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 ]

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... 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.

After The Burn - What lessons learned?

So, Burn2 is over.

House of Cards had a wonderful group of visitors; over 700 uniques for the official Burn and still counting. As far as I could see, being at the Playa every day for 4+ hrs at a time, the Burn was quite well attended. Not too bad, when you consider the dearth of publicity for this event and the sometimes-incredible glue-lag engendered by second-class servers.


Here's the impressions I took away from this Burn:

1. The builds were consistently better and more interesting than the SLBirthday event, and much more consistent than the last Burning Life event. Perhaps this was due to most people having to pay for a plot, which I thought analagous to paying for studio space. I also saw people work a lot longer and harder on their builds.


2. Because of the smaller size of the event, people could actually take their time and investigate builds, rather than rush from place to place taking snapshots in order to "see it all." Rather than the "hey I got a build, let's have a party!" crowds who tend to hang out with their friends at one or two builds, I saw most people taking the time to tour most of the builds.


3. That a small, 32x32m plot with 351 prims could be turned into a huge area with a lot of interesting stuff by use of space, lighting, sound and texture and a build could be fascinating and interesting to many people without elaborate scripting or other tricks.


4. The lack of any kind of support from Linden Labs was to be expected, even though this event should have been on the Showcase pages. It was a nasty bit of sour grapes that LL, having been spurned by the Burn organization over issues of nannyism and the like, chose to turn a cold shoulder to this event and bury it. Their loss. However, giving us crappy, old servers for this event after making us pay for them instead of donating them smacks of Halliburtonesque rip-off and does nothing but harm to the happy-smoke and bullfud LL is streaming out lately.


5. I was sorely disappointed to see so little blog coverage for this event. True, the Burn org was somewhat to blame for this in not understanding the need to provide advance entrance and information to the press. Press and machinima makers need lead-time, and having a Press Day with somewhat confusing and involved procedures for getting a Pass only 3 days before the opening was kind of retarded.

I did expect to see at least the "Invited Artists" blogged a lot, along with such heavy hitters as Ub Yifu, soror Nishi, Bryn Oh, Wizard Gynoid and the rest. Last time I Googled (and then Binged, comparing search engine hits), there were perhaps 4 blogs doing any coverage past one or two builds. Shameful. In my quest to support newer and 'smaller' artists, I spent 3 10-hr days blogging and mapping most of the builds at the Burn because I felt that it was important that someone did it.


I do understand that because of the abrupt change in leadership and direction, things were a bit hazy and fuzzy for this event. The Burn org did have "tour lists" I was informed... three days later, after I'd spent my time mapping the Playa. I guess that's nice; would have been nicer if I knew about them in advance.

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It's bothered me a lot lately that the very people who profess to love SL for its artistic community and are a part of that community are so... indifferent, it seems, to the need to do some basic PR. I don't know if it's the "we are artists, PR is beneath us" attitude that is prevalent not only in the virtual worlds but in RL, but it is the equivalent of painting in your bedroom and then whining when "no one values my art." If they don't know it's out there, they won't see it or think about it.

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Here's the lesson of 'web 2.0', which is really a lesson we learned 30 years ago in punk, when we were blocked from distribution or publicity from the Major Dinosaurs, couldn't book big clubs because no one would book punk bands and crisscrossed the country and continents with cartrunksfull of 3.98USD singles (at a time when 45rpm singles sold for 0.99), mailings and hand-done posters and 'zines:

DIY - Do It Yourself

It's clear that LL does not have our interests at heart. It's clear that, given our own lack of speech and efforts to publicize and speak about our work in virtual worlds, stories about the lowest and most titillating facets of this new universe will be the most-repeated stories, coloring our efforts at legitimacy and respectability. If you leave it to them, all you're going to get are Prok-like stories ranting about the money-business of SL and stories about "omg furreh nun sex with kidz" and the like.

If you continue to rant at LL for 'yer doin' it wrong' or for focusing on a purely-Kmart-level of business concern, you're attached to the platform and platforms don't last. Unless you want to be a Word .doc or something (and even that format has been changed so many times, old versions of Word can't open new Word files and new versions can't open old files) you're going to be left behind.


Likewise, the political infighting between "what grid is da best grid?" is just so much more high-school factionalism and serves only to dilute the efforts and strengths of a community. Wake up and smell the future. There were some small politics between, say, the Punks, the New Romantics, the Jazzpunks, the Artpunks and the rest, but at heart we all pulled together because we had an identity as a community of musicians and artists, and we supported each other's efforts as a unified front. We did it good enough to get the Majors to beg for a signing by Talking Heads, B-52s, Gang of Four, Ramones, Duran Duran and the rest. Everyone had their own leitmotif and area of exploration, but we all knew we were part of something worthwhile.


You're part of a network. The network is not the machinery or the platform. The network is people. We make our own network; we don't depend on LL or any outside force.


Don't wait on LL, or Time-Warner, or a label or a magazine to do your job for you; to 'discover' you; to court you for your amazingly creative efforts, to bring some interest to your work, to legitimize you. Do it yourself.