Info War / the technology of the lie

(there was an email problem, some of you may have gotten
duplicated messages)

referring to:
fis discussion and
Social Information, New media ("Gottfried Stockinger" , Wed 17:24)

> So we have to look, as you say, for new media.
> That can only be, IMO, a media made out of
> a non-rites and non-force kind. A media that (like art and tecnology, as
> you mention) helps social creativity to come out to wipe off the "unfit"
> VEMs
============================================================

Actually there is an age-old time-honored way,
"a media made out of a non-rites and non-force kind"
for wiping off the "unfit" without using force:
The technologies of "Info War", Deception, Manipulation, or short: "the
technology of the lie".
We can turn around Clausewitz' dictum and presume, that when the cold
'info war'
of the dominating sectors of society against the subdued ones
(those who actually build the pyramids and the monuments)
doesn't work any more, then "real war" (or revolution) will happen.
http://www.uni-ulm.de/uni/intgruppen/memosys/diskur05.htm#Heading99

Jared Diamond in "Guns, germs, and steel" missed this crucial point in
his exposition of
the overpowering factors of Eurasian populations which led to the
colonization of the Americas by the Europeans: It was not only the
germs, that
decimated the populations by up to hundred millions, but the systematic
use
of the "Info War" technologies of plain lies by the Europeans. The
concept of
the lie was quite alien to the AmerIndians, or at least it was tabooed
so that
it could ravage these populations mentally as the germs ravaged them
biologically.

The Ars Electronica has devoted this year's symposion to this
fascinating subject:
http://www.aec.at/infowar/NETSYMPOSIUM/

One contribution found in the aec discussion tree:
THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF INFORMATION AGE TECHNOLOGIES
http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/inss/books/uc/uchome.html

Comments on Information War are also in telepolis (in German)
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/special/info/default.html

The "Confronting Technology" website also contains interesting
contributions to the subject:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~lmonke/

More material in German:
Kongress 12./13.6.1998: Machtfragen der Informationsgesellschaft
http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~rillingr/imd/IMD98/98texte.htm

I have made an attempt to give a summary overview of the infrastructure
questions of information
technologies for future society (in German):
http://www.uni-ulm.de/uni/intgruppen/memosys/diskur.htm
http://www.uni-ulm.de/uni/intgruppen/memosys/diskur05.htm

Book Literature:
Bloom, H.: The Lucifer Principle. A scientific expedition into the
forces of history, Atlantic
Monthly Press, New York (1995)
http://www.bookworld.com/lucifer/
Diamond, J.: The third chimpanzee, HarperCollins, New York (1992)
Diamond, J.: Guns, germs, and steel, Norton, New York (1997)
Shenk, David: Data smog, surviving the information glut, Harper Collins,
New York (1997)
Stoll, C.: Silicon snake oil, Doubleday, New York (1995)
Wurman, Saul: Information anxiety, Bantam, New York (1988???)

-- 
Andreas Goppold 
URL: http://www.uni-ulm.de/uni/intgruppen/memosys/
c/o FAW Ulm, Postf. 2060, D-89010 Ulm , Germany
Tel. ++49 +731 501-8757/ -915 , Fax: +731 501-929