Search results for 'swarm'
Felix Stalder Digital Solidarity
eBook published by Mute Books and the Post Media Lab, Leuphana University.
Enter the Swarm: Anonymous and the global protest movements
Felix Stalder explores the swarm politics of the 'endlessly fascinating Anonymous story' in an essay written for Le Monde Diplomatique, where it appeared in a slightly edited version and under a different title.
This version of the text was originally distributed via the international nettime mailing list.
SWARMACHINE
Activist Media Tomorrow*
* BH: When I wrote this text five years ago, it really was not clear whether
the swarming tactics of the counter-globalization movement would get a
"second chance." But they have, and now the subtitle could be "activist
media today."
What happened at the turn of the millennium, when a myriad of recording
devices were hooked up to the Internet and the World Wide Web became an
electronic prism refracting all the colors of a single anti-capitalist
struggle? What kind of movement takes to the barricades with samba bands
and videocams, tracing an embodied map through a maze of virtual
hyperlinks and actual city streets? The organizational aesthetics of the
networked movements was called "tactical media," a concept that mixed
the quick-and-dirty appropriation of consumer electronics with the
subtle counter-cultural anthropology of Michel de Certeau. The idea was
to evoke a new kind of popular subjectivity, constitutionally "under the
radar," impossible to identify, constantly shifting with the inventions
of digital storytelling and the ruses of open-source practice. Too bad
so much of this subversive process was frozen into a single seductive
phrase.
#OCCUPYWALLSTREET
A shift in revolutionary tactics.
Alright you 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,
A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that
bodes well for the future. The spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of
Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain, is captured in this quote:
"The antiglobalization movement was the first step on the road. Back
then our model was to attack the system like a pack of wolves. There
was an alpha male, a wolf who led the pack, and those who followed
behind. Now the model has evolved. Today we are one big swarm of
people."
- Raimundo Viejo, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain
Beautiful Trouble - A toolbox for revolution
Introduction
By Andrew Boyd & Dave Oswald Mitchell
"The clowns are organizing. They are organizing. Over and out."
-Overheard on UK police radio during action
by Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, July 2004
Digital Solidarity by Felix Stalder
Felix Stalder's extended essay, Digital Solidarity, responds to the wave of new forms of networked organisation emerging from and colliding with the global economic crisis of 2008. Across the globe, voluntary association, participatory decision-making and the sharing of resources, all widely adopted online, are being translated into new forms of social space.
ReadFuzzy Biological Sabotage
If the left has learned anything from resistance against capital driven technocracy, it is that the democratic process is only minimally useful for slowing the profit machine of pancapitalism. Since corporations and other capital-saturated institutions own the process, and tend to function outside national democratic imperatives, other methods of power appropriation have to be developed. In the case of biotechnology, the resistance is unfortunately in a position of reactivity. Corporations have already infiltrated most governments and markets at such a furious pace that all that can be done is attempt to slow them down, while cells and organizations regroup and decide on a way to address the many problems that have already arisen, and the many potential accidents that are in front of us.
Notes for a R-evolution 2 (version 2.0): Stage two: Vices vs. New Tactical Virtues
What we've learnt from the Net and how we can extrapolate it to all spaces of struggle.
(Some thoughts geared towards action, compiled for the Radical Community Manager courses that we organise at X.net)