Tag Archives: consciousness

What I learned at Camp

Numerous messages are streaming in asking me to write about and put out more content related to the notorious camp I just spent a week at. And while it is true I saw amazing things and met wonderful people, I refuse to do any further cheering as the internet has plenty of material about the inventions, parties, achievements, and so on.

At some point during the last days of the CCC the film crew asked me to stand in front of the camera and talk about how I saw the camp and the talk I was going to give. While I did say kind words about the things going on at this former soviet military base, I also took the opportunity to share my concern and disappointment about the level of social and global consciousness at such events.

While they love to discuss and worry about such societal topics as privacy and ownership, over the past year I have observed that hackers are not so in tune to other issues that involve human rights or global poverty.

They have a wealth of knowledge and access to amazing power as a result of their skills and equipment, yet focusing them on issues related to human rights is not often enough a priority… if ever. Lectures or discussions on related topics go significantly under attended compared to the full house you get if you talk about hacking something or how to build your own drone.

While this correlation might be seen as only natural to many, as someone who has witnessed first hand what such a group is capable of, I still get disappointed. Bringing various cultures together in the spirit of cooperation and knowledge sharing, that they have and it is great. Attempting to connect what you can do with a computer or technology with the needs of a world that is plagued by poverty, corruption, and indifference…(not including a minority working on very important social issues like voting computers and sustainability) there the hacking community could use a nice motivating kick in the ass.

Yearly Whatever

Lots of things happening in my professional life as well as the social life, as it seems all my good friends in Amsterdam are inviting me places lately. And behind all this, preparations have to be made for my upcoming talk at the Chaos Communications Camp which begins this week. I’m taking my talk extremely seriously this time, as I’m going not to represent myself, but rather to talk about the important work of New Orleans bloggers and grassroots net activists.

As I prepare this I notice lots… no.. excessive blog posting throughout the internet about a conference held by a dominant mainstream American blogger. It sounds like a lovely time, yet at the same time.. yet another conference to talk about how revolutionary they the bloggers are. The truth is, as an offshoot of one of the two corporatist political parties of the US, they are anything BUT revolutionary. More like the voluntary pawns of a political game that gradually moved online, yet the talking points remain the same.

This is what I was thinking about, along with all the other endless distractions and talk about nothing on places like facebook or twitter, as I listened to the latest Amsterdam Forum from radio Netherlands. The focus of the podcast was what the internet has done or not done for society, art, and information. Many of the participants spoke at length of the amount of useless conversation and endless new websites for alleged community building that are popping up all over on the internet. They also talk about book publishing and what will happen to that industry, and of course – the media – as one man goes on and on about the important of gatekeepers… which of course, I don’t agree with. (read the text)

What I like best about the program is that it brings up a very important fact — there’s alot going on with the internet today… but much of it isn’t FOR any particular reason. And why should it be? In my opinion, because there are many more important things that the people of the world are in desperate need of that we might be able to help with if we’d only stop using all the power and innovation for such shallow objectives.

In many ways.. just writing this post adds to the pile.