"Yes i'm going to New Orleans, and i'm gonna see that Mardi Gras!" The Anarchives Volume 2 Issue 18 The Anarchives Published By The Anarchives The Anarchy Organization The Anarchives tao@lglobal.com Send your e-mail address to get on the list Spread The Word Pass This On... --/\-- the Global Village / / \ \ mcluhan and gaia ---|--/----\--|--- \/ \/ /\______/\ by .rhosts "The media extensions of humanity are the hominization of the planet; it is the second phase of the original creation."1 "The extensions of human consciousness are projecting themselves into the total world environment via electronics, forcing humankind into a robotic future. In other words, the nature of humanity is being very rapidly translated into information systems which would produce enourmous global sensitivity and no secrets. As usual humanity seems to be unaware of the transformation."2 "As man succeeds in translating his central nervous system into electronic circuitry, he stands on the threshold of outering his consciousness into the computer."3 From millenium of fragmentation to holistic unity Explosion of fusion and creation of an earthly and simultaneously unearthly being. A computer whose databases penetrate deep into nature and civilization simultaneously, harnessing their powers for global exploitation. Transforming and controlling its components with programming of information. Generating its own consciousness and intelligence drawn from human and digital resources. Soon achieving the ability to project, and direct;. GAIA comes alive, born from the technopoly of industry. The Global Market=99 The Global Village=99 The Global Corporate State=99. "Earth in the next century will have its collective consciousness lifted off the planet's surface into a dense electronic sympnoy where all nations - if they still exist as separate entities - may live in a clutch of spontaneous synesthesia, painfully aware of the triumphs and wounds of one other. 'After such knowledge, what forgiveness.' Since the electronic age is total and inclusive atomic warfare in the 'Global Village' cannot be limited."4 The revolution has no limits. "There are no more passengers, only crew. Such a grap of totality suggests the possiblily of control not only of the planet but of change itself. Constant chage, for its own sake threatens everybody."5 The revolution also has no limits, but it does have an agenda. An agenda dictated by the same dictators who've been doin it for centuries. This Information Revolution gives them the opportunity to put it down for millenia. The second industrial revolution is now upon us. The information revolution. A revolution that will transform the industrialized world into an information economy. Catapulting society into an information age. Further enslaving humanity into the horrors of capitalism; strengthening the oligarchy that has traditionally existed; replacing the nation state with the global corporate state. Immense amounts of power and wealth are being created and simultaneously centralized into the hands of an increasingly shrinking power elite. The time is now brothers and sisters. It's act or be acted upon. Music -------- Run Niggers ----------- Last Poets As the revolution comes it will be like a steam roll effect. A groundwork needs to be laid for the Information Age. The Information Infrastructure must be built. Fuck it, it is being built right now. The Information Technology industry is rallying to get the lines laid down, build up an industry, construct the information economy. Create mass amounts of unemployment in the process, not to mention abolish privacy, and destroy the individual. Humanity turns towards the tribal in order to seek security in a suddenly exposed and total world in which private identity dissolves. Puppets to technology will think, "Wow this shit is amazing!" Marvelling at their two-way tvs, internet, and virtual reality. Little do they realize they are selling their real freedom for virtual freedom. Lost in their urban wastelands, staring into their screens for hours thinking it's real life. They renounce their privacy and expose themselves to twenty-first century direct marketing. Living their lives virtually, entering data into the global computer. As they plug-in and get on-line they are transformed into a new being. "Interactive - a cindition in which the user merges with the data base or the system."6 People who I've talked to after initally plugging into the world describe the event as "overwhelming" and "powerful", I even heard a high school librarian call it "electronic heroin". Connecting into a massive life form drawing from millions of people and computers; simultaneously ovserving it and being a part of it. Interactive in that it is you, and it is huge. When you disconnect it is still in you for it changes you, reconstructs your consciousness in relation to its, which is of course part your own. It lives Igor! "In short, the entire operation has been miniatruized, speeded up, and placed under the direction of one mind instead of several."7 Unemployment from the new automation. The assembly line in the information economy is travelled by electrons at the speed of light. All potentially controlled by a handful of people. Sys-ops and net administrators constitute a new bureaucratic class of administrators or in some cases local sheriffs. Enforcing "net-ettiquete" or their own operating agreements. The control of the technology is centralized into the hands of the few on the micro scale, and on the macro scale developed and controlled by the few. The oligarchic controls of our society are strengthened, and enforced. Organization remains oligarchy as real control rests in hands of expertise and administraive management. The government bureacracy is replaced with the corporate model of sleek effeciency for profit. Your life becomes tailor-made, all your needs could become met and automatically served... Before your even born. "And holism will then emerge as a dominant form of thinking, governed by a considerably smaller gourp of management elite." Using EFT: electronic fund transfers, "banks are able to transfer money electonically between customers banck accounts" which in effect enables "the creation of a super bank through the electric linking of literally hundreds of local and regional data sources to provide the entire Western world a view of your social and economic standing."8 Finance in the information revolution must be fairly unified. Or in other words capital must be liberated to such an extent that management and devlopment of the corporate state be efficient and complete. GAIA the earth computer must be able to have all resources easily accessible in order to function properly. Great amounts of capital will be generated by the Information Revolution and this capital must be available to be used to further develop the revolution as it grows exponentially. "There is no technical reason why the 40,000 - odd financial isntitutions in North America devoted to banking, securities, and insurance could not be merged into a single institution through electronic means."9 "The future holds for us a corporate man who will accept the goldfish bowl as a natural habitat - having recognized that electronic espionage has already become an art form."10 Privacy is eliminated along with individualism so each person can become a full participant in the Global Database. The information they produce as a human being will be extracted for the purposes of the whole. Their privacy will be traded in for a corporate identity and global consciousness. Their participation in the global computer comes at the price of their private identities; faced with the immensity of creation; of millions of people simultaneously existing in the same enviroment; what McLuhan terms synethesia. A new consciousness. "More and more people will enter the market of information exchange, lose their private identities in the process, but emerge with the ability to interact with any person on the face of the glove. Mass, spontaneous electronic referendums will sweep across continents. the concept of nationalism will fade and regional governments will fall as the political implicatons of spaceship earth create a wrold government."11 The emergence of the Global Corporate State. And where will this Global Corporate State emerge from? From where it already is now. "The multi-carrier media corporation has the peculiar ability to be a media orchestrator, to link all video-related technologies, whenter staellite, earth station, microwave, date base, or computer into a resonating whole."12 Now who's this going to be you ask? The American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) or the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Personally I put my money on AT&T. I've conducted substantial research on the fuckers and am now scared out of my wits for both the present and the future. In 1980 AT&T was bigger that GE, GM, USGold, Kodak, and Xerox combined. They were also bigger than the entire US Army. Since then there size on paper has diminished, but there power has grown exponentially. With over 30 million shareholders they are a nation unto themselves, their power earning them their own sovereignty. AT&T was and probably still is the core of the military-industrial complex's research & development. They own the patents and copyrights on almost all the technology that exists today, and almost all the technology that will exist tomorrow. Through directorship-ties and partial or full ownership of countless other companies they are a corporate empire equal to none. As information technology continues to proliferate AT&T will only continue to grow. Similarly IBM a giant in its own right, will also benefit greatly from the Information Revolution. They have a virtyal monopoly on global computer production providing about 70% of the mainframes used in the world. Mainframes are the central part of any large or networking computer. They generate profits around the $6 Billion dollar mark and also have their own nation of shareholders. As computers become more of an integral part of our lives, IBM will also. It's also worth noting that they too are a part of the military-industrial complex. Both IBM and AT&T operate their own private networks, seperate from the internet but still able to access its resources. Included in these networks are two-way television communication which AT&T as already started marketing. "The bad news is that all persons, whether or not they understand the processes of computerized high-speed data transmission, will lose their old private identities. What knowledge there is will be available to all. So, in that sense, verybody will be nobody. Everyone will be involved in robotic role-playing including those few elitists who interpret or manage large-scale data patterns and thsu control the functions of a speed-of-light society. The more quickly the rate of information exchange speeds up, the more likely we will al merge into a new robotic corporate entity, devoid of true specialism which has been the hallmark of our old private identities. The more information one has to evaluate, the less one knows. Specialism cannot exist at the speed of light."13 "What is happening at the present time is that chagnes are occuring so rapidly that the rearview mirror does not work anymore - -at jet speeds, rearview mirrors are not very useful. One must have a way of anticipating the future. Humankind can no longer, through fear of the unkown, expend so much energy translating anything new into something old but must do what the artist does: develop the habit of approaching the present as a task, as an envrionment to be discussed, analyzed, coped with, so that the future may be seen more clearly."14 1 McLuhan, Marshal; Powers, Bruce; The Global Village; Oxford University Press, pp. 93 2 Paraphrased from The Global Village; pp. viii 3 The Global Village; pp. 94 4 The Global Village; pp. 95 5 The Global Village; pp. 98 6 The Global Village; pp. 128 7 The Global Village; pp. 106 8 The Global Village; pp. 111 9 The Global Village; pp. 91 10 The Global Village; pp. 114 11 The Global Village; pp. 118 12 The Global Village; pp. 119 13 The Global Village; pp. 129 14 The Global Village; pp. viii http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/ ___ ___ ___ / /\ / /\ / /\ / /:/ / /::\ / /::\ / /:/ / /:/\:\ / /:/\:\ / /::\ / /:/ /::\ / /:/ \:\ /__/:/\:\ /__/:/ /:/\:\ /__/:/ \__\:\ \__\/ \:\ \ \:\/:/__\/ \ \:\ / /:/ \ \:\ \ \::/ \ \:\ /:/ \ \:\ \ \:\ \ \:\/:/ \ \:\ \ \:\ \ \::/ \__\/ \__\/ \__\/ -------------------------------------------------------------- To receive the Anarchives via email send a note to Majordomo@lglobal.com with the message in the body: subscribe anarchives To get off the list, send to the same address but write: unsubscribe anarchives Also check out: