The Protocol Wars of 4chan, Anonymous, and Wikileaks
This is where the war stands to be won: in the building of autonomous structures of all sorts (structures that bypass and outcompete existing ones) on top of other new structures until the entire old world is unnecessary.
The above conclusion on the validity of p2p-based change strategies is from an interesting analysis which appeared in the journal Radical Philosophy, by Colombian scholar Nicholas Mendoza. The article refers to many people occasionally or habitually referred to in our blog, such as Johan Soderbergh, Sean Cubitt, and David Bollier.
* Article: A tale of two worlds. Apocalypse, 4Chan, WikiLeaks and the silent protocol wars. Nicolás Mendoza. Radical Philosophy. 166 (March/April 2011)
Excerpted from the conclusion:
“The notion of protocol describes not only computer protocols, but also social, cultural and political conventions that inform the behaviour of societies. In an ambivalent world that is simultaneously exploring new territories of freedom and being subjected to heightened measures of control, the gradual reclamation of the commons is the crucial operation. Scholars like Michel Bauwens and David Bollier articulate how the Internet fosters processes of decommodification that effectively challenge capitalism. Rather than being the result of a violent class struggle, the end of capitalist hegemony might be the result of a slow Internet-enabled process of migration, a dripping (to abuse once more the WikiLeaks logo) towards societies that organize around commons.
What is interesting is that WikiLeaks, after all, is still up. Someone still hosts it (poetically, a hosting company located in a Cold War era anti-nuclear bunker), and because someone still hosts it, someone still processes their fund-raising, so that allows whistleblowers to keep on leaking information, and so forth. WikiLeaks is an example of how a rogue can still thrive against the will of Empire, supported by an emerging ecology of more autonomous actors. MasterCard, PayPal and Amazon don’t need to be shut, just bypassed or outcompeted. As the autonomous ecology evolves, it allows for more complexity. This is where the war stands to be won: in the building of autonomous structures of all sorts (structures that bypass and outcompete existing ones) on top of other new structures until the entire old world is unnecessary.”
(“This article first appeared in Radical Philosophy 166 (March/April 2011), online at: www.radicalphilosophy.com/ “)
March 28th, 2011 at 2:31 am
MasterCard, PayPal and Amazon don’t need to be shut, just bypassed or outcompeted. As the autonomous ecology evolves, it allows for more complexity. This is where the war stands to be won: in the building of autonomous structures of all sorts (structures that bypass and outcompete existing ones) on top of other new structures until the entire old world is unnecessary.”
My sentiments exactly. While our need for self-defense from authoritarian institutions is important and perpetual, we must do more than battle. We must build.
To “include and transcend” add “bypass and outcompete”. The p2p “art of war”?