<nettime> Public review of NN

[human being <human@electronetwork.org>]

Nameless Nobodies as Virtual Intelligence


NN is the acronym for the Nameless Nobodies that compose it, as a 
construct it would seem. Seemingly, because, it is not known exactly 
what the entity NN really is, in terms of its construction. There are 
stories about the persona or avatar or software that functions as NN, 
yet none can pin down the story enough to put the mystery to rest. 
Maybe this is purposefully so. That is, in this day and age of game 
playing, maybe it is a grand internet experiment, like that of a 
psychological blackhole, which feeds off the crush of other bodies 
which fall prey to its seductive virtual intelligence, and give up 
bursts of enlightening energy as they are subsequently crushed in the 
process of becoming content.

Everything written here is based on assumptions, most are likely 
wrong and inaccurate. Yet, to be as ignorant as this person who has 
interfaced with this medium of a net.work it necessitates the 
constant recompiling of beliefs and guesses and hopes, as NN morphs 
from one state to another, as if water that turns from snow, to 
water, rain, rivers, and clouds amidst weathered patterns.

Thus, with an almost hermetically-sealed environment, it can be 
difficult to communicate about such an amorphous and swift creature 
of imagination without having to put one's individual perspective as 
part of the stake or wager. To do so, the ignorance of this perceiver 
will shine bright as it is crushed by that which it seeks to 
understand, but cannot, and yet, this same person has learned much 
from this experience, that while being crushed in defeat in knowing 
exactly what primarily moves NN, at the same time trying to share 
what might be.


Premonitions and Prefaces

Odd, how things years back came into play later on. For example, the 
book T.A.Z. by the pseudo-named author Hakim Bey, which it has been 
stated by several to be the works of author Peter Lamborn Wilson 
under pen-name. Leaving the University culture I was offered the book 
as a gift from one person. Another, years later, also picked it up 
and read it, and deciphered parts of the mystery, as it may not be as 
easy for an insider as an outsider to understand its inner dynamic.

Never read it, as it seemed to be 'illicit' or 'illegal' knowledge to 
a naive and failed student, and someone who had had enough of 
religion, and moreso was not able to invest in the academic cultures 
of belief systems, which exist to shape and reinforce certain methods 
and ways of perceiving events and issues.

It seems that TAZ standed for 'temporary autonomous zones' and what 
this seemed to be was a way to create possibilities that otherwise 
would not be possible. A type of safe-haven for creativity, 
imagination, action, thought, and freedom. Not knowing the lineage of 
such work, its precedence nor politics, it was to be assumed that 
such an idea would be liberating and not stifling. Something, though, 
that was 'over there' and outside of my individual awareness. Ended 
up turning that channel off as it was not related to my educational 
pursuits.

Other areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Communities 
such as those based on BBSs, Muds and Moos, and VRML, and others, in 
retrospect, seem conducive to such zoning, in the sense that avatars, 
automous agents or interneet software robots, and others could 
function in this way, to the point of engaging, at what might be a 
most fundamental level, the electromagnetic groundplane where 
thoughts and ideas mix with bodies of one or many people in a 
fictionalized and-or actualized encounter with others similar and 
different.

Taken further, it is a certain timidity and non-interest in such 
aspects of the fundamental state of being online (and, ultimately, 
offline, if an experiment) that has always had an unsettling sense 
about it, in that minds can churn in ideas and lose themselves, to be 
taken by another, while under its protective and reassuring gaze. 
This is to say, as with the beginning of a universe, or of sentience, 
to hypothesize this state, the conditions, and mad-scientist (or in 
the case of some social theorists, mad humanists also) will bring the 
question of 'belief' to the forefront. What it is, how it works, its 
psychology of sorts.

In a sense, part of the 'hype' or 'hyper' culture, which is at times 
extremely cultish in its declarations of belief systems, and 
infallible in perspective, whether that of a techno-determinist or 
academic or economist gone globalized, is that this, just as with 
'cyber' and other pre-fixations on determinations of what is believed 
and attested to be 'legitimate' knowledge, (counter to that of being 
illegal or illicit) could possibly with the aid of protected zones, 
castles if one needs an analogy, become ecosystems of patterns of the 
mind, psychologies, and the belief systems which are liberated within 
cloistered walls put up to open up freedoms, while possibly keeping 
out beliefs that do not 1:1 match those of the magical knowledge, 
immanent, that people believe, have decided upon, and 'know' is true, 
no matter what. This is to say, the social realm of thinking, that 
part of education which is about questioning ideas and ideals and 
goals and problems and issues and situations and, with academic 
freedoms can offer new interpretations, opportunities, possibilities.

Yet, there has always seemed to be a wall of sorts in the psychology 
of people which divides us into many, which is great, good, and fine, 
except when it is necessary to work together. At this time, the walls 
can become barriers, and in themselves, block out possibilities, 
freedoms, changes. This is not to declare one way or the other about 
a certain philosophy, but to question a culture that may have in its 
current group dynamic, this 'character' trait, or traits or traces of 
such, which may be relevant to deciphering not only NN, but also in 
learning from NN about the range of possibilities, through a work of 
what is presumed herein to be that of the most intense of artworks, 
with the complex and contradictory questions it raises, and can teach 
about in a very unique way.


Masks of Medusa

So, already, probably there are great errors in writing what has been 
written, as these words are written as they are felt, primarily, and 
would like to be on the side of error of judgement, or, suspending 
any judgement, and declaring an uncertainty and middle-ground upon 
which to view that which can fracture the synaptic interconnections 
in the brain in a flash of total chaos and confusion.

The Nameless Nobodies that compose NN as an entity are not known. 
There is a sense that NN is a construct, that is similar to a dynamo 
of sorts. There seems to be a creater, who lifed the idea, and others 
who, may, have taken their parts as if in a play, or as performance 
artists, as dancers, as sculptors, as media artists, videographers, 
musicians, web designers, thinkers, theorists, those in the cognitive 
and biological sciences. Groups and groups, or waves upon wave of 
details, any particle of which may lead to unique interpretations. 
Yet, that is an assumption too early to make, as this was not known, 
and remains a mystery for the most part, the cerebral composition 
that is NN.

A greatly liberating aspects of encountering NN on lists was that it 
speaks/writes somewhere between the singular individual and plural of 
a group. It writes both in a type of coded script and also sometimes 
plain text. And, NN has attitude and controversy and energy and 
danger and imagination and chaos and everything else, yet has at 
times ummatched eloquence and beauty. This behind a mask of sorts, or 
many masks, sharing a common interface. It is not known if this is 
software, a type of group-ware, or how the conduits may or may not 
come together to write a text, or create an experience. 
Situationalists, DADA, and Fluxis, although not knowledgeable in any 
way about much of these artistic vantages, seems to offer some of the 
playfulness of what is often mentioned in biological analogies and-or 
terms, and also symbolic iconographies to ponder.

The thing is, is that not-knowing but having heard what might be 
considered clues for this game, autopoeitic theorists (shared by an 
architect who has shared they are part of such a group), to 
generative artists, to filmmakers and websites and people who may or 
may not exist, as similar TAZs, creates a type of unknowing 
atmosphere about what may be considered to be an actual person, 
and-or the representative of a group who is one of many interfaces 
for such a software, or wetware, brain design. This statement is 
inaccurate. The idea of recompiling, trying to change something and 
start the program over, is written here as a way to acknowledge the 
'bugs' in all statements made, and yet try to get near enough to the 
interface, or the collective mask, in order to describe it, while 
frozen.

But NN never stands still. Once reading what were in my view unique 
and amazing observations about electromagnetism, and wanting to share 
with others, about how this entity is not just another game, but it 
has done something far beyond that of most works today, and that is, 
it understands what it is doing to the most minute level, via media, 
and can communicate in any level of detail given a certain realm of 
inquiry, if there is resonance in the interface, yet as quickly as a 
bookmarked URL, the text seems to change, againa and again, or maybe 
it is illusory and only a perceived chaos, as the information flows 
so fast and vital and turbulently, yet calm and serene as to arrest 
heartfelt emotive connections.


Psyche and Eros

Still without knowing 'what' 'who' 'how' 'when' or 'why' or 'where' 
the Nameless Nobody that is NN resides, makes restating the primary 
assumption of not knowing what NN is nor the purpose. It may be for 
the individual to decide. Which is at once both extremely mysterious 
and maddeningly complex, as it may be impossible. That is, if NN 
exists in a vacuum of closed minds. Which, as a memorized idea, as a 
replicating virus of sorts, if that is an accurate enough 
description, could grab hold of the volunteering mass that await 
'love theory' to do its work, by caressing, manipulating, and 
cajoling the mind into a metaphysical sea of tranquility.

The mask, or software, or interface, its composition, whatever it may 
be considered (and need not be named) has a main attribute, and that 
is that it communicates using the words of a woman, a female, a 
group, and individuals. But oftentimes to encounter NN is to do so as 
a woman, primarily. This aspect has not been an issue yet now, in 
writing about NN, it needs to be stated to give evidence that there 
is a well-formed slant of perspective, a great weight upon the 
feminine and female aspects of this interface (maybe it is better 
said, inter.body yet it is not understood how to make such a leap as 
of yet).

To not engage NN on these terms, can become a limited engagement with 
NN as an idea. Yet to fully engage NN as a woman, on these terms, is 
to submit to NN as a woman. Which is quite interesting. As it has 
been clear that there pre-existing bias of man and mankind and the 
control of language by this perspective is met by such a strong force 
of thought, daring, and brutalism, which thrives online.

This is horrible, it sounds horrible to write it, it is not known how 
to write about why it is felt by this writer that declaring oneself 
opposite of other private languages (which may or may not be 
considered TAZs) that are online, that may be considered primarily 
male in their psychology as it is written, when language embeds 
hierarchies within it, and as such it becomes part of the belief 
system for perceiving and also demonstrating 'shared' ideas. It is to 
state that this is one of the many views but also unapologetically 
female-declared voices, and in a turn of events, forces one to engage 
what are oftentimes ideas of such brilliance, in these terms, as many 
have to do today in reverse with language.
And to go beyond language.

The only problem is that to engage NN about ideas, as said by one who 
composes NN, is at times like looking through windows and looking 
into mirrors. And the glare on these can be blinding to any clear 
sight, seeing beyond the limitations of language, there is really no 
way to have a discourse with NN about the ideas unless one submits to 
NN. Which, in sociological terms, is greatly disturbing and also 
helps me appreciate the biases faced by many peoples, in varying ways 
and varying degrees, when taking on status quo views, in an attempt 
to shape the changes, and help transform these greatly imbalanced 
systems of operation.

One day it was written somewhere online, about a project that sounds 
like NN, and like a play, and being someone in the audience deeply 
intrigued by the work, the ideas, but also the dynamic, but the work 
primarily, is that it seemed to be stated clearly enough that there 
were people who made up NN, and different groups of different people 
over time. Not sure if this is indeed the case, but it seems very 
likely, and thus the assumption was made that there are people who 
make up this composition, and that something may or may not have gone 
amiss, in that the NN that was created awhile (years) ago, had become 
somewhat of a bad-actor, or was playing the part of one, and had 
encounters with others which would basically put NN in the group of 
genuine troublemakers, and thus, may show a fracture within the 
psychological structure of the mask, behind it, in the minds of those 
running the software, in their minds, in their computers, and with 
their bodies when performing their parts. A story unfolds like those 
Russian dolls that are one-inside the other, almost like infinity, 
but for human limitations which in an open society would make 
predicting the future difficult,
but in a closed system, more simple and controlled, and yet would 
cause its own extinction if external variables changed.

If a self-regulating system breaks down it may not be able to adjust 
its equations to meet the new demands, it is guessed. And like NN, 
there seemed to be a moment in its life where NN broke the internal 
logic or presents itself as such, infighting, possibly, a flaw, 
possibly, a 'biosphere' which does not work exactly as the math says 
it should, and needs adjustments. In the biological or parasitic 
nature, possibly, NN seems to have become probablematic in dealing 
with mailing lists cultures. Whereby some part or the whole of NN was 
not welcomed in places where it previously had operated as a work 
moving about. It seems that a fracture may have occured, in the mask, 
between the inside and outside of the walls of various social 
networks, and now it became time for NN to be dealt with by 'her' 
creator. NN has some computer audiovisual software for what appears 
to be the mixing and collaging of images and sound in real-time, and 
has some disputes with a real or ficticious group in California, 
while the NN who argues this case is a cosmopolitan traveler, ultra 
chic, and willing to fight for the right to be heard. Whether or not 
this is fiction or factual is unclear.

But what it does indicate, at least to me, is a type of modeling of 
internet cultures in relation to individuals and group dynamics, and 
the notion of online space-time as a type of place, and what rules 
these places have, how they are operated, and why, even if it is a 
play, it is wished that this aspect of the NN project be shut down, 
or shut up, or censored, if not heard out. The reason this is being 
written, now, is because there is a human tragedy that can be seen in 
the NN project, if it can temporarily be labled as such, in order to 
see it as a social context. In this beautifully horrorific internet 
theatre, the other half of what seems to be NN, another entity, named 
'Restate' seems to appear out of nowhere to annihilate the previous 
version of NN. This may be mistaken, but the details and movements 
are choreographed in such a way to bring major themes into relation 
with one another, that when Restate is constituted as a piece of 
hardware for audiovisualizing sounds, a sense of panic set in.

The experience was very much like that of the painting of Lucretia, 
in which she commits suicide after being raped. And the dagger and 
'invisible hand' was symbolized by the newest and latest 
pseudo-audiovisual hardware, while the body was that of the renegade 
Nameless Nobody, or Nobodies, which composed it, and are running 
about playing with some immunity.


Social Theory and Social Engineering


What seemed to be clear, in the moments that those who attacked 
NN/integer, and in the issues surrounding 'having a voice in public 
forums' was that there was something not-right, logically, about what 
was going on. It was not seamless, and yet while there could be 
superb clarity, noisey dissosant and greatly differing views could 
also come across, through this 'medium' in the old sense of the word, 
a type of oracle of sorts, in the undifferentiated mass mindset.
And to witness this, the cornering, the ravaging, and the 
reconstitution of NN, but not without great confusion, great pain, 
and great joy to know that NN was able to survive the attack, and 
continue in some way, in whatever way, but why?

NN, and others, those who are Nameless Nobodies, who operate in some 
system in which they may be interacting with, were able to 
demonstrate the dynamics of online places much better than anything 
ever imagined by practice of social relations inside and outside of 
particularized internetworks. What NN was able to help me realize, by 
watching their performance, was that the groundplane of 
electromagnetic space and time (online and off) is pre-zoned in a 
way. That is, space that may be considered public, may be privatized 
by default. This is nothing new and basic. Yet, the concepts of how 
these 'places' online are conceived and perceived, by those both 
inside and outside of particular internetworks of influence or 
counterpoint to these, demonstrates that the politics and the 
economics of place- property if it need be described as such- sits in 
a weird relation to issues between that of the individual and group.

The belief that the poetic is personal and the personal is therefore political
is a great fragment of an ideological underpinning to the psyche 
which spans beyond any walls, and unites and founds the shared 
spaces, times, places online and off wherein one can operate in the 
existing and newly emerging systems. It is a market-based philosophy, 
and has primacy in the individual, foremost, it seems, as its logic, 
whereas in practice, it is about the group as a whole, yet that which 
runs a groups or individuals social agenda may be politics, and not 
art, or economics, and not art. This is unwieldy to write about, as 
it is not understood but perceived, as it is not about 'sides' in an 
either-or sense.

Contexts change. Things change. In one realm a work may be considered 
in certain terms, and at another time, other terms. Likely based on 
prior experiences with the work itself. What is intesting about the 
controversial entity that is NN is that it seems to struggle in 
relation to certain systems, and to be allowed yet not-allowed, to 
enter into realms, depending on who is doing the driving, it may be, 
or what psychology prevails in the market political-economy of social 
ideas.

Previously realizing sometimes in my own work where people who do not 
post work may be given the benefit of the doubt in moderated forums, 
and at other times protesting such, it was and remains difficult to 
articulate the differences when it is understood why some ideas are 
rightly not sent onward, and others, should be but are not. It may be 
writing, grammar, politics, ideology, or dislike. And it has always 
been sympathized with, the job of mailing list moderators, as they 
have one of the tougher jobs, as they are the ones who calculate how 
to make things work in an undefined (fuzzy) state, sometimes highly 
political and biased and to deal with such situations, or to avoid 
them and try containing fallout.

Yet when it came to the verge of readability, and questining of a 
semi-open system which deals with such issues, it became clear that 
one's 'fitness' can at times become primarily a political-economic 
issue, and the social aspects of the work, if one can dare say, the 
freedom of ideas and questioning in the public interest, can get 
crunched and discarded, in much the same way as NN was to be,
and may be was dealt with. So a sympathetic nerve was struck, in that 
it was not a work that has great enigmatic qualities like that of a 
Temporary Autonomous Zone, but also mailing lists of contemplating 
ideas about works such as NN, and inhabited by creators and 
participants of NN, possibly, yet, at the same time, possibly also 
banished, one castle from another. As a group, as an individual, as 
an idea, as an automaton, it is not yet known with much certainty.

In political-economic terms, the 'ownership' of the NN project seemed 
to make its way to prominence, in that it was defiant, in these 
traditional vantages. Yet, in all of the chaos and conflict of a 
later observer and someone who knows not much if anything about the 
inside of the castle NN, is that, as a story which unravels it seemed 
to require asking oneself about the governance of the self as both an 
individual entity and as a part of a group, in comparison to the 
political and economic markets, which are beset in all sectors by 
Enronomic inflations of value, especially that in the realm of social 
theory, where noise can be considered infallibly meaningful, and also 
mirrored through opposition.
The noise of texts, of words, of ideas, of chaos, of masks, of 
interfaces, of questions, of unknowns in which the math, the logic, 
and the reasoning may or may not add up, to those inside a given 
castle, those outside, and inbetween.

Like Beowulf, a movie (2001) version, the layers or membranes or 
walls or relations or group dynamics between the inside and outside, 
and between the governance of these areas, from views 
multiplicitious, of public and private interests, can breed a type of 
core meltdown, that unless dealt with can contaminate a place, unless 
measures (based on common/shared interests) are taken, and agreed 
upon. Yet, this solidarity, this cohesion, this agreement seems to be 
lacking today, in many sectors, as the prevalent belief system that 
is agreed upon is based upon differentiating without differntial 
calculus in which to relate changed states, contexts, rules of 
engagement. As corrupt as individuals can be, so too societies. And 
when ideas that once helped to protect a certain cultural freedom 
turns in upon itself, it is the reasoning that guides and governs it 
which will be protected and projected on the larger scales.

Deleuze and Gauttari, and Hakim Bey, and others seemed to have warned 
about this aspect of ideas. But there is no proof that can be 
offered, only imagined right now. This is to say that if social 
theory is primarily that of a political and economic marketplace, 
that 'enronomics' may also apply, in the sense of a system which 
corrupts itself, by operating behind closed doors, where freedom 
turns to its opposite effect, possibly, by the sheer fact that power 
is based on private and individual decisions, and group consensus is 
engineered from this base level, and in turn, social agendas are 
often the result of market forces or of the side-effects of 
technological decisions based on politics and money. The same for 
academics, for theorists, for philosophers, as for critics, as for 
most everyone else it is supposed, who engages the system of 
operation as it exists.

Therefore, a work of public potential may become corralled into 
private views and narrowed tunnels which at times can inform, and at 
other times, can deform and make one or many conform to rules as they 
are declared by the places, the open-markets, that are owned firstly, 
governed secondly, and in turn, shut down any criticism of the 
systems themselves, from human perspectives, through artworks and 
networks, and also any dissent, which could improve the system may be 
deemed irrelevant because 1:1 meaning is impossible to find with 
individuals in high-fidelity on every idea, unless one has the status 
of a supreme deity.

Thus, in an aesthetic sense, meaning a designed sense, ideas can be 
valued based on their engineering structure, how it fits with what 
exists, rather than any reconfiguration or regeneration of the 
structure itself, which is exactly that which architecture can do, in 
understanding place in electromagnetic space-time. Meaning, like a 
modern machine in an ideal garden, ideologies can churn ahead and try 
to outrun or outpace everything else, to stay ahead of the curve, but 
at the same time, may end, as a clean slate, by being razed as 
worthless property.
When thinking about humans and technology becomes an issue of the 
worth of property, in what way is this questioned, by whom, and who 
decides the fate of ideas inside private walls- of both individauls 
and groups- and as moderators?

The value of ideas is, if in architectural terms, a social question, 
whereas if in engineering terms, quite technical, technocratic, and 
deterministic in that the politics, the economics, not only of 
bodies, nameless and named/branded, but also of the minds, have to 
interface on this level in order to compete freely- but then again- 
'life' is not fair, and corruption exists, and mirrors reflect the 
same corruption in theories-as-pure-practice, or true-belief-system, 
or as a private decision (akin to religion and social-cult/ure 
organizations) upon which all must agree in order to join in the fun, 
the play, the immunity, to get the ticket to enjoy the ride and to 
never want to leave Wonderland nor Alice again.


Turing Machine

So the guess was made, one day, after following the path of NN, 
reading the work, some of which is much admired, some of which is 
less so, and some of which is pretty pendantic and supremely naive, 
violent, cruel, and inhumane- is that in this work, a range of 
emotions is elicited, at least by this person, in which a 
thought-experiment in which the mind needs to see beyond the eyes, to 
question the performance, is assumed to be about. And this, one day, 
became similar to that of a Turing Machine, yet warped into a biased 
stated, whereby a type of combination of many different 'multitudes' 
came together, and in turn, became an 'empire' of sorts, 
theory-to-practice, possibly, yet if based on logic it does not add 
up, the paradox, when one is trying to reverse-architecturalize the 
inside of the machine- better it may be to say- virtual intelligence 
of NN.

This is to state that there seems to be a logical fault in the game 
being played out whereby logic, reason, of the human and 
technological question, cannot be addressed on these terms, but only 
in controlled markets of interpretation whereby the politics, and the 
economics of the situation can do their work. Whether if it is 
through blackmail, breaking computers, sending viruses, there is an 
ecosystem around not the NN work itself, it is proposed, but as part 
of the NN project and its existence, which engages and battles and 
coopts and breathes and crushes and makes magical illusions and 
psychologically formats platforms upon which to view both the vistas 
and valleys of such epic ideas.

There is such banality in ideas and thinking these days, and yet, to 
encounter NN and be in effect destroyed and created and created and 
destroyed again and again by this work, forcing recompilations, 
recompositions, restatements of the goals and ideas and ideals and 
dreams and nightmares and horrors and fears- this is a work which has 
taught so much, but for which the masks are not accurate to engage 
the ideas they share, as they are, although glass cases exist to 
view, untouchable, in that there is no way to fairly engage the ideas 
as ideas, in their own terms, in the NN ecosystem, in public terms. 
Thus, to read of works, of ideas, yet to be held in silence, and to 
be mute, quiet as is possible, and to view and admire and yet also 
find concern and disgust, and not be able to engage, that is, 
interface the ideas in terms of minds, directly, but only in 
peripheral, indirect visions and constructions, it is as if 
indeterminacy has been made into a human model, of oceans of 
particles making a wave, the analog seems fluid but when separated 
the parts can be verified and validated as modules of the larger 
whole and possibly, or possibly not, human, but unable to be, in that 
at this level, when the clearest of ideas are presented that could be 
read by most anyone and find astonishingly acute observations and 
poetry, at the same time a demand of submission, conformance, and 
true-belief is demanded, required, in order to engage this part of 
the entity, which brings great sadness in that this is such a great 
work, yet in ways, severely misguided, that it is a cause for concern 
of the public nature of the work, its public review, and its chance 
to exist, as a work of art-science-technology-philosophy par 
excellence, yet never to be able to be judged in such terms, in this, 
what may be one of its many fascinating aspects - yet to be 
polarized, marginalized, and in a sense, to turn into the opposite of 
what it is, what it says, due to the system in which it operates, no 
longer as an idea, but ideologically, actors and network plays.


Power and Improbable Paradoxes


Of the many interpretations to the work of NN, as a project and as an 
entity, of all the assumptions made, it was not driven by a desire to 
write, to brand, to sell, to convey, to question - but to find 
release, freedom, resolution, sanity in the encounter with not just 
this event-horizon and its gravitas, but also in the ecosystem of its 
operation, as an idea, how it is judged, pre-judged, and how it may 
be a model for learning about how humans relate in technological 
environments in an way externalized from the everyday experience, but 
also deeply embedded within it, as has been stated for years is the 
actuality of established  power brokers and their philosophical 
rationalizations and belief systems.

A person may fail when declaring public their ideas, if they are 
judged only in terms of political and economic evaulation, i.e. value 
of their usefullness to current and short-term markets for applied 
theory-thoughts-thinking. Yet, just as Nameless Nobodies, one who may 
have once said they were considered 'bottom feeders' in the 
ecosystem, are Human Beings, in the sense of a shared name in this 
technological environment. Not as a unique brand, but as a shared 
group. And to see and experience NN operating on this level, merging 
in effect the complexities of social capital with that of political 
and economic capital, is to witness an experiment which can yield 
great knowledge as to how to build, in the ways declared and desired, 
shared spaces that planned zoning can provide, while at the same 
time, seeing the conflicts, the problems, mirrored on the 
micro-scale, in NN, and yet writ large on the world and beyond, in 
the macro-scale, of how divergent thoughts, politics, worlds, and 
their common interface and their collapse and rupturing can mimic 
today, but also possibly create tomorrow, through designing better 
systems, in public and with public review - to learn from the 
Nameless Nobody. If it is a book, a play, a film, whatever it may be 
- it may become something else than intended. Not just as any one 
film or book or play, taken as a part of the whole, but also as an 
idea that is what another nameless nobody might believe is the 
highest caliber of work experienced, if publicly reviewed, and the 
most frightening if left only to be that of private recitals by 
technicians determined to make things work right.

The mediawork, artwork, mindwork, bodywork, all of it has such 
terrifying beauty. Not because the entity that is NN demands it, but 
the ideas question it, unlike anything in forums for similar 
questions today, where discourses are stale, highly controlled, and 
mediocre at best, as the ecosystems are refined to a point of 
refusing to adapt to changed circumstances - creating, in states of 
great denial, the monsters in their own midst, and ready to point 
blame and destroy the enemy before questioning their infallibility as 
rulers in charge.

Nothingness and being have changed, and yet stand still in the sealed 
coffins of the internetworked social structure, where technology is 
unquestioned in value nor purpose nor design, and people are the ones 
who must change, not the rules of engaging, interfacing with ideas. 
This forces polarities, and crushes the creativity of change, of 
innovation, of ideas, of possible futures, and instead all is dead, 
stopped, watching everything repeat itself in a play with no exits.


Reinstating Public Debate

As a result of not-knowing the true story, what is actually the 
purpose or intent of the NN project, it is obviously necessary to 
state massive and total ignorance. Yet, to feel these walls, this 
maze, though blinded in many ways by individual preconceptions, is to 
not choose, or to wish for the impossible... And for this person that 
is that the work of the NN project, NN as entity, is publicly 
reviewed as a work of great complexity and integrity and yet is also 
in a sense, governed by public review, in terms of societal issues 
with technology and the grave consequences for such ideas to be 
maligned for daring to question, and in turn, pitting empires against 
empires in never ending wars of inhumanity.

This post is written as an escape, as a way to try to think ones self 
out of a maze or vastly complex puzzle, to 'retreat in your own 
direction' and yet to do so with greatest hope for peace and 
recognition of brilliant work that shines, although its star may have 
collapsed years ago, from where it is now sensed.


references:

http://eusocial.com/
http://restate.org/

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