Life as an Artificial Lifeform

or "Wo bleibt die Revolution?" was a the best demo poster I have seen at the "Freedom not Fear" demonstration 11 day ago. Later I found out that the poster was made by the "famous" german blogger fefe.
Now we have elections next sunday and I want to take my own little internet space to reflect my thoughts on it in a bit longer way then the 140 letter in twitter permit me doing. If you think this is a nice peacefull reflection I can only guard you out the room nicely now before you get too disappointed, it might get rough.
Let me start with a nonlinear timeline of happenings that actually got us to where we are now.
As in all western countries September 11 2001 marked the day the powerfull elite found an excuse to hammer through a series of laws that would allow them subsequently to gain more control over the ever growing population that got poorer as a whole as the class divide got wider. It seems clear that if you get more and more people that get poorer while you get fewer and fewer people that get unproportionally richer there might be some a time this explodes so it makes only sense to curb that as soon as possible.
So laws got hammered through that allowed the ruling elite to spy on the people (and I think contrary to popular believe not to get one or two or a group of rogue people but to get a general sentiment of the population to actually react at a moment before it all starts boiling over). Now this might have already been sufficient - coupled with some distractions like wars and still enough games and mind-numbing entertainment around to keep the balance of the powers like the last 3000 years .
Only one thing they missed and I think that can be attributed that in that elite those who actually have a say are - well - too old. That in the past 3000 wasn´t a problem in itself but time has speed up considerably in the last 100 years or so. There are nice studies of how our perception of time changed with the advent of trains, airplanes and so forth - but since about 40 years a extremely disruptive technology entered the life of about anybody in this world - the internet. It supercharged our perception of time because now you didn´t have to take a long ride on a horse, a trainride or even an airplane to get to the middle east or china or to the other side of the world - you are there all the time - it only takes milliseconds to talk to somebody somewhere else. Now our poor elites just couldn´t grasp that concept as they have been growing up in a time when airplanes where all the rage so they missed the other disrupting factor in all that - limitless realtime communication. I have been on the internets for quite a while now (1996) and the limitless freedom of the early days was almost scary - nobody cared nobody was watched all was well.
I think the first real eyeopener for the powerfull came with Napster. All of the sudden an industry that is actually vital for distracting the public with meaningless shit lost complete control over their distribution channels - and that happened in less then a year. The pure panic that followed was almost a joy to watch because the net had become so indestructible by then that whenever there was a "fire" put out on one corner 200 more fires where started everywhere. Gosh they freaking build the net to be indestructible in case of a global nuclear holocaust do they think a few puppets of politians can actually make a dent - especially then that it had grown global?
So even with napster politics didn´t grasp the full extend of nets impact and resorted to 20th century scare and distract tactics. Well that worked for a big part of the population that also didn´t grasp the net yet. But there where the few and far between that saw the dangers of the laws that where forced upon all of us. Some of those where very confident in the net. While the mainstream was kept dumb with mindnumbing media 1.0 that is totally controlled - the few that grasped the full extend of what is going on started to act. Groups formed, a communication was happening outside the mainstream media totally uncontrolled. The blogs and forums started to get viewerships in the hundreds then thousands then millions - then they got noticed. Another Napster was happening while the first Napster was getting bigger and bigger. This time the controllers not only lost the venue of distraction they lost the venue of mind control. People got a second opinion and a lot started to find that refreshing - it started to make them think. On top a whole new generation was starting to disconnect from the old ways and what they got was a multitude of opinions that allowed them to form an opinion of their own that was pretty untainted (I am of the believe that if you read much opposing opinions - which the internet is full of - it actually allows us to become smarter and make more rational decisions).
Now besides lossing their distractive advantage the elite started to figure out that they also loose any opinion control - over not so long enough people are informed enough to question the system as a whole. Now it gets a bid muddy.
Because to think they are dumb is the wrong thinking - they are not and they have the tools (money) to get some brightness in their thinking. I am sure I saw an influx of "conservative" bloggers in the US around 2003 where I think that might actually have been an organized (at least in "hey we need to do something" chainletter style) counter move - the funny thing is that it only adds more opinions and makes people smarter by considering more viewpoints and finding the weaknesses.
Yet this trend has accelerated where traditional media - that by definition can only give the opinions of a few - is fast replaced by "democratic" the "anarchic" the uncontrolled - the blogs.
Now thats the point when the politicians really woke up (just eons too late) so here in Germany we all of the sudden get these laws that point to one thing: censorship - a beautifull 20th century concept that has worked when the publication of opinions was actually a hard thing to do. More surveillance extending to the net (at least they want to get a feeling of the cooking pot to see when its boiling over) and some more drastic things because they feel that the control might be lost in a mental "peacefull" way and that the only way to get the control back might be through force - I am getting there in a second.
The censorship law from our family minister (to protect the internet from watching child porn of course - what else can make an impact in this world otherwise anymore then anything that is absolutely shocking to the max) had one problem - it was dumb (stopsign coupled with dns routers) and transparent (we keep "secret lists"). I think the dumbness not necessarily comes from the fact that the people making it are actually dumb - I think they have not much choice otherwise to censor the web in any meaningfull way other then that - and at least - keep the mass of people from forming their own opinion at least a little while longer. What I think was their real dumbness was the fact that they didn´t see that they couldn´t hide the fact that it was about censorship in a big way. What they also still did not seem to have learned is the speedup of time.
That speedup of time got even a little more speedier with the advent of Twitter. I have to get into Twitter(or any other microblogging service) for a paragraph here. There is an inherent beauty in Twitter that makes it possible for our carbon based brains that need a couple of generations to actually adapt to actually process the huge amount of information on the web in near realtime. Basically making the speedup in time I talked about earlier available to us without taking away the chaotic nature of the web where you might click on something that you never intended to click on and that all of the sudden wides your horizons in ways that you never thought possible.
Twitter made it possible to spread the word about the censorship debate around the country in mere minutes. I watched it and it was a-m-a-z-i-n-g how the debate was shaped in less then a week. The petition against the law garnered 120.000 signatures in mere weeks - this all the while the politicians tried to discredit the movement and stuck to their - already weak and disproven - talking points. Needless to say that this backfired.
But this is the netactivism to that point. Where the ruling had been smarter in my opinion is to get things through on a totally different level that escapes the ordinary netizen.
I am still sure the banking collapse of 2008 was fabricated to a certain extend - orchastrated starting 2001. I know until now I have to not gotten into any kind of conspiracy theory in a big way but I think looking at who actually profited from the collapse and drawing the path backward and forward it my line of thought might become a bit more clear. To keep people happy in the years after 2001 there had to be some kind of prosperity - easy credit everywhere (yes also here in germany) was the answer. Then you fabricate a collapse of a big bank and the easy credit dies up - you end up with slaves that loose anything and will be nice little slaves trying to get to status they had been before (big houses + cars + tvs for everybody). This means you have desperate people - desperate people are easily controlled as long as they don´t have the time to think and question the overall concepts of life.
What also happened - especially here in germany - is police control. I don´t know if the number of policemen actually grew massively in the last 4-6 years but sure as hell am I feeling a bit opressed already. The amount of times I personally have been randomly stopped pulled over ask for ID etc is mindboggling if you consider that there was about 10 years of my life where I had zip zero contact with the police (I am only talking about stuff not provoked totally random stuff). And not only that - they are getting more and more aggressive - kind of talk from above hand on gun etc pp. Yes they made me already a tiny bit afraid of them. The culminated in the "Freedom not Fear" demonstration that I was very closely observing (thats what I like to do best ;) - the police was aggressive, demonstrators where fearfull. The whole demonstration had been closed up totally (anybody else noticed that) and then of course the police started beating some protestors. My view is that this was a concerted effort and not a single case of mad policeman. There might have been "nice policeman" on the street that day but there was a HUGE amount of extremely aggressive provoking riot squats around.
Instilling fear - not with bad terrorists but with its own police - making people (financially) weak - its all tactics to control a crowd and I think the powers might be even happy the "active" people are distracted with net rights at the moment - meanwhile they can just employ their 20th century control strategies - the magical tipping point where a considerable mass of people can be reached through the net will not be reached for another 5-10 years (looking at the only 25.000 people at the freedom not fear demonstration). Until then there is plenty of time to disrupt this movement and attack from points where it seems very vulnerable and blind.
Vulnerable because nobody of the up coming generation wants violence - so a violent revolution will not happen in my life time - that might have to do with the peacefull fall of the wall and generally people living in a lot of comfort and are thinking they are too intelligent to actually pick up arms and fight it out.
Blind because they are missing the social aspect of it all - as long as the current system stands as it is there is a lot leverage through money - draw it away and give it only in doses where it makes you dependent has worked for a very very long time - the german Pirate Party being completely void of the social aspect makes that totally apparent that its the big blind spot - what good does it do if you have freedom of speech when you are a slave to the system? Slaves could also speak out openly among themself in their quarters - it has not gotten them anywhere. They still where surpressed by fear, violence and scarcity.
Now I am the last person who wants any violent conflict ever. But the appeasement the protest movement of the netizens with the powers that are is pissing me off. Its an opertunity to do something grand to actually overthrow a powerbalance that has enslaved human kind since close to 3000 years and has quite obviously done the planet nothing good in return bringing it to a point of total collapse - to a point where it might look like mars or venus another 100 years onward.
The Pirate Party - as the visible public formation of that protest movement - is trying everything it can not to upset the powers too much because it could be seen negatively, it pussyfoots around issues of larger impact then a censorship law (the system is broken not a couple of laws) and the only tool it can use to actively protest outside of violence - the words - are "carefully democratically drafted".
I can only respond - nice try - its not how revolutions are made. Change the system or loose the war. If you don´t give the powers a big "FUCK YOU" and actually resist them it will not work. Its sad that the movement is the master of the biggest word spreading tool in history and just fails to use it radically enough to make an impact.
Maybe it has to get a lot less worse before that thinking sets in - my only fear is that the longer it takes the further we get a way to resolve that in a peacefull way. There will be a time the control mechanisms are of the ruling are strong enough to surpress any movement - and this time arrives pretty fast (give it another 4 years of current policies).
In the meantime I think some of the concepts of the Pirate Party are good for after a revolution - like the "zukunft ministerium" and such and its probably not lost work that is done there but for the near future I don´t see any winning strategy in the way this goes.