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sterling_interview
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sterling_interview
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Sterling Interview
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"The cities are digital salt marshes now. There is no solid ground anywhere."
* The recent discussion of thorium as a "green" nuclear fuel, disregarded because its outputs weren't easy to weaponize, came right before the announcement of new, complex nanocircuitry at Stanford, no doubt funded in part by the Department of Defense. Will there ever be an end to technological development for the sake of war, a time where efficiency rather than control becomes the dominant driving force behind the expenditure of tax dollars on technology development? You've called cell phones "tin wind up toys compared to what is coming"--will you share something of what you are envisioning here?
* When investigating online communities, some colleagues and I came across the case of Carmen Hermosillo, better known as humdog. Here is an individual who whose assemblage of contacts and history were more digital than analog, someone who developed frameworks for outlining the pitfalls of virtual relationships and yet was herself unable to avoid those very pitfalls. People are becoming more and more impacted by their "virtual others," as demonstrated by the increasing rise of suicides that revolve around problems with online origins. Are we seeing an emergent psychic duality, a partitioning of self across actual and virtual space, in both but never only in one, the signifier of the physical self as inadequate as the data body in representing the entire assemblage of "you"?
* In 1990, there were still phreakers running amok, "owning" whole sections of telecommunications systems, and I was dubbing tapes like all the other kids. In 2000, Kevin Mitnick was just about to end his prison career and the L0pht were about to merge with @stake, while tens of millions were signing up to Napster a month. In 2010, the US government hosts systems cracking competitions and we have seen cases close in judgments against The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. What room remains for unsanctioned use of the Internet infrastructure? Does the FCC's language discussing net neutrality for "legal software" signal potential policy shifts in the pipeline? The fragility of the entire system seems under-appreciated. Why isn't a vulnerablty on the DNS poisoning not a headline issue in physical newspapers? What happened to discussing the developing architecture of our "Information Superhighway" in real space? Is it just a fact that, as Geert Lovink says, "We are all connected, yet we do not care," or could the fabled netizen perhaps yet actualize?
* It's getting close to twenty years since the publishing of _The Hacker Crackdown_, required reading for anyone engaging with computer history and looking for a civil liberties case study. For those who have not read the book, reality served you with one of its elegant ironies. In a severely bleak looking trial against a hacker who published details on the 911 phone system, a random individual discovers and notifies the defense attorneys that the supposedly sensitive details are available for purchase through AT&T [FC!] catalogs. The prosecution's case sort of crumbles after that, yet the extremes that had been reached in the investigation stand testament to the level of response the US government is ready to flex to win a high-profile, high-tech case. Then we have Kevin Mitnick, who was told in plain terms it was either plea bargain or remain without trial. Yet neither of these stories are well-known outside the cyber(counter)culture. (I still remember having to rehash the Mitnick situation with almost everyone I'd talk to about it _while it was happening_. Things, unfortunately, have not changed.) Meanwhile hackers are cultural heroes in the People's Republic of China. Your book has been available through Project Gutenberg since 1993.
* In your closing speech to South by Southwest 2007, you redefined the first/second/third world frame with a new framework: The first world as the point-and-click, so-called global marketplace, the second as any and all governments, and the third as common-based peer production. As the third increasingly intermixes and even drives the first. You also called for a more critical, intelligent engagement with the internet.
* As Geert Lovink puts it, "We are fully connected, yet don't care."
* You've analyzed al Qaeda in terms of Benkler's exposition in _The Wealth of Networks_. This reminded me of Galloway and Thacker's approach in _The Exploit_. Exploits are the networks working too well. The free-flowing global movement of people and ideology has enabled al Qaeda, which through its actions threatens the network supporting, and constructed of, that free-flow. Are there other solutions to the exploit that is al Qaeda besides restricting the capacities of the networks, the free part of free society, in which they appear?