world information.org in Novi Sad & Belgrade

[anna balint]

22 march to 5 april, 2003, novi sad
19 april to 5 may, 2003, belgrade

after successful presentations in brussels (2000), vienna (2000), munich (2001), helsinki 
(2001), berlin (2002), london (2002) and amsterdam (2002) world-information.org will once again 
invite visitors to explore the fascinating and complex sphere of information and communication 
networks and their impact on politics, culture, art, economy and everyday life.

this time the exhibition and conference venues are located in yugoslavia, where world-
information.org will be shown from 22 march to 5 april, 2003, in novi sad's museum of the 
revolution and from 19 april to 5 may, 2003, at the museum of contemporary art in belgrade.

while the world-information exhibition will offer the public a glance at the world of state-of-
the-art and historic surveillance and control technologies, display digital artworks and 
present high- quality and easily accessible information on the multifaceted interrelations 
between technology and society the world-infocon conference held on 20 april, 2003, in belgrade 
will bring together international and renowned speakers from the fields of activism, politics, 
journalism and culture to discuss questions of urgent importance for the future development of 
the network society.

http://www.world-information.org/
http://kuda.org/
http://www.msub.org.yu/

World-Information Forum


Belgrade
20 April, 2003

"Total DisInformation Awareness"
Conflict, Control and Freedom of Information

A new security paradigm overshadows the world of technology and communication. As conflict is 
increasingly being shifted to the infosphere- with Homeland Security Alerts for the terminally 
overinformed- the new conflicts of the DisInformation Society are not so much about blood and 
steel but the psychological positioning of ideas and the creation of adversaries. 
Communications technology becomes a carrier for media PR and psychological "truth projection" 
operations where truth maintenance is a socio-technical engineering challenge.

The skies are filled with a dense veil of electronic eyes, ears and transponders with the aim 
of a multiple redundant sphere of "information awareness". With the US DoD set to integrate, 
broaden, and automate these current approaches, interfaced information systems are installed 
with the hope to counter asymmetric threats by achieving "total information awareness useful 
for preemption; national security warning; and national security decision making".

Paranoia has become a business model for the security and media industry and supports a climate 
for political influence based on an assertion of identity. The paranoid energy can be 
manifested as consumer sales which increase personal feelings of security through spending or 
panic cohesion instrumentalized for "national interests".

Terror as a psychological phenomenon has entered the Information Age where everyone becomes a 
suspect in a world of self-learning algorithms that police the population into following the 
norm. While it becomes undesirable to be creating attention by deviant behavioral patterns, the 
trade-off in exchanging freedom of thought, association, movement and speech for security is 
questionable in many ways. A statistical in/significance is turned into a general lifestyle and 
ideology, where automated databases rule the land.

Military conflict management has always been a driving force in the development of ICT and is 
increasingly based on advanced electronic command and control systems. But now society at large 
is drawn into conflicts concerning the distribution of wealth in access and content. In regard 
to Intellectual Property, labor and culture, information vs. disinformation becomes a question 
of intelligence in public interest research.

How can transparency of the control of information flows and production be promoted rather than 
an opaque system of unaccountable information dominance?

How can it be assured that the public interest is represented in a balanced way?

A new Information Culture needs to acquire total awareness of the structures and effects of 
information flows and their processes.

______________________________________________________________

Speakers will include: Mathias Broeckers (DE), Steve Kurtz (US), Petar Milat (CR), Sjoera Nas 
(NL), Marko Peljhan (SI) and Gordan Paunovic (YU).