Week 10: Tom Cruise...

...seriously freaks me out.

If Will Smith is a Scientologist too, I'll never ever love again. :[

But I do believe in aliens. Whether they are of superior intelligence to us or of inferior intelligence. At least a plant. Or some tiny specimen of life, even a paramecium. Maybe even lower. It has got to exist.

Week 9

The picture of Subcommandante Marcos... total Counterstrike. Fire in the hole!

The picture of Ricardo Dominguez, hacktivist... all I see is that mischievous little hair curl. I wonder if it was intentional or not: if he had to try to gel it down but it wouldn't stay, or if he had to spend any extra time to purposefully achieve that curl. LOL

The picture of Oxblood Ruffin... Oxblood? I'm sure he chose that one himself. And what is up with that Chinese character on his beanie? I HATE seeing Chinese characters on random things. He also looks like he has never seen the light of day cuz he's hacking in his underwear all day long.

I think............ ECD is legal. And if not, it should be legal. And it doesn't matter anyway, a lot of things are legal that shouldn't be and a lot of things are illegal that shouldn't be.

Week 8

It was truly interesting to watch the video about UCSD back in the day. I never really thought much of my four years that I've experienced at UCSD under the context of the current students, faculty, and historical time period. Seeing the same buildings that stand today, yet how different the campus was back then... it really puts things in perspective. It was especially interesting to note the types of stuff that was painted on a Revelle dorm room windows. I lived in Revelle dorms my freshman year and we too painted stuff on our windows. They were mostly useless stuff, like squiggles and jokes and such. Back then they painted things like peace signs, POWER, and other more politically aware slogans that shows us what was important to students back in that time, important enough in their lives for them to think to paint such different things than we do now.

Week 7: Paaaahhhhtay!

In the video I especially liked the part about the Guelaguetza. When obstacles come our way we tend to become hardened, solemn, low in spirits, and downtrodden. Sometimes it's vengeance that powers us and not what's really supposed to matter. Watching the people take back what was once theirs and party harder than ever, while enduring extremely difficult situations made me think how unfortunate WE actually are, living in a land with greater social opportunities and where we can exercise more freedom than the people of Oaxaca had, and yet being generally unable to find reasons to overcome and celebrate ourselves with the people around us. 

Midterm Essay: The Political Power of the Decentralized Emergent System

Download link to word doc: (>>here<<) 34kb

copy of essay below:

The Political Power of the Decentralized Emergent System

       We live in a paradoxical world where the masses are marginalized and the few rule the world. We have acquiesced to the struggles and injustices we are pitted against; many of us have been tricked into believing that there isn’t any other way. Nature, however, tells us that this is not so. Many successful social systems found in the natural world are decentralized and emergent in nature. Take ant colonies for example. Ant colonies are highly organized and efficient, ranging from job distribution to the allocation of waste landfills and even cemetaries. One can easily assume there must be a leader figure, perhaps the queen, who governs the colony’s behaviors. This is untrue, and there exists no central figure or planning department in ant colonies. Their intelligent colony system is decentralized and emergent, working from the bottom-up and exhibiting behaviors that are always for the greater good of the colony. We, as human beings, are inclined to a centralized mindset where we automatically tend to look for the central figure in understanding group behaviors. Decentralized systems utilize networks composed of a multitude of individual agents, whether they are people or groups. The very nature of a decentralized system makes it an effective political tool for fighting against centrally structured forces with pro-democratic activism while also empowering its members.

       An emergent system is a system of complexity that arises from the simpler relationships between multitudes of smaller, local, and isolated agents. An emergent system does not require any purposeful, central decision-making or any exertion of leadership from a single figure. It can develop and self-organize completely on its own. Often times, especially in nature, the individual agents that make up the collective system are not aware of the higher rules that govern them; they are only concerned with their local interactions which in turn is what allows for the emergence of more complex rules. One of the most advantageous qualities that such systems can boast is its resiliency. The source of its power is in the collective, and the failure of a single point in the system is greatly less traumatic to the rest of the system than it is so in centralized systems. A centralized system, on the other hand, can self-destruct if the central figure is dismantled. This can explain why people in power, especially monetary power, feverishly try to obtain more and more power just to stay at the top and keep their system alive. In decentralized, emergent systems however, what arises is a set of self-organized, group-intelligent complexities that promote the health of the system.

       Decentralized systems have structures ideal for social organization and political activism in today’s centralized world. The collective that grows from the grouping of individuals brings about properties and possibilities that are impossible for the individual to achieve and that only the collective can accomplish. It can solve problems that can be impossible for the individual agents to do on their own, such as increasing the amplitude of an action or avoiding targeted punishment. Within a collective, actions can be justified as representations of social moral issues, whereas an individual committing the same action alone would not be heard in the same way. In order to better understand a self-organized system at work, we can learn from the Underground Railroad of the 1800’s. The Underground Railroad did not come about through the convening of central authorities that planned out all the route logistics entirely at once. Instead, it was organized in smaller, localized groups. These individual agents belonged to a larger scheme of organization that they did not necessarily have specific knowledge of. The Underground Railroad was an emergent network that owes its success to the characteristic qualities of a decentralized system. In fact, it was crucial that the individual agents merely did their share of the job and had a limited knowledge of the bigger picture. Without the existence of a central headquarters susceptible to attack, the safer the network was.

       Networks are especially apt for a social revolution of the masses due to their multitudinous nature. Since the eighties, Hacktivists, politically active hackers, worked to make privately, governmentally owned internet technologies accessible to all. Contributing to the “freeing information” movement of the sixties, they worked to politically disrupt the existing order of computing. The EZLN, or the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, was the response to unfair NAFTA deals that would further marginalize their people, robbing them of their historical land and way of life. The Zapatistas were not hackers with access to computers, and the Hacktivists were not indigenous Zapatistas whose lands and rights were being exploited. By the unifying power of networks, however, on January 1st, 1994, the Zapatistas, without computers and without access to the internet, broke into the virtual, electronic fabric in protest to the injustice inflicted on their people. Despite the Mexican government’s attempts to limit media coverage of Chiapas, through networked information sharing the computerless Zapatistas unleashed a crippling netwar against its great oppressor. These disparate groups, the Hacktivists and the Zapatistas, working separately but towards essentially similar goals was catalysis enough for the emergence of a network that unified these previously separate entities. There lies great power in the multitudinous network of “weaker” people that can subvert the influence of “greater” authorities that usually act in self-interest and not in the interest of the masses. This power gave the Zapatistas a greater weapon that did not exist as guns and arms but as nonviolent direct action, and with it they were able to injure their globalizing oppressor. The electronic attack rendered the NAFTA useless in terms of retaliation. How could one fight back an internet-based network where there exists no physicality or a clear node of centralization? This idea works on the same principle as nomadic power, the upper hand of ambiguity lacking in set borders. This is precisely why decentralized systems provide to the marginalized masses a powerful, political tool practical to the opposition of centralized evils, without the need of vast amounts of money and tightly knit infrastructure planning.

       Furthermore, the structure of the EZLN itself is pro-democratic and horizontal in nature, keeping the interests of the masses alive. Its needs and demands are based on the interests of the community as a whole. A key characteristic of the horizontal EZLN group is that it does not seek to overthrow the Mexican government; all they desire is autonomy and the enabling of rights of their own. Such horizontal decentralization is also integral to other pro-democratic groups. Extreme Democracy is a network of activists that acts on a philosophy of putting the people in charge, following the political model of “Emergent Democracy” by the emphasized use of technological tools and the Internet. An aspect they share with the EZLN is that they too define the basic unit of organization as the people, or more specifically, the activists. They act to change the very nature of democratic representation by utilizing the emergent, effective qualities of networks. Decentralized, networked systems are not only more stable than centralized systems; they promote self-regulation and increased efficiency in information exchange. Also, centralized systems lack in adaptability to new factors or evolving issues. This model is impractical especially for social and political activism. In case of becoming attacked, a certain degree of tension is necessary for collective networks seeking successful reform. The ambiguity of a central node characteristic to decentralized systems can provide this tension, increasing resiliency to disruption. Although there are pros and cons to both systems, top-down systems tend to fall short against the demands of bottom-up systems. David Ronfeldt insists that "institutions can be defeated by networks, and it may take networks to counter networks"(Wehling). Metaphorically put, decentralized systems are nets that can absorb the stab of a pyramid and also engulf the pyramid on all its sides; the pyramid cannot win unless it too turns itself into a net. This gives networked, decentralized systems an advantage when working against centralized authorities, which was proven by the Zapatista movement and other social revolutions around the world.

       The modern world is made up of 6.7 billion people. Yet, all political power lies in the hands of a selected few. Selected not by the 6.7 billions people, of course, but by some magical, God-given Calvinian, predestined birthright to exorbitant financial fortunes. 6.6999 billion lives are under a dictatorship of social, political, and economic oppression whether we realize it or not. How can we even begin to chip away at that centralization of power? We, all 6.6999 billion of us, have an advantage. We are the masses and the multitudes, and in that itself lies our potential power. Without participating in direct action, no amount of faith in a leader figure is enough to propel the changes you wish to see. Continuing to feed our centralized political system can do nothing for the best interest of all, not just in America but oppressed people all over the world whose lives are directly paying for the luxuries of the few. In order to see change, we must change first. Only when the individual agents do their own part can the greater, networked system of self-organization and adaptability emerge, unleashing the power to make real changes. Only in horizontal networks of the multitudes lie the power to disrupt the vertically oriented, unjust order of the world.

Week 6: Don't Fuck wit the Zapatistas

Could not make it to class. I will read about the writing anyway. I mean, write about the reading. Haha.

Performance Art in a Digital Age: A Live Conversation with Ricardo Dominguez.
The funny thing is, I can totally hear his voice as I read this.

404.. clever.

Who is the Sea?

A Contribution to the Discussion of Electronic Civil Disobedience by Harry Cleaver.
If the Zapatistas are down to break the law, then I am down with the Zapatistas. In the videos we saw in class, they look so gangster with the bandannas on their faces.

Week 5: Electoral College=Aryans?

I spelled Gandhi right today. “Puts down armed violence and turns 100% electronic, Gandhian.” Never will I mess up on that ever again. And NOOSPHERIC! :] I'm glad I spelled this one wrong before. Makes the meaning more memorable in my mind. And I like the meaning. Even though its definition is the blurry kind. My favorite! I love stuff where you can imagine it in your head and you can even almost feel, but can't really explain in words.

I asked Professor Dominguez a question in class, and I actually understood the answer. I have a hard time understanding something when it’s spoken to me. I usually have to read it over and over and imagine images in my head. It was difficult for me to understand how the Zapatistas “ripped through the electronic fabric” without computers and how in the world they “put down armed violence and turned 100% electronic.” (I’m quoting my own written notes right now.) Then I realized that I was thinking in a purely A-to-B kind of top-down logical mindset. I learned about bottom-up structures and swarming before, and when Professor Dominguez mentioned the word swarming I started to see it from that point of view and it started to make sense.

Samuel Huntington. What a shitface.

When I imagine the electoral college,
I see a bunch of blonde and very pale superhumans.

Week 4: I Like Knowing that You Don't Know that I Know and You Don't

Class cancelled.

I should mention, I love how this whole topic of ECD is so readily accessible with all the pdfs and all. I love the opensourcenessosity! I HATE researching for schoolwork and encountering those 5-sentence, small preview-only documents that you gotta register and pay for and cancel memberships and shit.

So about this week’s material….
The Chiapas Uprising. Anti-NAFTA and anti-development. Netwars. Erosion of top-down hierarchies. Got it. I don’t really know what to say about it all. I’m just trying to absorb it all first.

The Internet is a crazy realm. No one knows if identities are real. The differences in people are based on the type of image you project of yourself online. Some limit their Internet use to "fundamental" things like e-mail and stock analysis. For some, the Internet is the biggest part of their social lives. Some use it to show themselves off to an anonymous public, and in this case the Internet can amplify the events in their lives. Others use augmented or fake online personas to hide their real-life insecurities. You can fall in love, save a kitten from being eaten, educate yourself and others on important issues, download the weirdest porn imaginable, and find children to molest, all on the Internet.

What all these things share in common is that they are merely extensions of our personal lives. The one thing we fail to realize about the power of the internet is actually and potentially the most important thing the Internet can offer us, not just in personal tastes and values but in deeply social and political ways that could change the very way we live our lives. It can possibly even flip upside down the way the world is currently running. It is the power of networks and the multitudes.

Networks, hacktivism, activism, education, revolution, government reform, social reform, corporates, conglomerates, exposing corruption, failure, crashes, destruction, conservation, meltdowns, extinction, foresight, opportunities, evolution, these are all terms that can be influenced by the Internet, for better or for worse.


“Institutions can be defeated by networks, and it may take networks to counter networks.” -David Ronfeldt, my brooo.
I copied this statement down in my notebook. I like it. Behold the power of the network!

“You can't see us… but we can see you.” -Creepy Me. Muahahaha.

Week 3: Huh?

The reading…
was really hard.

I think it’s all the new vocabulary involved.
Dammit NOOSPHERIC! I spelled you wrong in my notebook, as “nuospheric[?]” when I was writing it down in class. Personally, this class to me is a class of many firsts... with all these spelling errors and also the with the midterm essay. I’ve never had to select my own topic since my 25 page AP US History paper junior year of high school, and even then I got to choose from a long list of topics. I like when the professor tells me exactly what to write. I get an A, they read what they wanted to hear, and we’re both happy.

Noospheric. “globe spanning realm of the mind...” I like it.
Collective knowledge is such a crazy concept.

BwO BwO BwO

Week 2: Gandhi or Ghandi?

I always pride myself on my excellent spelling skills.
Damn you Gandhi for making me mess up.
This is the first time in a very long time where I've made a spelling error, except when I purposely butcher spelling and grammar while chatting with my friends online.
I am mildly pissed off.

Moving on...

"Multitude is at the core of civil disobedience."
Said beautifully by Professor Dominguez. I don't know why this line is sO kEwL. It's an interesting statement. Why does the word multitude correlate with civil disobedience? Shouldn't the multitudes constitute what is RIGHT? It's a shame that the multitude, or the masses, or the general public which is inherently supposed to be good, should be disobedient in order to convey what's right, good, and beneficial to them. Because this means that the non-multitude, or the few people way up there at the zenith of the social pyramid who are supposed to represent the rest of us, are actually promoting something that's only good for them and NOT good for us, and in order for us to try to spread some goodness we gotta be disobedient. It'd be nice world if we could just be OBEDIENT to what's really and actually good for us. Although personally I enjoy breaking rules. To a certain extent. Actually, to any extent. Haha.

Conceptually, and because we're all rebels at heart, disobeying the rules definitely sounds cooler.