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The roiling swirl of today's cyber factories has brought-on a condition of condition of cyberfeed.
This is the beginning of a project to adapt to this using something other than a measured and considered publication that has digested state of the world is no longer practical. Rather, we will be sailing with the winds of this feed while using the compass of a total critique of the conditions of today - this compass being the essence of critique political economy.
Email is a medium that moves ever closer to the oral than the written traditions. We will extend the conditions of temporarity by publishiing everything we have written, whether complete or not. And with the provision that everything is prelimenary, everything can be updated. This page itself is prelimenary and will be updated irregularly. It is possible that we will obtain the technical means to make these pages automatically commentable and updatable. But this is again uncertain.
Our present practice is embracing this method, especially by finally getting stuff out the door that we previously would have waited on and digested.
This is neither purely glorifying nor purely accepting the world of the feed. It is an experiment around taking the conditions of today and subverting them.
There is no morality involved.
The essence of a twentieth century, scientific, systematic or cybernic approach is the distinction between model and reality.
Here, the key to any serious argument is the structure that is described. If an argument presents a model which it useful for describing, explaining and predicting reality, the exact labels that are used will themselve be secondary.
Now, it should be noted that the essence of modern "propaganda" is the exact opposite. Propaganda aims to find "hot botton words" which guarentee an unthinking, gut response from people. These are both negative and positive reactions. "Terrorism" and "child pornography" are used to get negative reactions. "Family," "responbility" and "scientifically proven" are terms which are used to engender positive.
Now, naturally, this quality of propanda flys in the face of the methods of science. And more, because science has had a position of authority within society and because it has been successful in further society's understanding, technology and control of nature, "science" and related terms are in-fact, favorite terms of use by propagandists.
The prevalence of propaganda indeed, has also resulted in an constant change in the meaning of words.
So, the distinguishing quality of an argument for us will be whether the structure fits reality - regardless of the exact labels. Thus whether we label ourselve "communists" "capitalists" "libertarians" or "anarchists" should be irrelevant. Indeed, to avoid the conditioned response of propaganda, we will be to an extent using either neuteral or new terms in our further descriptions.
The general arguments and framework we are present are not original, though the exact way we are combining them may be unique. They include arguments from cybernetics, economics, psychology and philosophy. They include those labelled radical as well as those within respectable framework of science.
One can argue that these frameworks for understanding are flawed in sense that our responses to words present more than either a rational or an irrational response to words - instead, the many-layered quality of communication involves a rich combination of possibilities. Indeed, it could be argued that nothing is "neuteral," that the using new terminology has it's own rhetorical appeal and so forth.
And there is considerable truth to this. Still, our approach aims concretely for the particular period in history. If the science of this times has acheived a terrain of neutrality or understanding, we aim to take advantage of this. Further could be said this is sufficient for right here.
Unfortunately, this kind of response is more likely to appear once we escapes the boxes of present society than now, when we are very much trapped within it.
It is often said that the internet presents a radical threat to relations of property. But it's important to realize that intellectual property itself is a radical invasion of dailly life.
And it's important to be clear how exactly this is happen. As a related phenomenon, money has existed as a part of life more or less since human beings have existed, but money as the dominant part of human life has existed for a much shorter period of time.
The relation of owning the tools, owning the means of production, is a system which extends beyond simply
The concept of intellectual property carried to its furthest extent intially implies a sort-of total cybernetic slavery.
Seeing as all activity possesses an informational description, those who control a class of information control everything.
The extreme centralization of this control can be seen if we compare the situation to the control of a physical object. A store sells a fork but it doesn't sell right to use a fork.
See the RMS document "when you could read."
In actuality, intellectual property cannot be carried out to this extreme in terms of repression alone. The means of repression fall short of this.
The question is how much be accomplished by propaganda, by fear and mis-information. Essentially, the likely result will soon constitute a cyber-stalinism (Though few cyber-cop presently acknowledge it, the massive computerized repression of the People's Republic Of China is serving as a test-bed for the compatibility of an information economy with a government openly giving itself the right to control all aspects of people's lives).
It is worth noticing how the prevalence of standardized tests today creates a situation where teachers have a strong incentive to encourage children to cheat.
It is reasonable to note that the present system is based on an increase in rules and an increase in cheating. Remember, though, that those instances of cheating which declare themsselves and challenge the system could be called subversive. Those instances of cheating which hide themselves and plead loyalty to the system are ultimate loyal in fact.
It is common for the organs of the most repressive systems to aim most directly at their own functionaries. The case of Wen Ho, who faces years in prison for miss-placing a few computer tapes is notable. He is accused of spying for China but has not been charged with this. But since he works with classified papers, even the most normal mistakes can be placed in the realm of felonies. (Though as the law expands, nearly everyone may face this same jepardy).
In it's theoretical limit, cyber-space might be described as infinite dimensional - distance between any two being essentially constant.
Objects in cyberspace could well be described as strings of information or combinations of strings of indexs and string.
When it is framed this way, it is easy to understand that describing the ownership of such strings is essentially impossible.
A key point made by a slashdot poster is that identification is a key part of taxation.
Something that isn't mentioned is that taxation essentially is not a matter of preserving government but preserving the ability to control monetary policy.