Parallels: Wikileaks and Second Life

If you've been following my blogs about the Wikileaks story, you know this is a cause dear to my heart. As I write, the Wikileaks.org domain name has been pulled from the root DNS servers in the US.


EveryDNS dropped WikiLeaks "to prevent its other 500,000 customers being affected by the intense cyberattacks targeted at WikiLeaks." These attacks have been ongoing since just before the release of the diplomatic cables; pretty interesting in the light of the Pentagon's veiled threats and the Obama Administration's cyberwar rhetoric of the past few months...


It kinda sounds like a legitimate action... however, what it means is that things can disappear from the web overnight.


Fortunately, the DNS servers here aren't the only ones out there. Several alternate DNS servers are mirroring and will still point to Wikileaks:

wikileaks.ch
wikileaks.dd19.de
wikileeks.org.uk

and a direct connection bypassing name servers can be made by using the True Name (numerical address) of the Wikileaks server in Switzerland:

213.251.145.96

As long as a site is connected to the internet somewhere, somehow, it can be accessed via its numeric IP address.


[ ADDED: this interesting link from Apmel:

Assange ‘rape’ accuser linked to notorious CIA operative

See why this story interests me as an artist working in communication? The spin, slants, disinformation and misinformation is textbook psyops warfare/propaganda; the use of Madison Avenue advertising techniques (ie art/design) to sell a political message.

The revelations in the War Diaries material, including authorized death squads, widespread complicity in torture, consistently misreported and falsified body counts of civilians as well as soldiers and the rest of the shocking and morally bankrupt revelations revealed to have taken place for years have now been buried, pushed aside and obscurred by the campaign to paint the messenger ]

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

... and this is where Second Life comes into the picture. See, even if the numerical server was blocked, you could use peer-to-peer networks like Skype, or a torrent, or FTP, or email, or steganography, or telephones or carrier pigeons to communicate.


Second Life is an application I use to reach a world/community in which I am a resident and participate. I work there. I socialize there. I have some great friendships there, and peers to listen to and learn from. I think it's at least as real as the telephone (only disembodied voices), television (only dancing light beams through a particle mask) or a letter (pigmented water on paper).


But it is the network I reach, on a device called a "computer" over the lines called the "internet" through a program called "Second Life." The network is not the hardware or the software; those are merely tools to reach the network. The network always finds and uses whatever means and technologies are available to communicate.


I've been working in InWorldz lately and walking other worlds, broadening my horizons. I don't wish to be beholden to one company/DNS server/location putting the part of my life which is online into possible jeopardy or ransom or hostage. These politics do concern me, as they are the harbingers and forerunners of the digital war which is coming and in some cases already here.


If we are netizens, citizens of the wide world web, then it's good to be aware of the politics which involve our country; good to know of alternative places and spaces for meeting and greeting, continuing our work and maintaining the network. It's just simple civics; we are making the future world and if we'd like it to be a certain kind of world, it behooves us to be informed and to be active in its shaping. As we are all learning about this malleable universe, interactivity is very much a part of the underlying philosophy.