@H+ :: Anarcho-Transhumanism

Once again, we’ve fallen behind in the blogging, though not from lack of interest. Here are some random tidbits to keep you occupied until we get back on track:

* Worth reading: Towards a Democratic Conception of Science and Technology

* Added an old Aufheben critique of primitivism and Liberate Not Exterminate, an anarchist defense of cities, to the sidebar links.

* If any of our readers happen to be tabletop RPG geeks, there’s a transhuman-flavored sci-fi RPG in the works called Eclipse Phase that has a significant anarchist element. Some info here and here.

* If you’re looking for more reading, check out these (dated) threads on the Anarchist Black Cat Forums: Techno-Hubris or the Shape of Things to Come? and The Continuing Appeal of Primitivism

NEFAC recently (re)published a refreshing look at the ecological problem from a libertarian communist perspective. Though this is only a framework, and doesn’t take into account the accelerating pace of technological change, it does correctly pinpoint the solution as dismantling capitalism and establishing new models of production, distribution, and energy rather than opposing (the misuse of) technology.

FYI to folks in the Midwest, the annual Finding Our Roots anarchist conference is going on in Chicago this weekend. This year’s focus is on anarchist organizing. The list of workshops can be found here.

Antisocialite and I may throw together an impromptu guerrilla workshop on Sunday to talk about issues relating to @ organizing and technology — stuff like:

– technology and security culture (surveillance, sousveillance, crypto, etc)

– internet organizing, open source models, new media, hacktivism

– organizing around tech issues, universal access to tech, subverting authoritarian tech for libertarian purposes

As a quick follow-up to Antisocialite’s post about Anonymous vs. Scientology (he tells me part 2 is coming soon), this brief over at Global Guerrillas summarizes Project Chanology in the context of an open source insurgency. Even more interesting, however, is this reply from a member of Anonymous:

Firstly, Anonymous is an example of viral organisation - there is no centralised leadership, and although there are nodes of organisation, these are dynamic - if one goes down or is taken down, others compensate with little damage done to the utility of the network as a whole. Organisation and decisions are made through what I would term “viral consensus” - the facts, questions and opinions are disseminated throughout the network by it’s users, the most successful or popular of these possible courses of action are therefore repeated more often and gain traction - mutations to the idea occur and those that are popular flourish. As such, there are no leaders to attack - whilst there may be some individuals who are more visible (such as Mark Bunker) they are not essential-, no easily-accisble points of failure. Indeed, the only thing that would severely disrupt the insurgency as a whole is internal factional problems - which are near-impossible for an outsider to predict or cause due to the shibboleths John mentions; or a total disruption of the internet as a whole.

Secondly, the initial campaign of DDOS and internet insurgency can be seen as an example of the internet as an enabling force - most members of anonymous are not hackers or computer security experts, but the information available on how to conduct operations such as DDOS attacks etc is readily available on the internet, and can be spread concisely and practically throughout the group itself through other networking tools (IRC, message boards, forums, p2p). However, the interesting thing in particular about the methodology of anonymous is that it is intensely adaptable - when the opinions of Mark Bunker that the illegal aspects of anonymous actions (DDOS etc) were tactically efficient but strategically detrimental entered the viral consciousness, the methodology drastically changed - to real life protests organised over a number of countries, and to information dissemination tactics aimed at the public.

I’ve been telling Infomorph that I was going to write something about the planned 2/10 protests for something like three weeks now to the point where the protests have come and gone and I’m only now sitting down to hammer this out. At this point I think my thoughts fall into two separate entries so this is the first focusing on how what Anon has done and how it gives hope to radicals and anarchists of all types, but particularly those of us of a more pro-tech orientation. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth discussion on the anarchists LJ community lately concerning technology and urbanization. I don’t loiter on LJ enough to get involved in these threads (they seem to explode very rapidly into 100+ posts), but it’s nice to see the level of debate taking a step up. Of particular interest is this post on Land Mass, Crop Production, and Urbanization with some math worth thinking about.

Over at Open the Future, Jamais Cascio was recently talking about inevitable near-future events that have the capacity to radically transform our society:

You don’t have to believe in incipient singularities to recognize that 2028 — just twenty years from now — will bear very little resemblance to 2008.

A small cluster of rapidly-accelerating drivers promises to dominate the first quarter of this century. Each of these drivers, alone, has the potential to remake how we live; together, the likelihood of a fundamental transformation of our lives, our politics, our world, becomes over-determined. Moreover, these drivers are distinct but interdependent: each one exists and would be transformative on its own, but how it plays out — and the choices we’ll face when confronting it — will be contingent upon how the other drivers unfold. Twenty years isn’t a long time to make the needed changes to turn potential disaster into a new world; we have all of five US presidential terms — maximum — to completely transform, globally, every significant aspect of our material civilization.

The specific drivers he notes are:

• Climate Chaos
• Resource Collapse
• Catalytic Innovation (transformative technologies)
• Ubiquitous Transparency (surveillance state vs. sousveillance)
• New Models of Global Development
• The Rise of the Post-Hegemonic World (the weakening of American power)

As I’ve discussed in previous posts (see Will Robots Spark the Revolution?), the point behind anarcho-transhumanist projects shouldn’t be just to advocate and fight for open access to and liberatory uses of technology. One of our main priorities should be to evaluate futurist scenarios for transformative drivers like those mentioned above that have the capacity to not only shake up the world, but to create crisis points within capitalism — stages where capitalist hegemony is weakened and possibilities for revolutionary alternatives are increased. There is far too little discussion in anarchist scenarios about the future — and what is out there tends to be formulated as dire warnings of impending apocalypse or Big Brother scenarios. The primitivists, perhaps, discuss these matters, but only with a callous eye towards how they can exploit tragedy to achieve their fantasy tribal lifestyles.

What revolutionary-minded anarchists should be doing is evaluating these drivers noted above and creating a game plan. What outcomes are likely? How can we position ourselves to affect them, to strive towards outcomes we’d prefer? How can we take advantage of the weaknesses these changes will bring to the status quo? What political stances should we be making and clarifying now, in preparation for future ideological battles? What sort of movement infrastructure should we be seeking to establish, in order to create a counterpower best prepared to deal with these future scenarios? Where should we focus our organizing efforts? Our direct action?

Our movements spend far too much time trying to fight a monolithic capitalism system head-on right now, while glorifying the past, without realizing that both are going to have very little relevance on how the next 20-50 years play out. The world is going to be changing quite rapidly, and if we’re not prepared to deal with it, we’re going to have no chance in fighting for a better future. It’s adapt or die time. So let’s get to it.

So it appears that Case Western has created ’super mice’ by way of a genetweak. Full article here.

The article itself makes for some interesting reading. The mouse is stronger, faster, more durable, lives longer, eats more but is less fat and, as the talking bobbleheads on CNN pointed out, it is sexually active longer into its lifespan. And best of all, the gene that was tweaked is one that is also present in humans.

But not to worry, say the researchers, this would never be done on humans! Bullshit. It’s fucking intellectually dishonest to present this as something that these scientists did “just for funsies and only for mice.” What kind of fucking moron actually buys that? You don’t do biomedical research on mice because you’re interested in making mice live longer, eat better, and have great sex in their old age. You just don’t. You do it because you want to improve humans. Improve them in the way you improved the mice.

By avoiding the question of whether these techniques can be developed for humans, or worse still claiming that they would never do that is utter bullshit. It’s dishonest and tries to preempt a legitimate discussion on this technique. Claiming that something is unethical and shouldn’t be used to enhance people merely ensures that discussions about the technique don’t take place in the public. And this is a discussion that should very much take place in public. Are you honestly telling me that everyone in the world is bound by the same morals as the CWRU scientists? That China, or Russia, or even DARPA isn’t creaming themselves over the idea of soldiers or workers who can work longer, live longer, are more durable? Considering all the crazy shit that DARPA has done in the past (for example check out Sharon Weinberger’s stuff or the Danger Room blog) this is basically a slam dunk homerun touchdown.

Not talking about techniques like this openly and publicly only feeds the conspiracy theory trolls of the bioconservative movement. Pretending we would never-ever seek to do something like this to humans just reinforces the paranoia that scientists are lying to us and are making a seekrit army of clones in underground bunkers somewhere. Sure, a public debate is gonna bring out the crazy, but last I checked crazy still got to participate in public debate (see: Presidential Election). Crazy is gonna sound off anyway, we may as well have a more open and honest discourse.

Among the many books I have piled up awaiting read is Naseem Taleb’s The Black Swan but I thought I’d offer a quick note after hearing him speak on a radio talk show yesterday. The main point of the book seems to be that we don’t take into account anomalous events enough when making plans for the future. Taleb seems to mostly be talking about the predictive modeling that is used for the making of public and economic policy but his point is one that’s been stressed by social psychologists in the past: namely that we have a tendency to assume a base continuity to our lives, that things will continue to be much as they have been in the past.

Why does this matter for us? Well I’ve already talked to one friend who opined that since black swans are going to happen it’s pointless to try and learn anything from past events and we should embrace a sort of fatalistic nihilism. I find this sort of sentiment to be rather stupid and I’m fairly certain it’s not the point Taleb is trying to make.

While there will undoubtedly be more black swans to come, the important thing isn’t necessarily trying to predict them but, rather, to be in place to influence the response to them. Look at the American Neo-Conservative movement as an example. Without a doubt September 11th was a black swan event. While it was something a small group had warned about, it wasn’t considered a terribly likely event so it caught us unawares. That small group that had warned about it was instantly awarded credibility and given prime spots shouting nonsense on teevee and within the administration.

So what you ask?

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been following the debate surrounding this op-ed by Mark Helprin. Helprin, who keeps getting referred to as a sci-fi writer but not as a fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute, basically makes the claim that not only are copyrights a good thing, but they should be extended to last perpetually. As in, forever.

There’s been a spirited rebuttal posted at this wiki where they make several valid points, including Helprin’s mistaken understanding of public goods. The main point, however, that copyrights are something desirable and good, is never questioned. Certainly not by Helprin, and not by the wiki (at least last time I checked).

Read the rest of this entry »