Mayan Technologies For The People

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Post-Media Impossibilities (Part One)
Or Mayan Technologies For The People
by Ricardo Dominguez


We must be ready for the unexpected. Not just about the emergence of new technologies - but how people will use them.
- (From Protocols of the MESH)


All post-media direct action cells must pursue the instabilities in Technologies--even before they become metaphors. We must move into areas that seem like the impossible - before they even gain presence among the protocols of the MESH. It is within these chaotic sectors that opportunities for greater disturbances and force multiplication will be found by actors among civil societies in search of leverage anchors for voices without power. Once these balance shifters have been sensed by minor communities of autonomy they must be harnessed. Those who wait for the decentralization of these instabilities will lose the small window available for the development of micro-mass disturbance gestures. We must always be seeking out the flow of uncertainty beyond the overused scientific discourse and technologies at hand: networks, bio-technologies and nano-technologies. Let the MESH spend its time tweaking these possibilities. Instead let us like the Zapatistas continue to break the Mirrors of Power and move into the elsewhere.

Post-media cells should seek out unprocessed instabilities even as the Army's Force XXI and the Marine Corps' Hunter Warriors attempt to retool the left-over war engines of the Cold War as interoperable cyborg systems. Postmodern war still remains bound by paradigms of military science and spectacle (note that most recent actions from the Gulf War, Part One, to the Kosovo Crisis were made for TV and Internet presentation), the endless objective theater of war discourse and the subjective NATO disposition of one reality has been completely introjected into the system (even in the case of Psy-0p actions). Their VR helmets can't see the failure of Reality before the new fundamentalism of the telematic - they continue to believe that the lights they see from the midnight bombs they drop are coming from something that still exists: nation, justice, and democracy. These are now nothing more than the last signs of dead cultural stars. The Military system, like the peasants of the Middle Ages, still kneel before the holy corpse of the MESH and pray for a true state of trajectivity. Some even admit it among themselves:


...there is little apparent interest in the wider effects of these developments and their implications for national security. In fact, attempts to foresee even the near-term future are remarkable for their conservative approach and the general belief that the future will be very much like today with a few advances in technology. Not surprisingly, there have been even fewer attempts to anticipate basic change caused by technologies whose practical applications are only now being discussed by specialists. We are already losing future wars now.
- (From the Army's Book of the Dead, Book II)


The MESH is busy mapping the human genome to create meme-gene weapons to target specific genotypes and building self-replicating fleets of computer controlled molecular weapons. Again, these are not fantasies, molecular nano-technology first emerged as a practice in 1990 when industry researchers at IBM were able to arrange 35 individual xenon atoms to spell out "IBM". In 1991, the Japanese government reportedly began budgeting an annual $185 million for nano-tech research. Since that time three-dimensional structures have been experimentally produced from DNA, and researchers have demonstrated the engineering of branched, non-biological protein with enzymatic activity as a basic methodology for nano devices. This nano-event will intermingle with other MESHworks to produce the new aggregates for the power zones of tomorrow. Post-media cells must fight the future with gestures that have no name in the present.



(Play Tape)

Mayan Technologies For the People (Rewind and Start Now)



Pedrito (tojolabal, two and a half years old, born during the first Intergalactic) is playing with a little car with no wheels or body. In fact, it appears to me that what Pedrito is playing with is a piece of that wood that they call "cork" here, but he has told me very decisively that it is a little car and that it is going to Margaritas to pick up passengers.

It is a gray and cold January morning and we are passing through this village which is today electing the delegates (one man and one woman) whom it will be sending to the March 21 consultation.

The village is in assembly when a Commander-type plane, blue and yellow, from the Army Rainbow Task Force and a pinto helicopter from the Mexican Air Force, begin a series of low over flights above the community. The assembly is not interrupted, those who are speaking merely raise their voices.

Pedrito is fed up with having the artillery aircraft above him, and he goes, fiercely, in search of a stick inside his hut. Pedrito comes out of his house with a piece of wood, and he angrily declares that "I'm going to hit the airplane because it's bothering me a lot." I smile to myself at the child's ingenuousness.

The plane makes a pass over Pedrito's hut, and he raises the stick and waves it furiously at the war plane. The plane then changes its course and leaves in the direction of its base.

Pedrito says "There now" and starts playing once more with his piece of cork, with his little car.

The Sea and I look at each other in silence. We slowly move towards the stick which Pedrito left behind, and we pick it up carefully. We analyze it in great detail.

"It's a stick," I say.

"It is," the Sea says.

Without saying anything else, we take it with us. We run into Tacho as we're leaving. "And that?" he asks, pointing to Pedrito's stick which we had taken. "Mayan technology," the Sea responds.

Above, a suddenly clear sky becomes golden next to clouds like marzipan.

The Sup, trying to remember how Pedrito did what he did.

(Above, the helicopter is a useless tin vulture).

Pause Tape.



For too long the specters of hyper-memetic cargo cults have flowed between the bottom of the third world and the top of the virtual class. A circuit that keeps the impossibilities of the fifth worlds behind the eschatology of designer futures for the first world. Post-media cells must travel among strings of inventions that fall outside of the logomass. To seek gestures that leap over the lines of flight that our current collective realities or imaginary conditions of speed and interconnectivity. We must place the impossible and the unexpected as our counter-dialectics, as in the case of Hannibal and his elephants against the Roman Empire. Tensors that can create unprecedented instabilities in the MESH beyond our todays and tomorrows. These tensors are already drifting among the intergalactic children outside the limits of our social condition. Post-media cells must create situations for mutation that can interrupt and reroute the protocols of acceleration, improvement and obsolesce that late capital is bound by. So that rational history will be broken and remade by the tiny hands of the intergalactic ninos of the fifth world.

Post-media cells must sidestep the Universal State of the Hybrid that late capital now globalizes across all markets. Our confrontations should tactically release all the impossible singularities beyond the homogenization of the New World Order's Human Rights agenda that has now been sent as the foundational condition of hyper-violence and total social control. Here the son (neo-liberalism) is devouring the father (national capital) and, in the process, is destroying the lies of late capitalist ideology: in the new world disorder there is neither democracy nor freedom, neither equality nor fraternity. The planetary stage is transformed into a phased battlefield, in which the chaotics of decayed neural nets now reign. Let us instead seek out those circuits of perversity of the mother and child that reside outside of the luxury of digital History.

Now is the time for the fifth world to move deeply into the virtual state of the Fourth World War and bite its head off with its own trajectories. Each post-media pocket should heed El Sup's smoke signals:


The apparent infallibility of globalization comes up hard against the stubborn disobedience of reality. While neo-liberalism is pursuing its war, groups of protesters, kernels of rebels, are forming throughout the planet. The empire of financiers with full pockets confronts the rebellion of pockets of resistance. Yes, pockets. Of all sizes, of different colors, of varying shapes. Their sole common point is a desire to resist the "new world order" and the crime against humanity that is represented by this fourth world war.
- (From the Book of Intergalactic Memories)



The End of Part One.



(Quoted from CTHEORY)

[TankGirl]

Thanks for an interesting article, Ramona, and thanks also for the link to the CTheory website which was full of interesting reading. Highly recommended . Another great site that I have found recently is Kuro5hin (thanks to Malk-a-Mite for pointing it out).

As for the article itself, I found it both spirited and interesting but also somewhat obscure. Not knowing the writer and his background at all, some of his terminology was hard to relate to. The key term post-media itself sounds weird to me as I don't see any signs of media - not in its multinational corporate forms nor in its private grassroots forms - withering away. Rather on the contrary. Especially the recent era of electronic communication has been characterized by a constant unfolding of new communication technologies with related new medias and new forms of communication. Internet, the latest layer on the cake, has in a couple of decades managed to give birth to a rich spectrum of communication tools and virtual meeting environments for private, communal and corporate use. Where there is communication there is always a media or medium to it, more or less transparent, more or less immediate, more or less public. Post-media would imply non-media but instead of non-media I see us heading towards richening multimedia in the formal sense - that is: in sensory forms - and towards richer social interconnectivity in topological and functional terms.

Watching the unfolding of information technology and its social effects through the framework of nonlinear thermodynamics and chaos theory is fertile and I often like to apply similar ideas on what I see happening around me. Within the general idea of macroscopic structural changes being initiated or introduced by microlevel structural instabilities the writer seems to identify strongly on the side of the microscopic fluctuations, wanting to make sure that they - with some help from cutting edge technologies - continue to make cracks to the all-invading power structures of the vested multinational corporate and military interests. To me there is something suspicious in his rather militant attitude and eagerness to fight the future. That presumably means fighting a corporate future but by doing so one keeps energizing and re-acknowledging - effectively perpetuating - the oppressive corporate reality. This logical consequence also shows in the gloomy outlook that the writer has for the future, reminding me of the eternally desperate world of X-Files dominated by a conspiracy of white middle-aged Anglo-Saxon male humanity haters who always have the latest gadgets of mass destruction in their hands.

I believe more in love and anarchy than in hate and anarchy. Rather than fighting a supposedly gloomy future and thereby socially amplifying the idea of it better tune up to a more desirable future and thereby allow good vibrations from the microlevel to get amplified and contribute not only to structural changes but also to entirely new phenomena on the macrolevel. Various 'post-media pockets' can naturally choose to live in a world of endless confrontation against the 'Universal State of the Hybrid' surrounding them but that is such a desperately narrow bunker view into the reality that is far more multidimensional and multifaceted - if you only dare to step out of the bunker.

To illustrate the idea with an example close to us, let us apply it to the p2p revolution. Shawn Fanning initiated a highly successful microlevel fluctuation - call it structural instability if you wish - that managed to change the established macroscopic communication patterns of the Internet. The idea of Napster and the software crystallization of it started to resonate with increasing energy and social scope until such established macrostructures as the entertainment industry started to feel the vibe of it. The energy input that kept feeding the growth of Napster was not generated by pockets of resistance against the established powers of communication but rather by universally spread and enthusiastic - dare we say thrilled - acceptance of a new idea and a new media of communication. Rather than intentionally opposing or cracking an existing macrostructure people simply started to feed energy to an alternative idea and model of global communication. The negative confrontations started to take place only later on when the entertainment industry realized that the new macroscopic order that was quickly establishing itself around the globe did not actually have a place nor a need for it. It was good vibrations that made Napster big, and the same good vibrations continue to reverberate and resonate through other programs and networks even if the corporate body of Napster Inc. will soon drop down dead.

- tg

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Ricardo Dominguez is the Senior Editor of Thingnyc and a founder of Electronic Disturbance Theater.

I came across this piece and was simply struck by its beauty as well as perhaps a little jarred by it. I supressed my urge to post it with any initial commentary or personal interpretation, however as I see it this "disturbance theater" is a movement of modern artists whose activities encompass hacktivism, cyberterrorism and acts of electronic civil disobedience, and a movement which Dominguez and others have patterned after the "real" Zapatista philosophy, in its broadest global aims.

(I should also say that although I am not advocating acts of terrorism or violence, I am resonant with these issues on an artistic level, which extends in my definition to my, and I believe everyone's, presence and interaction on the Net - are we not all artists here ? Submitted for your contemplation: The Diary Of Nathan Adler or The Art-Ritual Murder of Baby Grace by David Bowie, the liner notes from the Outside and the source of my nom de guerre, who is described as a "tyrannical futurist.")

Let me quote a bit of the above Zapatista site, and though it may be a gross trivialization of their true, vital, and even militant nature, point out how some of this language might metaphor the concerns of many hyper-vigilant NetHeads toward the power struggles in their own cyber-backyards.


"...It is perhaps for this reason–the lack of interest in power–that the word of the Zapatistas has been well received in other countries across the globe, above all in Europe. It has not just been because it is new or novel, but rather because it is proposing this, which is to say, to separate the political problem from the problem of taking power, and take it to another terrain...

...Our work is going to end, if it ends, in the construction of this space for new political relationships. What follows is going to be a product of the efforts of other people, with another way of thinking and acting. And there we are not going to work; instead, we would be a disturbance...

...We do not want others, more or less of the right, center or left, to decide for us. We want to participate directly in the decisions which concern us, to control those who govern us, without regard to their political affiliation, and oblige them to "rule by obeying". We do not struggle to take power, we struggle for democracy, liberty, and justice...

...It is not our arms which make us radical; it is the new political practice which we propose and in which we are immersed with thousands of men and women in Mexico and the world: the construction of a political practice which does not seek the taking of power but the organization of society. Intellectuals and political leadership, of all sizes, of the ultraright, of the right, the center, of the left and the ultraleft, national and international criticize our proposal. We are so radical that we do not fit in the parameters of "modern political science". We are not bragging … we are pointing out the facts. Is there anything more radical than to propose to change the world? You know this because you share this dream with us, and because, though the truth be repeated, we dream it together...

...You struggle for power. We struggle for democracy, liberty and justice. This is not the same thing. Though you may be successful and conquer power, we will continue struggling for democracy, liberty and justice. It does not matter who is in power, the Zapatistas are and have always struggled for democracy, liberty and justice...

...We hope that the people understand that the causes that have moved us to do this are just, and that the path that we have chosen is just one, not the only one. Nor do we think that it is the best of all paths. …. We do not want a dictatorship of another kind, nor anything out of this world, not international Communism and all that. We want justice where there is now not even minimum subsistence. …. We do not want to monopolize the vanguard or say that we are the light, the only alternative, or stingily claim the qualification of revolutionary for one or another current. We say, look at what happened. That is what we had to do..."


In essence, (my interpretation) the Zapatista aspire to take the form of 'perpetual disturbance' to the cybernetic loop of government, a heuristic for tearing down obstacles to dialogue.

As I see it, this adoption of philosophy is not a "gloomy outlook" by any means, rather it is an affirmation for the future of the power of the individual. Clearly, this is a future that must be fought for, Not by opposing the orders which are fighting for their own capitalistic concerns and freedoms, but by breaking away and beyond these concerns. We must not make the mistake of fighting the same old corporate and political wars on the level of this 'new frontier' of cyberspace; such conflicts are inherently destined to forge the same responses, to focus the same systematic limitations back into the 'old world order.' The richer social interconnectivity TankGirl refers to is something that has always existed, and something which has never been adequately contained, acknowledged or expressed by the Power Media. Power is concerned with the mass of common denominators; its languages become increasingly archaic in the face of obstinate eccentricites whose voices are not heard. The "arms" we have on this "new battleground" are unique in History by the very virtue of their accessibility, the power of our own voices of intelligence and open-mindedness to create signs large and small, and for movements to follow gestures into the elsewhere.

"Instead let us like the Zapatistas continue to break the Mirrors of Power and move into the elsewhere."

As the outward flow of this space expands, its growth is increasingly anticipated and projected so that many concerns are already meeting the "Mirrors of Power" reflecting the persistent systematic response back at them. These "mirror wars" could only prove to be, as TankGirl insinuates, the very forces which would confine this explosion of energy, sculpting it into a facsimile of the inwardly spiraling arguments of the 'old world.'

Quoting Ms. TankGirl, from the "A Day in the Life" thread: "Hammer down the phantom of Napster and you have WinMX and Morpheus instead. Hammer them down and you have 10 JXTA projects that are doing the same thing. There is no end to it. It's a pusher's nightmare: the clientele is learning to grow their own weed and even to spread it for free - just for the joy of sharing."

Nice fractal imagery, the Orbs of The Blob, responding to every hammer blow by exploding into mercurial octopi tentacles channelling toward the elsewhere, to root, swell, blob and be hammered down again, recursively. But I suggest that this is the sustenance of the 'Mesh,' the echoing sound of the same forge on which the old metals of industry were hammered. This is the Mirror War, in effect.

"Post-media cells must fight the future with gestures that have no name in the present. "

I glean another interpretation of the designation "Post-Media Cells." We simply are the post-media cells, you and I, no apocalypse here, rather a vision of ourselves and our progeny as the inheritors, the users of this media. We are They Who Get It. The Receivers. Again, to my mind's eye, a lovely vision; the information flowing out of and back into monitors everywhere, illuminating the envelope of each users experience and understanding like a dewdrop on Indira's Web, each user left with their own responsibilties to interact by the affirmation, correction, debate, amplification, synthesis, and creation of information.

The Napster user, as a post-media cell, is Uroborus, the serpent which swallows its own tail, but it's the dynamic interactive linkage of these cells, the 'joy of sharing' which defined its content and its true power. Napster however, as a multicellular post-media organism attains a predictable, and familiar form, and one that readily charges into the Hall of Mirrors to cannabalize itself and be hammered into the Mesh. Largely, subsequent replications may be an endless string of similar gestures.

"Post-media cells must travel among strings of inventions that fall outside of the logomass."

I think it's easy to see how, out of this fractal empire of building and tearing down the same structures, the very importance of P2P tech may be obscured, locked into an endlessly rising canon of repetitious gestures. I believe Dominguez means to warn us, simply and finally, to seek ways to break out of these loops. In my mind this could be as obvious as something I (and certainly others before me) have imagined for some time: a true revolution against "the music industry" in the form of a true independent explosion into the elsewhere; a 'folk movement' of independent art. Of course this implies the need for actors. And here, the Mirrors of Power have certainly done their work.

I can assure you, I often felt surprisingly lonely at the Napster forum as an independent artist who saw the basic phenomenon as having a purely positive effect, as being a possible if not probable medium for the exponential acceleration of something that had literally never had a medium before.

"We want justice where there is now not even minimum subsistence."

:: Jungle noises ::

Even before the mirrors were erected, the twilight began to pick up the colors of artist's fear. "if this is to exist at all, then it must be seen as a commercial model... how can we do that ?- advertising ? - borrowing energy from this or that ?" ...indeed it still seems persistently counter-intuitive that it could be otherwise... someone has, by God, got to be paid here. Soon enough though, those who prey on the artist came out of the forest wielding judicial gavels, and the fence was built. This fence is high and pervasive at this point, reflecting myopic old multi-national corporate concerns back at us from every sector.

"All post-media direct action cells must pursue the instabilities in Technologies--even before they become metaphors. We must move into areas that seem like the impossible - before they even gain presence among the protocols of the MESH."

Within the context of Napster, in one sense perhaps we did pursue its instability to the fullest. However I cannot help but feel, in a greater sense, an opportunity to act - directly - not against the power, but apart from it was, or is, being passed by. But certainly not by everyone... We must learn from every mistake.

"It does not matter who is in power, the Zapatistas are and have always struggled for democracy, liberty and justice..."

"We must be ready for the unexpected. Not just about the emergence of new technologies - but how people will use them."

This last statement, which is also the first statement in the Dominguez piece, implies that we are moving into areas of perpetual future shock, that we should be shocked at the possible diversity of voices in the future, and that we should have no pretense as to what they will be. We should only strive to insure that there is a political space, a forum, for them. Obviously, sharing information - not just music - is at the very heart of the Human experience, and is the point of power in the initiation of all change in the Human experience. The message in the persecution of Napster is a manifestation of a collective fear - "we should fear this technology - it will change the orders of power." Damn straight.

"Let the MESH spend its time tweaking these possibilities."

As Ms. TankGirl implies, one's approach to the idea of anarchy is a question of one's spirituality; either one embraces that truth, intelligence and good will ultimately prevail toward the best of all possible ends for humanity, seeking to open every channel for their expression - or one simply fears that the ultimate "chaos" of the elsewhere equals the dissolution of necessary policies designed to subvert our nature into ritual and often frustrated forms of expression. But doesn't an anarchy of Human concerns already exist ? Is this not the lot of our species and the very gift of our individuality ? As the 'elsewhere' is nothing but the subjective experience of up to six billion other living Human beings, and the internet is a realm of ideas, I submit that one's very definition of anarchy is a statement of relative "self-trust" - a reflection of one's confidence in the strength of the Human Spirit to change the world into a place more like itself than it found it, so to speak. It is my personal belief that, as the World Wide Intellect is the only observable force in nature which works aggressively against The Second Law of Thermodynamics, true chaos is impossible - as beyond the threshold of individual experience as it is beyond the probabilities of the system I am speaking to you through now. There is nothing to fear but limitation. Again, in agreement with She of The Tanks, the first step toward breaking beyond the screens of these microcosmic limitations is to not engage them, but to seek, or if necessary, create exits.

And finally, the mystical essence of "Mayan Technology For The People":

"The plane makes a pass over Pedrito's hut, and he raises the stick and waves it furiously at the war plane. The plane then changes its course and leaves in the direction of its base.

Pedrito says "There now" and starts playing once more with his piece of cork, with his little car.

The Sea and I look at each other in silence. We slowly move towards the stick which Pedrito left behind, and we pick it up carefully. We analyze it in great detail.

"It's a stick," I say.

"It is," the Sea says.

Without saying anything else, we take it with us. We run into Tacho as we're leaving. "And that?" he asks, pointing to Pedrito's stick which we had taken. "Mayan technology," the Sea responds."

An imaginative gesture by a young boy, which diverts an annoying war plane. Successfully.

The final constraint of the magick of the teleological process, the final affirmation of reality, is the power of our IMAGINATION.

I don't know many people who hold my view of anarchy. I think that anarchy is a place where a hermit can find his place in civilization, a place where you can be alone among 6 billion people. This is ultimately what everyone wants but no one really knows how to achieve it. Even though everyone can drive his or her own car they still have to deal with the other motorists on the road. But the nice thing about the internet is that you don't have to go anywhere to get information. As a result people can interact without stepping on each other's toes.

But I draw the line where power is concerned. It is, in fact, an illusion. Either your boss has tricked you into thinking he can control you destiny, or you have tricked your boss into thinking he can control you destiny. So when people give up on anarchy and surrender to other people's ambitions self government ceases to exist.

That's why the internet is synonymous with revolution: those that thought they had no power over their destinies discover that they really do, and those that thought they had power over other's destinies discover that they really don't. The true leaders emerge.

There's too much information in this thread for me to digest right now; I'm mostly relying on TankGirl's and Romona's interpretations here. I tell ya, the first post literally put my stomach in a twist (maybe I should stop and eat something).

But the basic theme I picked up throughout this thread is that free-thinking individuals thrive on each other's free will and become very powerful in the eyes of those who wish that power for themselves. Those poor souls don't realize that the power we wield results from our own self government multiplied by the friends we share that concept with. With true altruism we make decisions for ourselves that we hope will have positive effects on our peers. The cumulative effect is impressive.

[greedy_lars]

wow, most of that article reads like the first chaper of Focault's Pendilum by Umberto Echo