Geert Lovink on Wed, 7 Apr 1999 10:31:03 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> Digital Resistance: WWW War... |
> Yes, but in my opinion it's much better to keep the internet alive. This is > my answer to all the people, who ask me how to hack NATO or Yugoslav sites > as a war volunteer and hacker. We should work for peace and freedom. This > means, we should work for uncensored communication beyond the military > disinformation and propaganda of both sides on the net. true, but internet is now slowly becoming part of people's life, their institutions and all the dirty realities attached to it. it is worth defending the net, and its principles of decentralization and distribution of power, but the AOLs, WebTVs, telcos and other business people are not interested in this 'idealism'. they are turning the net now into an interactive mass medium meant for only one purpose: electronic commerce. all the rest is becoming marginal. governments are encouraging this trend. the logical next step is that activists (from all sides) can no longer see the net as something 'neutral'. it is not, and perhaps never has been. what I find a bit silly is to think that bringing down PR servers of, for example, NATO has any 'real' effect. these hacks are symbolic; actions aimed to get publicity. they are by no means affecting the military infrastructure. geert --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl