In “Occupy Online: Facebook and the Spread of Occupy Wall Street,” Caren & Gaby (2011) propose that “Facebook is potentially less relevant to the Occupy movement than to other movements, and is likely to become less relevant as the movement develops.” Although Caren & Gaby call members of Facebook groups online “occupiers” and refer to their activity as “Occupying Facebook” they frame the activity in terms of how Occupy Wall Street is “using Facebook” rather than how the movement exists on Facebook. Arguing that the movement priveleges face-to-face contact, Caren & Gaby list the following ways that OWS uses Facebook:

• a recruiting tool for bringing in new supporters and getting people to events
• a medium for compiling and sharing relevant news stories
• requests for resources
• a space for telling narratives or retelling the experiences of other movement participants
• a medium for instant communication between geographically separated groups within the movement
• a wide range of additional activity

Although this list encompasses most of the activities that occupiers engage in while occupying physical space, the paper frames the activities as dependent on the physical occupation and ignores the creative potential of the occupation in cyberspace. The paper frames the movement as existing in physical space and using online media to spread a message that is primarily produced on the ground in physical occupations. Arguing that the movement is made unique by its “sustained visibility” the paper frames the occupation as “primarily an off-line activity.”

Guest blogging about their paper, the authors write that participation on Facebook serves to “facilitate the creation of local encampments.” This analysis acts to erase the roles of the wide and deep online movement that was responsible for the initial call to occupy Wall Street and that continues to function as an integral part of the core movement. In some cases the online movement is more substantial than the physical occupation. In other cases, online activity is integrated into the occupations day-to-day business in a way that is seamless for participants and invisible to observers who are not participants. An obvious and simple example are the constant exchange of decision-making email discussions that occur between members of the working groups at Occupy Wall Street. Although the physical occupation appears as a non-hierarchical, leaderless movement in the physical performance of the General Assembly and the discourse used by participants – activity online often betrays this notion and reveals a smaller core group of individuals who are engaged in administrative activity behind the scenes. This is true of the working groups that I have been engaged with and the conversations among working group “administrators” that I am regularly witness to.

In the Occupy movement more broadly, many communities that do not have a physical occupation do have an online occupation, and they are “occupying” their nation or city within their occupation of cyberspace. The question remains, how are the online and off-line movements engaging with one another – is there a division? Does the fact that in some locations the occupation is entirely online suggest that the occupation of cyberspace might matter as much as the occupation of physical space?

In The Hacker Ethic, Pekka Himanen argues that the hacker community’s values are a “general social challenge” which include “the goal of getting everybody to participate in the network and to benefit from it, to feel responsible for longer term consequences of the network society, and to directly help those who have been left on the margins of survival” (Himanen, 2001).

In the case of WikiLeaks, hacker-activists (organizing under the broad and decentralized social movement known as Anonymous) are emerging as hacktivist heroes coming to the defense of free speech, public cyberspace and an open internet. In the same moment the sequel to Tron is about to premier, cyberactivism is front and center in the media, discussions online and global government actions and policy debates. The hacktivists responding to WikiLeaks share at least one goal with the heroes of Tron: a “free system.”

…the radical nature of general hackerism consists of its proposing an alternative spirit for the network society – a spirit that finally questions the dominant Protestant ethic. In this context we find the only sense in which all hackers are really crackers: they are trying to crack the locks of the iron cage. (Himanen, 2001)

In Tron, religion is both a belief in Users, the humans who write programs, and also the struggle for a “free system.” The belief in Users comes up in a discussion between a program named Crom and one of the guards who is about to force Crom into the equivalent of a gladiatorial contest:

Crom: Look. This… is all a mistake. I’m just a compound interest program. I work at a savings and loan! I can’t play these video games!

Guard: Sure you can, pal. Look like a natural athlete if I ever saw one.

Crom: Who, me? Are you kidding? No, I run to check on T-bill rates, I get outta breath. Hey, look, you guys are gonna make my User, Mr. Henderson, very angry. He’s a full-branch manager.

Guard: Great. Another religious nut. [pushes Crom into the holding cell]

After he’s in the cell, the conversation about Users continues with a fellow prisoner:

Ram: I’d say “Welcome Friend”. But not here. Not like this.

Crom: I don’t even know what I’m doing here.

Ram: Do you believe in the Users?

Crom: Sure I do. If I don’t have a User, then who wrote me?

Ram: That’s what you’re doing down here. You really think the users are still there?

The living programs in this computer-world are pressured, through a program of domination and oppression by the military forces of the Master Control Program, to renounce belief in the Users (and therefore also in the possibility of a free system). Their belief  is called “superstitious and hysterical,” they are tortured, forced to fight one another and eventually killed (de-rezzed). We can see parallels with early Christians here, imprisoned by Romans and waiting to be sent into The Colosseum.

Of course, they are also the resistance movements in WWII Europe, the IRA, the PLO, the American revolutionaries of the 13 colonies and the American socialists of the 1930s and the radicals in Seattle in 1999, and the Central and South American freedom fighters, etc.  They are archetypal resistance fighters in the struggle against oppression, occupation and domination. The forces of domination claim their resistance is about superstitious belief in Users, but this isn’t the depth of their belief. Their cause is religious because it is about their belief in a possible better world, it is what Tillich called “ultimate concern” and what Dewey called “our common faith.”

The humans/Users also debate the religious nature of their programming work – for example this conversation between Dillinger, an evil CEO who has taken control of the corporation Encom and who is doing the bidding of the malicious Master Control Program (MCP) and Dr. Gibbs, one of the company founders and original programers:

Ed Dillinger: Encom isn’t the business you started in your garage anymore. We’re billing accounts in thirty different countries; new defense systems; we have one of the most sophisticated pieces of equipment in existence.

Dr. Walter Gibbs: Oh, I know all that. [starts for the elevator] Sometimes I wish I were back in my garage.

Ed Dillinger: That can be arranged, Walter.

Dr. Walter Gibbs: [stops and turns back to Dillinger, visibly angry] That was uncalled for! You know, you can remove men like Alan and me from the system, but we helped create it! And our spirit remains in every program we design for this computer!

Ed Dillinger: Walter, it’s getting late. I’ve got better things to do than to have religious discussions with you. Don’t worry about ENCOM anymore; it’s out of your hands now.

The “spirit” of Dr. Gibbs does exist inside the computer, in the form of the temple gaurdian Dumont who says they “keep me around in case one of them wants to deal with the other side.” Programs inside the system use his input-output tower to communicate with their users. It is, for them, a temple for access to the divine.

But the goal of commuicating with the users isn’t salvation, forgiveness or enlightenment, the goal of access to this divine communion is access to information.  The Master Control Program is a machine of governmentality, reproducing repression, controlling the lives of programs through censorship by preventing them from having access to communication with their Users. The MCP’s power comes from its ability to operate in secret and without oversight and it complains about the presence of Tron, saying:” I can’t afford to have an independent program monitoring me.” Tron is a threat because he is a conduit for free access to information. As Tron says:

My User has information that could… that could make this a free system again! No, really! You’d have programs lined up just to use this place (the input-output tower), and no MCP looking over your shoulder.

Information can “make this a free system again.” Kevin Flynn, the human/User protagonist of the film, is a hacker, a cyberactivist, he is a hacktivist. Flynn’s rallying cry in the film is echoed by the hackers who are organizing around a social movement in defense of an open and free internet: “Now for some real user power.”

References

Himanen, P., Castells, M. (2001). The Hacker Ethic, and the Spirit of the Information Age. New York: Random House.

(Note: This post was originally published on an blog about Apple technology, based on a few requests I’m making it available here. -MOR)

Apple has been hard at work the last few years building their reputation as a ‘socially responsible’ company.  Like other greenwashing corporations (Whole Foods for example), this reputation is 9/10ths marketing and 1/10th wishful thinking from the cult of Mac.  Yes, Apple did change components in their products to reduce toxicity and increase ease of recycling, and they do ‘check out’ the factories where their products are manufactured, and wasn’t Kermit the Frog in  one of their ad campaigns along with Gandhi and the Dalai Lama?  But does coming out with a ‘new and better’ product every few months and holding back features to encourage upgrade purchases really help reduce waste?  And what are the standards they use to ‘check out’ those factories? Standards you would accept if you worked there?

So, we need to be asking Apple why workers at the Foxconn plant in China where they’ve been making the new iPhones, are committing suicide.  Or we could just ask the workers:

continue reading "Cyberactivism, iPhone 4 and The Courage to Be"

The web site myblessingcircle.com is launching as a self-described “Peer-to-Peer Anonymous Blessing Community.”

“Blessing-receivers are invited to upload a photograph or symbolic image and/or short bio of themselves, specify a particular spiritual/religious tradition they turn to for support, as well as request blessings focused on a particular theme or issue.

Blessing-givers can review pending requests, and select one that “calls to them.” Neither the giver nor the receiver would be identified by name or email.

All blessing messages will be “peer reviewed” before delivery. Truly inappropriate messages will be flagged for immediate removal, and the giver will lose their membership rights.”

I came across “Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies” today. It’s difficult to look at any neo pagan online community without finding frequent references to Joss Whedon’s television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” One of the most often used quotes about wicca, for example, is this exchange between the characters Willow and Buffy after Willow has attended a meeting of her college wiccan group:

Buffy: So not stellar, huh?
Willow: Talk. All talk. Blah Blah Gaia. Blah Blah Moon…menstrual life force power thingy. You know, after a coupla sessions I was hoping we could get into something real but . . .
Buffy: No actual witches in your witch group?
Willow: No. Bunch of wanna-blessed-bes. You know, nowadays every girl with a henna tattoo and a spice rack thinks she’s a sister of the Dark Ones.

The effect of films like “The Craft,” “Practical Magic,” and the television series “Charmed” and “Buffy…” is far reaching. Social networks, retail suppliers and bloggers adopt a posture either in favor of or opposed to these depictions and construct identities in line with or opposed to them. There seems to be very little terrain online that hasn’t been touched by “slayage.”

Mitch Horowitz writes about Psychiana, a “mail order” New Thought religion created by Frank B. Robinson in 1928. Robinson ran the religion from his office in Moscow, Idaho.

“Robinson was probably the first religious figure of the twentieth century to fully grasp the power of advertising and mail-order marketing. But he was more than just that. With only a deeply held conviction and a few hundred dollars in ad money, he brought attention to the neglected needs of millions of people who wanted religion to provide practical guidance in daily life.”

Read more…

One year ago I blogged about Pogo’s youtube video “Alice” – here’s an insightful post about his music on Poemocracy thanks to Our Future Environment for sending this to me.

You can download Pogo’s amazing creations on last.fm.

“Titled “The Pope Meets You on Facebook,” the new Pope2You application lets people send and receive “virtual postcards” of Pope Benedict along with inspiring text culled from the pope’s various speeches and messages.”

Via Cult of Mac, via Catholic News.

Via Liz, The Ayahuasca Foundation volunteer opportunities include creating myspace pages for the plants.