Re: <nettime> On Accelerationism (Fred Turner)

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

One possibly crucial difference (between then and now) is forced
verticalization of communications. While the media always existed,
the ratio of unmediated communication (between humans, using air as
conduit) vs. mediated communication (newspapers, web pages, mail
lists) has significantly gone down in the past several decades.

The form does influence the content, and with strict templating
into 130 characters and other social media formats, forced explicit
'sharing' vs. private communication (for example nettime) which
modulates everything to the lowest common denominator, and implicit
sharing with various agencies of everything that's not end-to-end
encrypted, perhaps it has simply become impossible to say some things.

I don't think that successful movements in the past were generated
by mob screaming mike checks and simple slogans (which is exactly
what mediated communication stimulates: there is a direct connection
between seeing your post on a web forum, imagining that all others
read it, and unison shouting in the crowd.) It's more likely that
these past successes were effected by preparing in small groups,
then slowly propagated via personal communication to larger numbers.
This provided the opportunity for more complex ideas to emerge, than
screaming out about percentages can.

The discourse around movements in 19th and 20th century was not
focused on rally slogans. Let me make it clear: NO ONE GAVE A FLYING
FUCK TO ENDLESSLY RUMINATE OVER STUFF SHOUTED AT RALLIES, SUCH AS "99
PERCENT". Rallies were tools, not points of creation. Infantilization
of social movements, expectations that something would emerge from
the crowd, all reports how everyone "felt" (as if it makes any
difference, this obsession about personal "feelings" is probably the
most nauseating recent phenomenon), ensures that exactly nothing can
happen.

There will be no change without persistent, ultimately artificial and
non-trivial ideological component, which majority of the crowd does
not really understand (what the crowd immediately gets is certain to
fail.) This is a time-tested mechanism - just look at the success
stories, for example how powers that be operate. They don't scream "we
are the 1 %". No, it's a very hierarchical structure, and very small
number gets to set the course.

The obverse phenomenon, where various leaks turn this hierarchy into
flat broadcast, further proofs the point. This could be the real
reason why they hate leaks, because they annihilate the hierarchical
approach. Wikileaks has abandoned the idea of strengthening the
majority - instead, it works on weakening the minority. It's uncertain
whether this will work in the long run.

To conclude, the currently prevailing social communication model,
which follows the consumerism paradigm of instant, broadcast, ready
to wear ideology, may be the thing that guarantees failure of
"movements".

Maybe they should start talking in private, and something may happen in 
few decades.


On 9/2/16, 13:48, nettime's slow reader wrote:
> One thing that Srnicek and Williams make abundantly clear is that the
> tactics the left has inherited from the social movements of the 1960s
> and 1970s no longer work. The antiglobalization actions of the 1990s,
> various student uprisings in Europe and North Africa, and, above all,
> the Occupy Movement in the United States—Srnicek and Williams argue that
> all have failed because of the left’s preoccupation with what they call,
> with the hint of a sneer, “folk politics.” This mode emerged in the late



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