<nettime> cellular

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

It seems, based on energy invested in passionate discourses in forums by 
otherwise intelligent people, that there is little understanding of 
cellularity of machine-mediated communications.
The amount of cross-talk, which is essential for spreading ideas to 
wider audiences, is near-zero. The perfection with which machines carve 
out the communication cells has no parallel in the history. One is 
always talking to known audience in a hermetic echo chamber, a gated 
community.
Subscribers. Followers. Supporters. Members. Goers. Forums. Invites. 
First you must identify yourself and join as the set member, then you 
can 'participate'. All set memberships are known to anyone that cares to 
find out, neatly recorded, logged and archived. The decision to join is 
set-based, not idea-based. Even if there was an idea used to market the 
set, the set is what remains. Such set is a death trap for an idea, 
which is probably why there is so much investment in enabling sets. Just 
think of it ... when you are interested in something, first you look for 
the set to lock yourself in.
Of course, there were groups before, but there was always cross talk. 
Information traveling through the air (light, sound) is broadcast by 
nature, not targeted. Ideas permeate environment accidentally or 
intentionally.
The notion that variety of 'groups' somehow represents choice and 
improvement is utter bs. There are estimates of over 600 million FB 
groups, and possibly hundreds thousands of GOOG groups (it's interesting 
that these numbers are never published. Platforms boast about numbers - 
users, visits, etc., but they will never reveal number of sets.) It 
looks much more like a fine-grained Venus flytrap.
Can you even imagine Christianity of Bolsheviks succeeding if they had 
FB pages?
The war on indiscriminate idea broadcast in the machine mediums began 
with the demise of web sites. Being DNS-addressable and reachable by 
everyone, they mimicked the pre-machine communication world. This was 
effected by suppression of URLs: instead of using the actual name, the 
hapless user was trained to 'say' what he wants, and then the authority 
would point to approved places that dealt with the topic. This training 
was incredibly successful: look around you - how many cretins begin web 
browsing by typing into GOOG search bar? Even if they know the f*cking 
URL, they will still type it into GOOG search bar. Some browsers even 
hide the address field.
The point is that the shit we're in is effected by some rather 
pedestrian means at the infrastructure level, which then have been made 
invisible by propaganda, and the way out is not some grand scheme, but 
rather simple de-programming. Or are we no better than elephants? (see 
"baby elephant syndrome" ... I wonder what elephants philosophize about 
in later years to explain their condition?)

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