HTZ10.5

2 Welcome to issue 10.5 of Hack This Zine. This article was originally going to be included in issue 10 but it was so good (and so long) that we felt like it stood on its own. So we present to you issue 10.5 of Hack This Zine: How To Make Friends With Volcanoes. **************************************************************************************** anti-(C)opyright 2010 This zine is anti-copyright: you are encouraged to Reuse, Reword, and Reprint everything in this zine as you please. This includes: printing your own copies to distribute to friends and family, copying and pasting bits of text in your own works, mirroring electronic copies to websites and file sharing services, or anything else you can think of... ...Without asking permission or apologizing! ***************************************************************************************** Questions? Comments? Article Submissions? Get a hold of us at: e-mail: staff [at] hackbloc [dot] org our website: hackbloc.org/contact --> GET COPIES OF THE ZINE! <-- Electronic copies of the zine are available for free online at the hackbloc website: http://www.hackthiszine.com There are two versions of the zine: a full color graphical PDF version which is best for printing and also includes all sorts of extras, as well as a raw TXT version for a more readable and compatible format. Having the zine in your hands is still the best way to experience our zine. If you can’t print your own(double sided 8.5x11) then you can order copies of this issue and all back issues online from Microcosm Publishing (microcosmpublishing.com) who are based out of Portland. If you are at HOPE this year in NY you will be able to find us tabeling with the NYC People’s Law Collective. We are seeking translators to translate Hack This Zine into other languages, if you are interested send an email to staff [at] hackbloc [dot] org. Thanks to everyone who contributed or helped us out with this issue or with hackbloc or with life in genral. Thanks to alxciada, anders, flatline, sally, ringo, frenzy, impact, evoltech, hexbomber, mat, molly, postmodern, whooka. Thanks to the crew at riseup.net for their hardwork and dedication and thanks to the church of scientology for the cover, motherfuckers. 3 Capitalism is run on in- formation systems. Computer networks track and link prod- ucts, components, resources, and people into the global hy- dra known as the just-in-time economy. We who work in the industry are all implicated in the perpetuation of this system, even as we struggle against it. We use our skills for competing purposes, to enrich the pow- erful and empower those who would put an end to power. Recently though, a new ally has surfaced- the earth itself. The eruption in Iceland and earth- quakes in Chile and Haiti have revealed cracks in the just-in- time economy. Capitalism is as unprepared for the vagaries of nature as it is for the needs of humanity. Eyjafjallajokull has given us hope and set us think- ing- what is our place in the struggle? How can we clog the engines? Can we build boats to float below the cloud? And when the whole mess comes spiraling down, where does that leave us, our technical skills and technical systems? Are they needed, or merely ar- tifacts of advanced capitalism? Here are some thoughts from a few of us. Thoughts from Mat. Without machines we’ll just fuck everything up more slow- ly. The fossil record stretching back forty thousand years into pre-history is a record of flora and fauna laid waste by hu- mans. On a geologic time scale it will hardly matter whether we do it with atom bombs or atlases. During the neolithic era we were still destabilizing hill sides, salinating the plains, silting the rivers, and burning the forests. Anti-civ anarchists emphasize a cultural revolution away from patriarchy and exploitation and towards mutual aid and a drastically slimmer technologi- cal footprint. But slow, well- intentioned destruction can still occur, outside the bounds of living memory and known history. I doubt first peoples of Australia and the Americas intended to wipe out almost all the mega fauna. The ex- tinctions happened “fast.” They took a few thousand years. Clever minds and dexterous hands allow us to change our condition too quickly vis a vis the rest of our ecology. It is our nature as a species to have agency that outstrips our un- derstanding and memory. De- struction is now rapid enough for all but the most profoundly deluded people to notice. But 4 the end of civilization will not be the end of destruction. Up until now, our technology has enhanced agency without any corresponding enhance- ment of memory. I believe Information technologies are changing that picture, enhanc- ing memory as well as agency. What if we sought to build systems that could record the state of our world and track our action within it, so we tru- ly knew what we were doing? What if those systems were de- signed with an eye to the fu- ture, towards a geologic scale? Within a non-exploitive, non- authoritarian culture, those memories could guide us away from destruction. I see hope for such systems, although few examples. I wish more (any!) anarchists worked on network- mediated systems of account- ing and exchange based on real value, like soil fertility and bio- diversity. I don’t mean to vindicate in- formation systems from exploi- tive culture. There is much to loathe about them and their place in capitalism. I don’t know what they would look like in the endgame. Certainly not like they do now, built of rare- earth minerals, running on fos- sil sunshine, and designed only for experts. But I do see hope and possibility in there some- where. Evoltech chimes in: Tech as we know it is not sustainable in its current implementation. This may or may not be obvious to you. The physical components of hard- ware are mined in a fashion that is oppressive to indigenous communities from Appalachia to Chile to China to Iceland. The infrastructure of which (fi- ber lines, telephone lines, data centers, power plants) are de- structive to the environment and often responsible for the displacement of humans and non-humans alike from their homes. I think many anarchists, hacker or not, see the current implementation of infrastruc- ture around us as inherently oppressive, where the mainte- nance of which is protected by force. Those with money, or the many other privileges that are stacked in favor of those with more power protected by force, make decisions based on their best interests without the consent or thought of those it ultimately effects (manifest destiny: rail roads, roads (go a head call me a primy), the fucking west, world trade, etc). 5 With tech this is a bit more of the same (GMO, mining of re- sources for hardware, ubiquity and intensity of RF, copyrights, peering agreements, CALEA support for every segment of digital communication, etc). It may seem that anti- autoritarians would be against supporting infrastructure that enables oppression, but here there are hackers among us as- sociated under anarchist prin- ciples working with some tech- nologies that are oppressive. This is the problem of trying to fight the system that one lives in from my point of view. I don’t agree with the idea that if enough people stop supporting oppressive systems that there will just stop being oppres- sive systems. I do not believe, as Derick Jenson might say in Endgame, that if the Rebel Al- liance just sent enough good vibrations to the Death Star that it would stop consuming planets. From my point of view there are many different stages to an end game for the ideal world I would like to live in, each of which would have by need varying levels of tech, where the final goal would be an existence with others where there was no tech that was not sustainable (implying that any tech acquired by oppressive force is not sustainable). In my work with Hack- bloc I am concerned with learn- ing about and creating tools in the digital realm that defend resistant communities and of- fer them tactically offensive advantages. The bulk of defen- sive tools being worked on now provide secure and or anony- mous methods for interacting with others across insecure channels. Creating our own in- frastructure here (secure mail servers and mailing lists, ano- nymity tools, secure voice and SMS applications, creation of secure geographically distrib- uted, decentralized networks for comms operators at mobili- zations) is not only possible but it exists and is constantly be- ing improved. The realm of offensive security is not as protected as defensive security. The accep- tance of protecting your own privacy is valued and desired. In our society the use of of- fensive security, voice and data monitoring, signal interception decryption and jamming, and host and network intrusion is monopolized by government institutions or organizations protected by government insti- tutions. This same work can be useful in our communities and 6 there is a wealth of existing tools and developers working on this angle as well. This of- fensive security could look like a support for other struggles or could stand on its own tacti- cally. For me it is all a means to an end, an end that I will most likely never see in my lifetime. It is a means that I contribute to because I can and it keeps my attention. After the rev you will be able to find me down by the river, smoking weeds, building a raft, and hop- ing that I find my old friends so that we can redefine our re- lationships. Flatline talks about the Robocracy: This is all based on a phone in- terview between Evoltech, Mat, and Flatline. Evoltech loves to tell folk about Flatline’s robot endgame scenario where hu- man’s finally figure out that Anarchy works, there is no such thing as resource scarcity, and robots take care of manual la- bor. E: Do you remember talking to me a while back about your endgame fantasy of a Roboc- racy? F: , Yeah. E: Great, well that’s what we wanted to talk to you about. F: , Well you caught me at the right time, I’m drunk! I want you to know that was a total drunken rant, but I think I can duplicate it. M: For the purposes of this in- terview we were going to have Google translate it (Note: this never actually happened, but supposedly google voice offers a transcription service provid- ed by robot slave labor), so all translations will be done by ro- bots, no corrections. The Ro- bocracy starts now! E: Can you tell us what the various stages of the Robocrcy looks like? What does the Ro- bocracy rev look like and how does the endgame pan out? F: Right now we are in the humble beginnings of the Ro- bocracy. Right now the robots aren’t there yet, they aren’t able to take over power from the hu- mans. We have the robots talk- ing to each other; robot phones are calling other robot phones. Bots on IRC are talking to oth- er bots on IRC. I’m actually getting more calls from robots then from humans. E: That’s depressing. F: That is depressing. I really feel at this point that robots are in their infancy. They are talking to each other, they are building up their world views. At this point they could go in 7 any direction, there is more and more of them everyday. M: This is reminding me; to- day my co-worker was calling a company that had a real sec- retary and it took her a while to realize it was a real person, because the secretary had the perfect secretary voice (mim- icking the best secretary voice), “Hello you have reached such and such enterprises, how can I redirect your call?” Molly’s im- mediate reaction was that she was talking with a computer. She realized she was so used to computer simulations of a helpful person that an actual helpful person was inconceiv- able. At least for 15 seconds into the call. F: There you go. The majority of our interactions these days, at least over a computer or telephone are with robots. This is really fascinating I think. We are creating a whole new society that will be mostly comprised of robots. We can use robots to eliminate work in society with some sort of combination of robots and fission power and massive amounts of recycling, nobody would have to “work” again. At this point I am not so sure that the robots won’t then put us to work for them. Robots aren’t the endgame of the revolution, but robots and AI are changing our society right now. Robots seemed to be taking over blue collar jobs, putting together cars, or other tedious manufacturing in the U.S. For a while the idea was that robots and machines could take over those jobs. The own- ers of the industrial complex thought that it was cheaper to farm those jobs to 3rd world countries instead of developing the technology to do these sorts of tasks well. Now it seems like robots have moved into a dif- ferent sector of jobs like tele- marketing and scams; sending emails. M: I see this with a lot of cleri- cal work. I get bossed around by robots all the time. People setting up calendar reminders for me. I was bossed around by a robot today. F: Its a lot easier to have a ro- bot do clerical work then blue collar work. Robots are great at crunching numbers, but they are not so great that do things like vision and hand movement. These are problems that are hard for robots to solve. I think that we are going to see a lot of robots as middle management. E: I have always taken you as someone who was pro-robocra- cy, but it seems like I am hear- ing that you are against robots and against the “machine”. F: No you’ve got me all wrong. I am for the liberation of robots. 8 Right now we have robots occu- pying traditional jobs, mostly clerical and we are not paying them anything, robots are our slaves. M: But what about the people getting paid to operate the ro- bots? A lot of modern office jobs you are just working for a computer. You are waiting in front of a monitor or printer waiting for a new job so that you can transfer something to someone or something else. F: The line between robot and person is also going to blur. I was talking with Amber Case at toorcamp about cyborg the- ory. I was thinking about the enormous number of machines we use on a daily basis and how dependent most people in the first world are on various tech- nology. M: Do you think it is infan- talizing us or replacing tasks we wouldn’t otherwise want to do, ie. I never kept a calendar until google calendar. I never kept track of a calendar until it was on my phone and computer at the same time. F: Me too, and I never remem- bered to do shit, but I also had a much simpler life and it was enough that I could keep it all in my head. M: Are we increasingly build- ing a world were we are depen- dent on computers? Are we let- ting them become our context for memory? F: We are. Digital memory can create a perfect record of our world. Once the robots trans- late this interview it will be fantastic. M: What if we found out that robots could not understand this and people were forced to? E: What do you feel your role as a hacker anarchist contrib- utes to the current struggle and what is your endgame fantasy? F: I haven’t been thinking about the endgame. I feel like we are only at the start of any sort of insurrection,just the begin- ning, the endgame is very far off. This is in contrast to how I used to think about this is- sue. I used to feel like we were very close, but now it seems like there is a long way ahead of us. Recently I have been re- evaluating what I feel the most important work is that needs to be done. Right now I think the most important contribu- tion in this vein is education. Technology that most people in the first world are using on a daily basis is relatively new. Most people here don’t see how current tech can be really op- pressive. I think this is all the beginning of a more cultural revolution. The world wide 9 open journalism and communi- cation that is currently happen- ing is really amazing. The type of communication we have is a shift from ten years ago. The cost and ubiquity of communi- cation right now is our biggest advantage. Along with this comes an overload of informa- tion and widespread surveil- lance. Like what’s going on in Britain or in the US. This need for privacy is being forced on people as a result. Certain gov- ernments and corporations are of the opinion that privacy is not important. Frenzy’s voice: I don’t see an endgame as any- thing that can be planned. I don’t see an endgame as any- thing that anti-authoritarians can control. I don’t see any end that involves tech infra- structure that will be able to sustain itself. I think the role of tech for anti-authoritarians is a complexity that we need to understand. We need to figure out how to utilize tech for our own means. An analogy would be to use the masters tool to destroy his own house. The role of hacker anti-authoritari- ans is to understand how these tools are being used against us, and figure out how to use this opportunity in front of us to bring about the revolution. My endgame fantasy is going back to the land, it does not involve robots. I imagine it to be very mad-max esque until the last resources are gone and we are forced to go back to the land. I think science tells us that some things can not be done. One of these is long term space travel ie. sending humans to other galaxies. I don’t see tech taking leaps and bounds allowing us to live off this planet. With that constraint there is a carrying capacity, a limit to how much we can do here, I think we are coming to that point and is why tech wont be a part of an end- game scenario. It doesn’t mat- ter if you have a factory that is worker owned and operated, or some green business, it is that you have those factories and that stuff is being produced. The existence of a factory is a problem because you are still utilizing resources, a factory is going to waste resources no matter what. Resource extrac- tion is the problem, when you extract pure resources out of the environment you make them into hazardous material ie oil was plants, in the concen- trated form it is highly danger- ous. I don’t see a rev of want, I see one of necessity. Learn- ing about tech is going to be a large part of this. I think a need to survive will be forced 10 on us and the state, the police, the power company, or internet companies will not help us. We will have to take the off cast of civilization, the skeleton of civ- ilization, and make situations that are comfortable, that we can survive in. This will be out of necessity. Currently the im- portance of learning tech will ensure our survival because the tech is being used by the state to oppress, if we do not learn how to use it for our own means it will be an exclusively oppressive agent. I do not see tech being used in an endgame scenario because of it’s inher- ent oppressiveness. It requires a certain amount of knowledge that is not inherent to most peoples situations. Basic un- derstanding we can take care of and is necessary for further- ance of revolutionary struggle. My goal is to get through to anti-authoritarians that tech is not safe for all situations, it is not necessary for all situations. When it is safe however we need to assist with those meth- ods. My role is to offer support to folk to only use tech when it is useful. I am very much into insu