Geert Lovink on Mon, 9 Jan 2006 23:21:48 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Frank Rieger: We lost the War--Welcome to the World of Tomorrow


On 9 Jan 2006, at 6:37 AM, Florian Cramer wrote:

> I admire the perfect Carl Schmitt-ian (and by implication, Leo
> Straussian) rhetoric of this manifesto: The rhetoric of the emergency
> state, political friend-vs.-enemy antagonism, and its view of the 
> status
> quo of democracy.

You mean admire like in Oscar Wilde's:

"I admire Japanese chairs because they have not been made to sit upon."

You like the text because it's so odd? So untimely? So not like the way 
journalists and theorists like you and me write? I doubt if Frank and 
Rop have read Schmitt and Strauss or have even heard of them and would 
understand the reference you make here.

What I liked about it was that it reported about a war that I had no 
idea about that it was going on. Only at the moment it was over I heard 
about it. On the cover of the German magazine in which the article was 
published, Die Datenschleuder, it says "Declaration of Capitulation." 
That's heavy rethoric, no?

It is imho an important text that Frank wrote, as it tells us something 
how the hackers community at large is discussing problems in society 
(even on planetary scale). We should have a debate about it, as is 
happening right now on nettime, and not presume that people have read 
this or that book, in the same way as I do not know Linux details (you 
might, Florian, but I don't). When I read the text I thought it was 
significant as it goes beyond discussing some technical problems and 
solutions and creates a common ground, beyond the hackers communities.

We could look into strategies and tactics. I am still inspired by the 
campaign(s) to prevent European software patents. The Big Brother 
Awards appeal to me. The struggle over RFID is not yet lost, or hasn't 
even begun yet. Privacy in general may not exist anymore, but then, as 
Karin indicates, isn't that a nostalgic position?

Geert






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