Re: <nettime> NO SECRETS

[Brian Brotarlo <brofont@iloilo.net>]

Have any prospective date yet, as to when this would happen?

Property rights are gonna go the way of the tulips. What would happen was, we
would be asking for too much mobility and we'd be getting it. Information
prices would be inflated above Real commodities because of demand--big demand
for the right information, or, as a second alternative, incessant demand for
more and more information. Upper-middle families that has two or three cars in
the garage would be considered poor. In fact, though the reliability of these
cars won't deteriorate, would even hover, they would be considered second rate
means of transporatation. Let's face it, sometimes roads and signs are not
enough to always get you where you want to go. It won't even advice you to
stay home, since it's raison d'etre is to keep going. In fact there are a
couple of companies that could give you what you really wanted (even if that
is just to sit down in a particular chair in your apartment, either to watch
TV or read a magazine or merely to look up to a particlar in the ceiling) for
a price. You'd pay on line and transfer some necessary stats for complete
satisfaction. Much of the cost for this contentment of course shouldered by
interested advertisers, who in turn needed these personal stats for their
company strategies--to make soap or to hawk insurance policies. Money after
all is easier to get than that right idea.

One thing remains good, the more you are master of yourself, the less need
there is to expend money. So say, for minimum wage, you can eat on every meal
and have a decent apartment, even a sleek hover car. But in case you get an
idea of selling this self-help capability, remember that Art isn't
copyrightable anymore, at least not completely. Just too much RPM. Sure, if
you were an information Age actor (you still don't understand if those people
really exist), people might be tricked to buy. So how to make your life story
information age ready? What if what you come out in the end is usually junk
already proliferating cheaply or freely?

You have to make yourself get out of bed and get that corporate job wherein
all the power resides. You have to admit, it has that gleam inside.

Brian Brotarlo

Tom Sherman wrote:

> NO SECRETS
>
> In the mature information economy, information will be exchanged,
> information-for-information, and those without information to trade will
> be dirt poor.  As it is now, most people only have a tiny little bit of
> personal information (raw personal material, RPM).  It makes you wonder
> what will happen when they lose all their privacy.
>
> People will get food stamps for telling others their deepest
> secrets--things like how they have been having sex with their parents or
> pets or their disconnected princess telephones.
>
> Exchanges of information are economic transactions, plain and simple.
> The obsession with translating information into money, into financial
> currencies or commercial properties, is only meaningful in this period of
> transition, and is overrated.
>
> A transaction is a transaction...in a mature information economy,
> information is exchanged (directly) without being tethered to money.
>
> Those without information will be poor, as is already the case, and those
> who lose their privacy will be the poorest.  What will happen when people
> have no information and no privacy?
>
> In the information economy people are harvested like trees or minerals or
> fish in the sea.
>
> Right now people are being harvested like trees, but soon they will be
> cultivated, planted and harvested like an agricultural product.  Then in
> turn they'll be manufactured, enslaved to provide a service, and then
> finally turned into outlets for the accumulation and release of something
> called knowledge.
>
> -----
>
> ACCEPTABLE LEVELS OF RAW PERSONAL MATERIAL
>
> Even though we live in a junk-food culture, where life is squeezed out of
> the product before it reaches the consumer, it is also a fact that
> significant levels of raw personal content will permeate the market as the
> tools and means of production and distribution continue to be
> decentralized and become totally ubiquitous.  Information providers work
> at home.  The information factories are miniaturized--desktops and
> laptops.  Such a vastly decentralized production and distribution system
> cannot be regulated easily.  Raw personal material (RPM) is fast and
> vibrant and abundant.  Raw personal material will continue to seep into
> the streams and torrents of junk culture.
>
> What's surprising to me is how intolerant most people are when it comes to
> accepting raw personal material in their cultures.  Even though computers
> have completely eliminated the differences between ordinary telephone
> lines and broadcast channels, people still want to draw the line as they
> don't seem to want real, ordinary humans in their entertainment and art.
> They treat raw personal material like unwanted insects in a perfect
> nature.  Most people are disgusted or horrified by flies, mosquitoes and
> ticks in the garden.
>
> Closer to home, it's like finding insect parts in a jar of peanut butter.
> Government regulatory bodies determine the acceptable or tolerable levels
> of insect parts in peanut butter.  Basically the insect parts have to be
> imperceptibly small.  It is impossible to produce a jar of peanut butter
> without including a certain amount of raw insect protein, parts of legs,
> wings, bodies, etc., but if they are ground up real fine, a small
> percentage of raw insect material in peanut butter is acceptable.  It has
> to be.
>
> It's like this in culture too.  It's impossible to produce culture,
> entertainment or art, that doesn't have a little bit of raw personal
> material in it.  People will tolerate quite a bit of RPM in their
> cultures, so long as they don't have to pay attention to real, ordinary
> people in their entertainment or art.  Entertainment and art formalize and
> fictionalize and dress up RPM.  People still like the IDEA of a culture
> springing forth from the people themselves.  Before cultures were
> dehumanized and totally artificial, cultural trends used to emerge from
> the people.  Today raw personal material is usually categorized as
> interference or noise.  Talk shows and mailing lists feature raw personal
> material groomed or organized for consumption.  With the blurring of
> telephone lines and broadcast channels, governments seem content to let
> markets set the limits.  I guess junk culture markets dictate acceptable
> levels of raw personal material, whereas regulatory bodies set the limits
> in other, more stable sectors.
>
> Tom Sherman
>
> -----
>
> http://www.allquiet.org/
>
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