Blog Art! The Death of Email (or Death by Email)

I tend to agree with your comments. It would be great to hear stories from
the dot.com world. I have a story from a friend who just got fired form a
job in Silicon Valley that I will forward to people individually if they
wish. Also, I tend to agree with more contributions apart from academic or
new-media arts. It would be great if other individuals could respond to
this discourse in their own voice because it all get a bit slippery
sometimes. Context is King and most of the problems that we as individuals
and citizens exist out side of the technology and the technology merely
replicates this. The only way to understand power and how power is used and
abused is to understand context.

I think that we need to define a few key issues, political issues and
power-contexts that we can depart to a broader public so that they can
challenge and engage with the world in which we live. Information rich and
information poor is not that helpful, we need to move beyond this. What is
information and why does it make you rich? What are we as the middle-class
political elite getting from this medium that makes us rich that our fellow
citizens at Footscray meat works aren’t?

Sovereignty in Australia (where equality is negotiated) is in decline and
it is partly our fault. Sorry, I don’t have my sovereignty meter on me, but
I am taking a punt here. Middle-class people have always hated Australia,
if they weren’t sucking up to the English they were sucking up to
west-coast libertarians. There is nothing new about this. There are two
Australias’ and this medium is merely replicating this. Quiet nationalism
is the enjoyment of lots of every-day people and it has served us well. If
we understand a few of the broad strokes that make up the set of ideas that
we call Australia, then we can understand this medium and our political
goals a little more. There is nothing global about the Internet, it is
American. Every bit of this medium reeks of Yankee propaganda. Yanks are
technically sophisticated and socially stupid. We need to civilize the
bastards and their Yankee technology.

I note that this list was started with a goal of building a critical
discourse in Australia about the Internet. But what does this mean in
reality? Don’t you have to at least like Australia first and a few of the
values and achievements of this nation-state? I am not sure about what
direction to go in, there are just so few people I trust who use this
medium and every one I seem to meet is a shonkey, self-serving cretin who
sold their soul to the devil and don’t even seem to know it. Just some
ideas, perhaps self-reflexive.

call for action: ICANN comes to Melbourne

Hi,

I an a disbarred historian working on the
history of Fitzroy and milkbars to help understand things that effect the
whole world! I also don’t understand what ICANN does, but we could always
ask them. Someone once described democracy to me as hanging out with a
bunch of cretins who you don’t really like but you will try and get on with
then anyway in the name of some bigger picture. Can’t we hang out with them
when they come here? A Palestinian also told me that ICANN’s twelve
employees will become a world government really soon. Perhaps after they
string up all the Arabs, and torture all the Hindu’s, and free all the
Chinese from the tyranny of being Chinese. Anyway, trying not to be a
devil’s advocate here, but before we spiral into some narrow determinist
argument about DNS being the new world order, lets contextualise what
ICANNDY does in a larger circulation of ideas and power. Am I missing
something?

I have secret evidence that an ex MicroSoft employee has infiltrated the AIM centre and is using this as a platform for global conquest.

At 11:12 09/09/99 +1000, wrote:

>for those of you in the discussion group wanting to get the latest on the

>trail between Microsoft and the unenlightened US government…

>http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2311916,00.html

>

I liked you paper and I wish that I had have heard you presenting it. I especially like the idea of embedding your arguments of masculinity and patriarchy within the culture in which we live. All too often the Gibsonesque drones look for an escape in that barren soul-less place called ‘cyberspace’. I saw one of those awful bubble cars the other day–you know, the sort that Bikers used to piss on at the Broadford rallys–and it had the word”Cyber” blazoned along it’s side. Now there is Cyberspace. Surely there is more room in a HR Manaro?

I’m not sure if I’m a big fan of Fukuyama either. There is a great book by an Australian named Keith Windshuttle The Killing of History: How a Discipline is being Murdered by Literary Theory and Cultural Critics. The past and history are two different things. The past is just there, but history is something that allot of dedicated people spend years scraping through dusty archives to support an argument or empower some group, be they conservative, liberals, or lefties. The thing that makes History different than all other disciplines is that it requires the weight of evidence to support the seeking of truths. The history department at Melb Uni is ironically called “The Department of History and Women’s Studies”. History is the solution, not the problem. It is the lack of History that is the problem. A lack of History means that all these young boof-head Kennett clones get around thinking they are hip when really they look like Duran Duran or Culture Club or some other 80s relic. Now this is tragic. No one owns the past as no one owns history. History is political and this is why Henry Reynolds helped win the Mabo case. It is the lack if History that makes us patriarchal or capitalist or whatever. Now I remember a country where rabid right-wing red-necks had to read a few books before they took public positions….such a long time ago.

His-story

Date: Wednesday, October 13, 1999, 8:21:04 PM

Subject: Shop ’till you drop?

===8<==============Original message text===============

Has anyone noticed that the “stop” button on Netscape Navigator 4.7 has

been replaced by a “shop” button?

Are they trying to tell us something?

December 1, 1999

>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (contacts mailto:wto@rtmark.com,

> mailto:jean-guy.carrier@wto.org, mailto:enquiries@wto.org)

>

>WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION DECLARES HATRED FOR RTMARK

>

>The World Trade Organization, the principal organization in charge

>of enforcing the rules of global commerce, has issued a press release

>stating that it is “deeply concerned” about RTMark’s “illegal and

>unfair” website, http://gatt.org/.

>

>In the release (http://www.wto.org/wto/new/press151.htm), WTO

>Director-General Mike Moore accuses RTMark of attempting to

>”undermine WTO transparency” by copying the WTO website’s design and

>using “domain names such as ‘www.gatt.org‘ and page titles such as

>’World Trade Organization / GATT Home Page’ which make it difficult

>for visitors to realize that these are fake pages.”

>

>RTMark spokesperson Ray Thomas says that, on the contrary,

>http://gatt.org/ is much clearer than http://www.wto.org/.

>”Following any of the Gatt.org links–or reading any of the text–

>will make clear our interpretation of what the WTO is about, and

>that RTMark is behind the site. Mike Moore must have a very low

>opinion of people to think they won’t figure it out.”

>

>It is the WTO, according to Thomas, that is misleading. “They claim

>to be ‘transparent’ because their site includes thousands of

>official documents and the minutes of many meetings, but who could

>possibly have the patience to read any of that, besides corporate

>planners? All anyone actually sees is their bold declarations that

>they’re ‘delivering better living standards for everyone,’ or

>somewhat bizarre assurances that ‘The WTO is not a world government

>and no one has any intention of making it one’… but the site

>doesn’t even mention the violent riots in Seattle, London, etc.,

>nor the reasons they’re happening.” [Links to news about the

>violence and some of its reasons can be found at http://gatt.org/.]

>

>Thomas said that while the WTO admits on its front page the obvious

>truth that free trade has resulted in environmental catastrophe–

>”The growing world economy has been accompanied by environmental

>degradation, including deforestation, losses in bio-diversity,

>global warming, air pollution, depletion of the ozone layer,

>overfishing and so on”–this openness is illusory.

>

>”WTO.org says that the WTO response to environmental catastrophe

>is to do ‘new studies,’” said Thomas. “But as you can read at

>Gatt.org, what Moore says in the press is that freer trade will

>lead to higher living standards, which will in turn make for a

>cleaner environment. It’s incredibly bad logic at every step,

>and it’s what has created this disaster in the first place.”

>

>Explaining this sort of trickery is Gatt.org’s reason for being, said

>Thomas. “We’re just making the WTO a little bit more transparent–for

>example, to help explain why the WTO prevents democratic governments

>from imposing sanctions based on human rights abuses, or from

>including economics in their foreign policy at all.”

>

>RTMark found out about the WTO release, dated November 23, from Jean-

>Guy Carrier, the WTO’s Manager of Information Technologies for

>Development. In an e-mail dated November 24, Carrier writes:

>”Greetings, to be accurate you should update your WTO clone site to

>include the text of the news release deploring efforts such as your

>to confuse the public. Any honest group with information and sincere

>views to convey usually does so without having recourse to

>subterfuge and deception. Others such as yourselves consider they

>are above all that. Too bad.” In another, to a news service

>advertised on the Gatt.org site, Carrier encourages the service to

>withdraw its sponsorship; in another one week later, he accuses

>RTMark of having “little regard for any law.” (Carrier can be

>reached at mailto:jean-guy.carrier@wto.org.)

>

>Director-General Moore shows a similar tone in the release: “It’s

>ironic that while the WTO is accused of lacking transparency, some

>critics who put out misleading or false information are camouflaging

>their identities.”

>

>Thomas says that by accusing RTMark of not playing by the rules,

>Moore and Carrier seem to be implying that the WTO and RTMark are

>equal opponents in the same game. “We’re supremely flattered that

>the WTO is acting as if RTMark were its equal,” said Thomas, “but

>it’s ironic that they’re so upset. Despite the neo-liberal myth of

>equal opportunity for all, the WTO is not enjoying this little

>dialogue. They’d rather just shut us up.”

>

>

>http://gatt.org/ is not the first time that RTMark (http://rtmark.com)

>has used website imitation to render an entity more transparent.

>RTMark has performed the same service for George W. Bush (with

>GWBush.com, archived at http://rtmark.com/bush.html), Rudy Giuliani

>(http://yesrudy.com/), Shell Oil (http://rtmark.com/shell/), and

>others. RTMark’s principal aim is to publicize corporate abuses of

>democratic processes