freaks.  First
they'll author media releases that function like hypnosis.  They'll cast a
spell.  Then they'll fashion media packages that pack the wallop of a stun
gun.

Control is based on predictability.  Surveillance and reducing uncertainty
is really at the heart of the matter.  Eliminating risk and theft and loss
is the main obsession.  People want to know what's going on when they have
something at stake, otherwise they could care less.  Unless they are bored
stiff.  Then they'll watch anything.  Bored people, given the opportunity,
will just bug people at random to find out what they are doing.

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BULK ERASING AND REPURPOSING

People say that information garbage disposal and recycling are not yet
profitable...  But I've seen forecasts of massive recycling campaigns
generated by the people for the people, where everyone recycles cultural
garbage for their own amusement.  They will make things out of abandoned
software the way people used to make floormats out of bottle caps, or
decorative chains of dead novelty watches from fast-food outlets.  And
then there is the information demolition trend.  Blowing up or otherwise
disintegrating rotten information is very entertaining and it is a service
our societies obviously need.

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T NOT P

Increasingly we are bored stiff.  We may be leading longer lives, but our
lives are increasingly empty.  There is a monotonous, flaccid tone to our
lives.  We are tired, made weary of constantly adapting to change.  We are
constantly asked to accommodate technological change, apparently arbitrary
change.  This flatness or deadness of heart is unnerving.  Don't check for
my pulse.  I just want to be a dial tone.



Tom Sherman

Nerve Theory
http://www.allquiet.org/

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