AW: [syndicate] our SL discussion

[fm]

Alan Sondheim a écrit :
> Not that this is my discussion, 
I'm afraid it's yours as well
> but I think you're overly simplistic here - you're not controlled by 
> the software any more than you're controlled by a hammer, which is 
> also produced, say, by Sears.
oh, man, I don't know where to begin with this.
there is not much to a hammer, buying it from sears and making one 
yourself will give you the same control over it. it's a piece of wood 
with a piece of something harder at one edge. unless there is some rfid 
built into it it's an isolated object which is completely out of reach 
of its maker. now there's a saying that goes "if your only tool is a 
hammer all your problems look like nails" but you're right you're not 
controlled by a hammer, alan, I agree. the analogy to software is not 
even limited it is inexistent. specially networked software... the 
examples for control with software are so well known that I truly don't 
know where to begin, i'm stumped. anyway I was speaking of a more 
refined form of control, oh, yeah there's a good example with wikipedia: 
everybody knows that you can't just go there and edit away, there is 
such an amount of protocol in there that it's for the pros and I don't 
mean the social protocol either I mean the way the software is designed 
is what controls you more and entices the others and you to conform to 
certain usages. now I happen to have designed and coded a social 
software environment  (polyptique) and I know that we have made it in a 
certain way to encourage certain behavior and to restrict others. it was 
definitely designed to achieve a certain kind of communal organization 
and not another one, in the way that some images are shown on top of the 
page for instance, or that when you create a new page you have to state 
a number of lines after which it will be deemed as "completed", etc
also the fact that when you register to a system you get more privileges 
than an anonymous user has, this is very simple and effective control
makes me think of what happened with blogger (bought by google a while 
ago) recently. i had been a blogger user for ages, 1999, and suddenly 
perhaps 3 months ago they said there were releasing a new and (of 
course) better version, to beta test that new version you had to get a 
google account (before that you just had a blogger account). I had no 
interest in the new version at all and did not look at it. the new 
version was rolled out in production and week after week they'd put up 
bigger and bigger announcements for the new version, for which you HAD 
to get a google account. I didn't move the blog to the new version and 
one day a friend told me he suddenly had to get a google account to get 
in. I thought he was fooled into it but _several days_ after he was 
forced to move I suddenly could not log into my blog anymore wihtout 
having a google account (oh, this happened to you also, alan, I remember 
now!) so what I did is that I shut firefox and opened the dusty IE and 
this way I could log into my blog... but when I returned I could not 
anymore with IE or firefox, I was fucked and if i wanted to update MY 
blog I had to get a bloody google account. then I believed my friend. 
and also I relaized that it was not to get your blog to the new version 
that you had to register to google, it was pure dominant behavoir from 
the owners of the software, my friend was posting in our blog with the 
supposedly new version and I had posted at the same time without 
"moving". yeah, after a while google got fed up with waiting for the 
bloggers to move, there was no option (even to get your archives and 
move to another platform), either you registered with google or you 
could not access your thing. they own the software, they control what 
you do and you can't do a thing about it.
Is blogger a hammer ? hell no

being in SL looks to me more like being willingly in "the truman show" 
than holding a hammer. you are constantly monitored and twitched to go 
this way or another.
it's the truman show and you are enjoying it as truman never would have

now there is also the argument that all this is worse or the same in 
real life, patrick mentioned it also, and that people like me who refuse 
control should realize that somehow it's unescapabale, the way it should be.
so, so wrong this analogy is, again.
in real life, where there is an organization of society, lots of 
different organizations thru out history and geography, there are many 
many forms of possible dissension and readjustement. yeah, like I can go 
on strike when the bosses are trying to fuck us (and I do, i'm a 
unionist) and when there is a law which I object to I go out in the 
street and demonstrate. the last time we did this in france we won, you 
know.
and there are so many moments where I am totally unmonitored and I can 
remain unmonitored, if I don't use my mobile phone, don't use my credit 
card, I can move around without being noticed and tracked as "me". now 
this brings me to another point: SL is private property. out there we 
still have a lot of public space and we are fighting for it and there 
are also lots of private areas which are private to us only
you know I can be in my apartment eating snails with my bare hands and 
no one will know, have sex or cut the skin on my thighs and no one will 
have registered it in their database
do you remember when people said cookies were evil ? that was not so 
long ago.
cookies are a way of tracking what you do, they were evil because of 
that, because of the power you yield
now think of what you are leaving in SL, that is a cookie to the power 
of 256

etc.
>  on top of that, the worst crap I've experienced was that period on 
> nettime
but you're back on it
gotta love that hammer!
when stuff happened there that I didn't like I yelled and I left

f.