Information commodities - from exorbitance to extortion in the digital age.
If you ever doubted that knowledge equals power, then this week's events should give you pause. However, the second line of that infamous historical rallying cry from hackers (real and mythical) to their brethren - in the face of faceless corporations and government agencies - no longer bears close examination. Regardless of any anthropomorphic qualities once ascribed to it by would-be-revolutionary bandit Robin Hood-types, running wild on what we used to call the Information Superhighway, its 'wants' are utterly irrelevant. Freedom is a joke, and information has always had a price tag attached to it.
From the much-hyped controversy regarding Scribd (enter, stage left, J. K. Rowling: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/30/scribd-rowling-free-book-outrage), to the prospect of £300,000 buying you copies of UK Members of Parliament expense receipts (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7973438.stm - includes embedded video), the zeitgeist is unavoidably economic in nature, and any subtext has been undermined by expedient causality: people want data, and whilst some are willing to buy and sell it, others will just take it because it's 'free'. There is no such thing as accidental consumerism, because the net result of successive governments drilling the value-free notion of "choice" into people's heads is that 'quality' has become a fluid and "transactive" variable. Only control remains the social inhibitor of outright general anarchy, because just as there will always be some people who demur at rioting on the streets, so too there will always be people who don't download pirated versions of the latest music, books, films, and TV releases. However grim the economic circumstances, and society's need for distractions, the fabric which ultimately holds everything together is a mixed weave of belief, hope, and laziness. If there's going to be any kind of ruckus surrounding tomorrow's G20 summit, the majority will witness it on television. Some will chide, while others cheer, but participation will be contained at that level, and go no further. Due to a coincidental convergence of global 'events', quite a few people will be rather more concerned about the state of their computers, and whether or not the Conficker worm is residing therein: http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/31/conficker-worm-detection-and-removal/
You may not 'own' the operating system which runs on many of your PCs (it's licensed from Micro$oft - one of those "faceless corporations" referenced above), but what about the OS that runs you? Is your DNA safe? A fascinating "special investigation" piece from New Scientist even throws that into doubt, because the human genome too has been reduced, and duly commodified:
'Intimate secrets hidden in your DNA could be stolen without you even realising. By taking a glass from which you have drunk, a "genome hacker" could obtain a comprehensive scan of your genome, revealing DNA variants that help determine your susceptibility to a wide range of diseases, from a common form of blindness to Alzheimer's disease.' - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127013.800-special-investigation-how-my-genome-was-hacked.html
Finally, because at the base level tomorrow is just another day - albeit a special one for different reasons - my very best wishes to trailer_spot. ;o)
From the much-hyped controversy regarding Scribd (enter, stage left, J. K. Rowling: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/30/scribd-rowling-free-book-outrage), to the prospect of £300,000 buying you copies of UK Members of Parliament expense receipts (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7973438.stm - includes embedded video), the zeitgeist is unavoidably economic in nature, and any subtext has been undermined by expedient causality: people want data, and whilst some are willing to buy and sell it, others will just take it because it's 'free'. There is no such thing as accidental consumerism, because the net result of successive governments drilling the value-free notion of "choice" into people's heads is that 'quality' has become a fluid and "transactive" variable. Only control remains the social inhibitor of outright general anarchy, because just as there will always be some people who demur at rioting on the streets, so too there will always be people who don't download pirated versions of the latest music, books, films, and TV releases. However grim the economic circumstances, and society's need for distractions, the fabric which ultimately holds everything together is a mixed weave of belief, hope, and laziness. If there's going to be any kind of ruckus surrounding tomorrow's G20 summit, the majority will witness it on television. Some will chide, while others cheer, but participation will be contained at that level, and go no further. Due to a coincidental convergence of global 'events', quite a few people will be rather more concerned about the state of their computers, and whether or not the Conficker worm is residing therein: http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/31/conficker-worm-detection-and-removal/
You may not 'own' the operating system which runs on many of your PCs (it's licensed from Micro$oft - one of those "faceless corporations" referenced above), but what about the OS that runs you? Is your DNA safe? A fascinating "special investigation" piece from New Scientist even throws that into doubt, because the human genome too has been reduced, and duly commodified:
'Intimate secrets hidden in your DNA could be stolen without you even realising. By taking a glass from which you have drunk, a "genome hacker" could obtain a comprehensive scan of your genome, revealing DNA variants that help determine your susceptibility to a wide range of diseases, from a common form of blindness to Alzheimer's disease.' - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127013.800-special-investigation-how-my-genome-was-hacked.html
Finally, because at the base level tomorrow is just another day - albeit a special one for different reasons - my very best wishes to trailer_spot. ;o)