I rather liked your interview. And I need to read a lot more of what you've
written.
Having been on both sides of the "online activist" scene - that is, been an
activist for things, argued and even fought with other activists whose
position (or more accurately, whose methods of expressing their position)
wasn't acceptable to me. So just quoting one or two examples here that I
was personally involved in, to make my point clearer.
What I see is not just grossly oversimplifying nuanced situations to fit a
tech oriented world view (what I'd call an extreme case of Lessigism, code
is law and all that), and yes I agree with Ranum on the futility of trying
to solve social (or rather, multi dimensional) problems purely by technical
means, but that's not what is going on here, for some the more visible
examples of online activism, at least as practiced in the USA - against
spam filtering (dearaol, moveon etc in 2005-06 when I wrote that, or Susan
Crawford / David Isenberg and others against net neutrality today,
It is a simple (and not too savory) advocacy tactic to frame yourselves as
the guy in the white hat and the other side in the argument as the black
hats, and it is an argument I occasionally like to turn on its head by
pointing to cases where the hard right does much the same as the liberal
left does - Propaganda. Hitler said it best:
"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless
one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging
attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and
over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most
important requirement for success." -- "War Propaganda", in volume 1,
chapter 6, Mein Kampf.
So back then the EFF and various organizations / people related to it found
it convenient to use words like "blackmail" and "shakedown" to describe
spam filtering. And Susan Crawford described deep packet inspection (which
is both a security tool and occasionally [mis]used by some ISPs for
targeted marketing) as "where the sidewalk eavesdrops and wants money".
EFF etc / spam filtering [which fizzled out within a few months of its
starting]
http://www.circleid.com/posts/eff_on_goodmail_further_confusing_an_already_confused_issue/
http://www.circleid.com/posts/eff_use_of_propaganda_karl_rove/
and on more familiar ground, multiple long threads on politechbot
http://www.mail-archive.com/politech@politechbot.com/msg03780.html
all summarized by Tim Lee at the TLF -
http://techliberation.com/2006/04/22/aols-censorship/
Now on to some slightly more recent history. The net neutrality debate is
currently following that very familiar pattern
http://www.circleid.com/posts/its_the_internet_stupid_i_disagree/
my comments at the end of this susan crawford circleid post on comcast /
netflix (which she originally posted on her blog with the revealing url
http://scrawford.net/blog/inside-job/1419/ .. as it happens I posted the
same comment on her blog and it didnt appear there, oh well)
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20101129_bad_timing_comcast_netflix_nn_cable_modems_and_nbcu/
Milton Mueller - a man who I have had my share of disagreements with (in
internet governance / icann related circles) wrote this article a bit after
that and for once I 100% agree with him. It quite neatly lists two world
views that characterize this approach. Recommended reading because you can
take this and apply it to quite a few other advocacy campaigns, not
necessarily all technical in nature (lovely example from 1980s US politics,
which I agree with 100%)
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20101202_how_to_discredit_net_neutrality/
Oh and again on the tech liberation front - larry downes has something that
I agree with too, and makes an extremely interesting lens to view online
activism with when you cut past the dissection of FCC net neutrality
regulations:
http://techliberation.com/2011/01/12/%E2%80%9Cpreserving-the-internet%E2%80%9D-but-which-one-reading-the-fcc%E2%80%99s-net-neutrality-order-part-iv/
srs
Gabriella Coleman [13/01/11 19:24 -0500]:
Hi Udhay (and everyone),
I think Cory was way too generous (so thank you if you are reading
this), although I did enjoy this interview more than most, perhaps
because he raised questions about the nature of digital activism that
really interest me (and get my goat as they are often so
misportrayed). Finally someone by the name of "lobster" left what is
nothing short of a hilarious comment. Really made my day:
"As for Ms. Coleman, I appreciate the work she's doing but I would not
want to be locked in a room with her. She has gazed deeply into the
abyss. Who knows what horrors have taken root in her mind, and lie
sleeping, waiting to unleash unfathomable nightmares for the lulz?"
I don't think I have met too many silk listers in person and I am not
sure if that description will make people to meet me or run...
Biella
ps-- hacker anthropologist is quite a title to hold :-)
On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Udhay Shankar N <ud...@pobox.com> wrote:
One silklister, writing about another.
I'm posting this a) posting this in the hope of getting Biella to come
out of lurkspace; and b) just for the coolness inherent in the phrase
'hacker anthropologist'. :)
Udhay
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/13/interview-with-hacke.html
Interview with hacker anthropologist Biella Coleman
Cory Doctorow at 4:46 AM Thursday, Jan 13, 2011
In this week's show, Thomas Gideon's Command Line podcast interviews NYU
professor Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist who studies hackers,
trolls, 4chan and other online phenomena. I met Biella when she was
doing fieldwork for her PhD by hanging around EFF and the hackers in its
orbit, and I've met very few social scientists with a better
understanding of how online dynamics work.
The feature this week is an interview I conducted with Gabriella
Coleman. I was introduced to her work through her writings at The
Atlantic. She mentions Malcom Gladwell's criticism of online activism
and Indy Media. The main reason I invited her on was her critique of
Bruce Sterling's The Blast Shack. We delve a bit further into the
question of WikiLeaks lasting impacts. I mention a couple of times Clay
Shirky's long haul view. Gabriella recommends Adrian Johns' book on
piracy (which I ordered with a gift card I received recently, can't wait
to read it). She also mentions a revisit of the topic of WikiLeaks at
The Economist. You can also find Gabriella on Twitter where she is quite
active and sharing some great links related to topics we discuss in this
interview and of course her broader work.
TCLP 2011-01-12 Interview: Gabriella Coleman
MP3 Link
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
