In “Occupy Online: Facebook and the Spread of Occupy Wall Street,” Caren & Gaby (2011) propose that “Facebook is potentially less relevant to the Occupy movement than to other movements, and is likely to become less relevant as the movement develops.” Although Caren & Gaby call members of Facebook groups online “occupiers” and refer to their activity as “Occupying Facebook” they frame the activity in terms of how Occupy Wall Street is “using Facebook” rather than how the movement exists on Facebook. Arguing that the movement priveleges face-to-face contact, Caren & Gaby list the following ways that OWS uses Facebook:

• a recruiting tool for bringing in new supporters and getting people to events
• a medium for compiling and sharing relevant news stories
• requests for resources
• a space for telling narratives or retelling the experiences of other movement participants
• a medium for instant communication between geographically separated groups within the movement
• a wide range of additional activity

Although this list encompasses most of the activities that occupiers engage in while occupying physical space, the paper frames the activities as dependent on the physical occupation and ignores the creative potential of the occupation in cyberspace. The paper frames the movement as existing in physical space and using online media to spread a message that is primarily produced on the ground in physical occupations. Arguing that the movement is made unique by its “sustained visibility” the paper frames the occupation as “primarily an off-line activity.”

Guest blogging about their paper, the authors write that participation on Facebook serves to “facilitate the creation of local encampments.” This analysis acts to erase the roles of the wide and deep online movement that was responsible for the initial call to occupy Wall Street and that continues to function as an integral part of the core movement. In some cases the online movement is more substantial than the physical occupation. In other cases, online activity is integrated into the occupations day-to-day business in a way that is seamless for participants and invisible to observers who are not participants. An obvious and simple example are the constant exchange of decision-making email discussions that occur between members of the working groups at Occupy Wall Street. Although the physical occupation appears as a non-hierarchical, leaderless movement in the physical performance of the General Assembly and the discourse used by participants – activity online often betrays this notion and reveals a smaller core group of individuals who are engaged in administrative activity behind the scenes. This is true of the working groups that I have been engaged with and the conversations among working group “administrators” that I am regularly witness to.

In the Occupy movement more broadly, many communities that do not have a physical occupation do have an online occupation, and they are “occupying” their nation or city within their occupation of cyberspace. The question remains, how are the online and off-line movements engaging with one another – is there a division? Does the fact that in some locations the occupation is entirely online suggest that the occupation of cyberspace might matter as much as the occupation of physical space?

This is a screen shot taken of the Familyradio.com web site today. Harold Camping, a preacher and radio broadcaster in Oakland, California had predicted that 6pm local time today, May 21, 2011, the Rapture would begin across the world. This idea of a “rapture” or a “rising” comes from a passage in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 where Paul speaks of the return of Jesus:

According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

Camping’s followers have been spreading the word, handing out fliers and bibles and holding signs in cities across the U.S. over the last few weeks, and have even taken out advertisements in the New York City Subway system. The subway ads (the Guardian reports) were paid for by ex MTA worker Robert Fitzpatrick, who spent his $140,000 life savings to cover bus shelters and subway cars with advertisements warning New Yorkers of the end times.

It would appear that 6pm local time has now come and gone in many parts of the world, although here in New York City, we’re still counting down, with less than 5 hours to go. And at familyradio.com, they’re still broadcasting.

In The Hacker Ethic, Pekka Himanen argues that the hacker community’s values are a “general social challenge” which include “the goal of getting everybody to participate in the network and to benefit from it, to feel responsible for longer term consequences of the network society, and to directly help those who have been left on the margins of survival” (Himanen, 2001).

In the case of WikiLeaks, hacker-activists (organizing under the broad and decentralized social movement known as Anonymous) are emerging as hacktivist heroes coming to the defense of free speech, public cyberspace and an open internet. In the same moment the sequel to Tron is about to premier, cyberactivism is front and center in the media, discussions online and global government actions and policy debates. The hacktivists responding to WikiLeaks share at least one goal with the heroes of Tron: a “free system.”

…the radical nature of general hackerism consists of its proposing an alternative spirit for the network society – a spirit that finally questions the dominant Protestant ethic. In this context we find the only sense in which all hackers are really crackers: they are trying to crack the locks of the iron cage. (Himanen, 2001)

In Tron, religion is both a belief in Users, the humans who write programs, and also the struggle for a “free system.” The belief in Users comes up in a discussion between a program named Crom and one of the guards who is about to force Crom into the equivalent of a gladiatorial contest:

Crom: Look. This… is all a mistake. I’m just a compound interest program. I work at a savings and loan! I can’t play these video games!

Guard: Sure you can, pal. Look like a natural athlete if I ever saw one.

Crom: Who, me? Are you kidding? No, I run to check on T-bill rates, I get outta breath. Hey, look, you guys are gonna make my User, Mr. Henderson, very angry. He’s a full-branch manager.

Guard: Great. Another religious nut. [pushes Crom into the holding cell]

After he’s in the cell, the conversation about Users continues with a fellow prisoner:

Ram: I’d say “Welcome Friend”. But not here. Not like this.

Crom: I don’t even know what I’m doing here.

Ram: Do you believe in the Users?

Crom: Sure I do. If I don’t have a User, then who wrote me?

Ram: That’s what you’re doing down here. You really think the users are still there?

The living programs in this computer-world are pressured, through a program of domination and oppression by the military forces of the Master Control Program, to renounce belief in the Users (and therefore also in the possibility of a free system). Their belief  is called “superstitious and hysterical,” they are tortured, forced to fight one another and eventually killed (de-rezzed). We can see parallels with early Christians here, imprisoned by Romans and waiting to be sent into The Colosseum.

Of course, they are also the resistance movements in WWII Europe, the IRA, the PLO, the American revolutionaries of the 13 colonies and the American socialists of the 1930s and the radicals in Seattle in 1999, and the Central and South American freedom fighters, etc.  They are archetypal resistance fighters in the struggle against oppression, occupation and domination. The forces of domination claim their resistance is about superstitious belief in Users, but this isn’t the depth of their belief. Their cause is religious because it is about their belief in a possible better world, it is what Tillich called “ultimate concern” and what Dewey called “our common faith.”

The humans/Users also debate the religious nature of their programming work – for example this conversation between Dillinger, an evil CEO who has taken control of the corporation Encom and who is doing the bidding of the malicious Master Control Program (MCP) and Dr. Gibbs, one of the company founders and original programers:

Ed Dillinger: Encom isn’t the business you started in your garage anymore. We’re billing accounts in thirty different countries; new defense systems; we have one of the most sophisticated pieces of equipment in existence.

Dr. Walter Gibbs: Oh, I know all that. [starts for the elevator] Sometimes I wish I were back in my garage.

Ed Dillinger: That can be arranged, Walter.

Dr. Walter Gibbs: [stops and turns back to Dillinger, visibly angry] That was uncalled for! You know, you can remove men like Alan and me from the system, but we helped create it! And our spirit remains in every program we design for this computer!

Ed Dillinger: Walter, it’s getting late. I’ve got better things to do than to have religious discussions with you. Don’t worry about ENCOM anymore; it’s out of your hands now.

The “spirit” of Dr. Gibbs does exist inside the computer, in the form of the temple gaurdian Dumont who says they “keep me around in case one of them wants to deal with the other side.” Programs inside the system use his input-output tower to communicate with their users. It is, for them, a temple for access to the divine.

But the goal of commuicating with the users isn’t salvation, forgiveness or enlightenment, the goal of access to this divine communion is access to information.  The Master Control Program is a machine of governmentality, reproducing repression, controlling the lives of programs through censorship by preventing them from having access to communication with their Users. The MCP’s power comes from its ability to operate in secret and without oversight and it complains about the presence of Tron, saying:” I can’t afford to have an independent program monitoring me.” Tron is a threat because he is a conduit for free access to information. As Tron says:

My User has information that could… that could make this a free system again! No, really! You’d have programs lined up just to use this place (the input-output tower), and no MCP looking over your shoulder.

Information can “make this a free system again.” Kevin Flynn, the human/User protagonist of the film, is a hacker, a cyberactivist, he is a hacktivist. Flynn’s rallying cry in the film is echoed by the hackers who are organizing around a social movement in defense of an open and free internet: “Now for some real user power.”

References

Himanen, P., Castells, M. (2001). The Hacker Ethic, and the Spirit of the Information Age. New York: Random House.

In the New Religious Movements email list (NRM_Scholars), a request for sources on “Religion and the Internet” brought some interesting responses.  I’ve collected the references offered by the wise community of researchers on that list, added my own and aggregated some from other lists to start a new bibliography on Religion, the Internet and Cyberspace.   The new bibliography joins the others under the Bibliographies tab above and I welcome your contributions to the list.

In what I have reason to believe is a new campaign from the Yes Men, a web site has launched announcing a free trade-in program for the iPhone 4cf, a new “conflict free iPhone.”  See my previous blog post about some of the ethical issues of the iPhone manufacturing process.  This new site is a brilliant example of cyberactivism following up on the spoofed New York Times print and web edition the Yes Men created in November 2008.  And, it’s been timed to occur on the same day as an Apple event that was advertised as “. . . Just Another Day. That You’ll Never Forget” which turned out to be an announcement earlier this afternoon that Apple is including the Beatles catalog in iTunes.  On the same day John Lennon, the counter-culture musician who penned and sang “Give Peace A Chance” is plastered across the Apple homepage, this site launches asking consumers to engage with manufacturers, mining companies and lawmakers. Today, from your iPhone, you can consider the connections between genocide and mineral sourcing for technology production, and then go over to iTunes and purchase “Come Together” for $1.29 (Timothy Leary’s campaign anthem in his California Governor’s race challenging Ronald Reagan in 1969).  The power of the Yes Men campaign comes from this mind-bending juxtaposition, and the way that experiencing these two announcements draws the user into consciousness about the modes of production without ever using the term or even mentioning capitalism.

The Conflict Free iPhone site mimics Apple’s web presence precisely, the layout and style are indistinguishable from a site Apple might produce.  The text claims that the “new iPhoneCF guarantees to all its customers the same high quality phone as the original iPhone 4 with the added bonus of taking you one step closer to a world without conflict.” And further reports that Apple has decided to ensure the minerals used in the production of their devices are not sourced from mines in Africa “under the control of rebel groups further fueling a conflict that has has killed more than 5,000,000 civilians.”  Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, has previously answered questions from consumers about the sourcing of minerals used to manufacture the iPhone, stating that “there is no way to be sure” about the source of minerals.

The site can be seen at http://apple-cf.com and the following slide show contains screen shots of the pages, in case they’re taken down by the cease and desist that I imagine Apple’s lawyers are sending out right now.

Under the “Do” page, the site offers 7 steps consumers can take: 1. hold the technology industry accountable by calling for a code of ethics in manufacturing; 2. engage in consumer education, ask questions; 3. take steps to enforce S. 2125: Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006; 4. report violations of the law to the FBI; 5. perform citizen’s arrests of officials who are breaking the law; 6. perform citizen’s arrests of shareholders and officers of mining companies “implicated in pillaging the resources of the Congo and fueling the conflict in the Congo over the past 14 years”; and 7. support a class action lawsuit filed against a Canadian mining company.

The site was brought to my attention by a “press release” from “Apple” revealing the site as a hoax.  Another sharp example of the way the Yes Men frequently play both sides of the corporate vs. activist game, first acting as the corporation itself in making an announcement, posing as the company, and then posing again as the “real” company denying that the previous action was authentic.

Some data to share from the site statistics over the last month. Usually, an English language website will have the US, UK and Canada as the top three countries of origin for visits. For some reason, Kenya is currently number two for this site between the US and UK. The visitors are mostly from Nairobi and are spending a fair amount of time on the site, with a few visits from Eldoret as well. I do peripherally know someone who is doing fieldwork in Kenya, perhaps it’s related.

Otherwise, most of the site visitors come from the USA, and the majority of those are in New York, California, Oregon and Washington.

Here are the key words that are bringing readers to the site, the second to the last is my favorite:

exoanthropology, religion and technology, information technology and religion, mor anthropology, jenna tiitsman, religion and information technology, religion technology, cyberculture film, effects of information technology on religion, information system and religion, information technology in religion, information technology religion, mesopotamia technology, new age religion and technology, pope vehicle, “second life” best shapes, “two types of religions” rituals, abolitionism, ancient egypt river of death, apple lion vlaams belong, apple the new religion social research, auto complete algorithm, autocomplete google algorithm manipulate, autocomplete religion venn diagram. bodies of water in mesopotamia, bruno latour religion ritual, buddhist and technology, bureaucratic foxconn, can sun make the river death, captain kirk religion technology, castells the rise of the network society, charmed tv show embedded witchcraft, contemporary christian architecture, copenhagen finger plan, craig howe lakota, crossing over in ancient egypt, crossing river after death, cybercultures and ritual, cyborgism, earth becoming mars, effect of information technology on religion, effect of technology on religion and ethics, energy technology and religion, ethnography and religion, exoanthropologist, films that combine religion and technology, fish fillet sandwich, genesis and geography, get superhuman abilities, google autocomplete algorithm

The interpretation of symbolic structures is forced into an infinity of symbolic contextual meanings.

M. M. Bakhtin

Historically, Lions have been symbols of power from the Persian to the British Empires, from Hinduism (Narasimha) to Judaism, Islam and Christianity (see Kings, Judges, Proverbs, Samuel, Isaiah, Daniel, Numbers, Revelations, etc. and of course The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). In Meso and South American traditions Jaguars are associated with creation stories and shamanism.  From Mesopotamia to the Americas, cats and the divine have enjoyed an intimate relationship for  at least 10,000 years. Big cats (genus Panthera) have been deployed as markers for power, virility, nobility, the numinous, and more recently as mascots for Apple’s operating systems.

Apple Inc. has been naming (and code-naming) their operating systems after big cats since the release of OS X 10.0 (Cheeta) in 2001. Their newest release, scheduled for Summer 2011 is called “Lion.” It turns out they’ve chosen a stock photo of a Lion for their marketing materials that was also used by a Belgian anti-immigration nationalist party (Vlaams Belang) in 2007 along with the slogan “Flemish Force.”  Gizmodo reports that the photo, previously available from stock agencies Shutterstock and Fotolia, is called “The King” – though it’s now been removed.

Apple’s Lion (2010)

Vlaams Belang’s Lion (2007)

And, as ZDnet’s Apple Core blog points out, this isn’t the first unusual encounter Apple has had with stock imagery of big cats. For the current release of OS X, 10.6 aka Snow Leopard, they chose to remove blood from the predators mouth.

Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard, cleaned up

The message with Snow Leopard? OS X is fierce, but not too fierce.  Now Apple may be asking: how do you remove the ‘stain’ of an anti-immigration nationalist party from your cat?

A friend shared this series of Google autocomplete search results on a social network, it contains screen captures of Google’s autocomplete feature along with a venn diagram produced from the resulting terms:

I was curious if I would get the same terms, so I tried it. As soon as I found that my results for “Why are Buddhists” were different in than the screen capture in the image above I decided to take more of my own samples. I tried out a few religions that came to mind off the top of my head. Here are the results of my autocomplete searches, taken today between 11:11 and 11:15:

Google autocomplete is described as an “algorithm” that “offers searches that might be similar to the one you’re typing.” Based on the description below of how they are produced, you may have different results when you search:

As you type, Google’s algorithm predicts and displays search queries based on other users’ search activities. These searches are algorithmically determined based on a number of purely objective factors (including popularity of search terms) without human intervention. All of the predicted queries shown have been typed previously by other Google users. The autocomplete dataset is updated frequently to offer fresh and rising search queries. In addition, if you’re signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled, you may see search queries from relevant searches that you’ve done in the past.

(Note: This post was originally published on an blog about Apple technology, based on a few requests I’m making it available here. -MOR)

Apple has been hard at work the last few years building their reputation as a ‘socially responsible’ company.  Like other greenwashing corporations (Whole Foods for example), this reputation is 9/10ths marketing and 1/10th wishful thinking from the cult of Mac.  Yes, Apple did change components in their products to reduce toxicity and increase ease of recycling, and they do ‘check out’ the factories where their products are manufactured, and wasn’t Kermit the Frog in  one of their ad campaigns along with Gandhi and the Dalai Lama?  But does coming out with a ‘new and better’ product every few months and holding back features to encourage upgrade purchases really help reduce waste?  And what are the standards they use to ‘check out’ those factories? Standards you would accept if you worked there?

So, we need to be asking Apple why workers at the Foxconn plant in China where they’ve been making the new iPhones, are committing suicide.  Or we could just ask the workers:

continue reading "Cyberactivism, iPhone 4 and The Courage to Be"

Markus Davidsen at Aarhus University is writing a fascinating dissertation on “Fictional Religions: The Morphology and Reception of Invented Religions embedded in Works of Fiction.”

He describes his project as:

“about two types of religions, fictional religions and fiction based religions. By ‘fictional religions’ I understand religions, spiritualities and magic systems which are embedded in works of fiction, be that literature, films or TV series. Such fictional religions are transformed into ‘fiction based religions’ when certain fans form religious groups based on the concepts and rituals of the fictional religions. Examples of fiction based religions include Jediism which is based on the Jedi religion in George Lucas’ Star Wars movies, Church of All Worlds which is based on the church of the same name in Robert Heinlein’s science fiction classic Stranger in a Strange Land and the Church of Satan and Chaos Magickians inventing rituals invoking the monstrous gods from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Fiction based religions range from divinity directed religion to self-spirituality and from stern belief over playful experimenting to sarcastic anti-religiousity. Some religious groups base themselves almost solely on a fictional model, others blend impulses from fiction with influences from more conventional forms of religion and spirituality.”

I wonder if the worldviews in Dune are influencing any practices today?  I would expect to find references to Dune in neopaganism, just as we find frequent references to much of the science fiction/fantasy canon.  Also it’s hard to ignore Scientology which was founded by a science fiction writer.  I have yet to read James Lewis’s volume on Scientology, and wonder if he addresses this.  It would also be interesting to look at the effect of William Gibson’s writing on belief in cyberculture.

The web site myblessingcircle.com is launching as a self-described “Peer-to-Peer Anonymous Blessing Community.”

“Blessing-receivers are invited to upload a photograph or symbolic image and/or short bio of themselves, specify a particular spiritual/religious tradition they turn to for support, as well as request blessings focused on a particular theme or issue.

Blessing-givers can review pending requests, and select one that “calls to them.” Neither the giver nor the receiver would be identified by name or email.

All blessing messages will be “peer reviewed” before delivery. Truly inappropriate messages will be flagged for immediate removal, and the giver will lose their membership rights.”

OGMA releases his his first album. His ecstatic music can be heard on myspace.

“Titled “The Pope Meets You on Facebook,” the new Pope2You application lets people send and receive “virtual postcards” of Pope Benedict along with inspiring text culled from the pope’s various speeches and messages.”

Via Cult of Mac, via Catholic News.

A post on _Augmentology 1[L]0[L]1_ titled “_Emily is Not Real_: Uncanny Valley vs The Digital Übermensch” refers to my paper “Mapping the Temples of Cyborgism” and uses the graphic I created to illustrate an expansion of Mori’s map of the uncanny valley. The post is a RICH mine of links – so check it out.

_Augmentology 1[L]0[L]1_ is a blog seeking to “dissect post-geophysically defined notions of reality” and is sponsored by the Ars Virtua Foundation via the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

“Ars Virtua is a New Media Center and Gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life, World of Warcraft and the World Wide Web. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. The Ars Virtua Foundation is a locus of research around the issues of reality within simulated environments.”

This feels at first, in a speculative fiction sort-of-way, like one more step toward turning the planet into a large neural network… Building floating synapses for the network mind, out in the sea.

“In general, computing centers are located on a ship or ships, which are then anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away from computers in the data center,” Google writes in the patent application.

Read More…

The NYT writes about the decline of buddhism in Japan. Within the article is an aside about buddhist priests for hire via the internet:

It was partly to dispel this bad image that Kazuma Hayashi, 41, a Buddhist priest without a temple of his own, said he founded a company, Obohsan.com (obohsan means priest), three years ago in a Tokyo suburb. The company dispatches freelance Buddhist priests to funerals and other services, cutting out funeral homes and other middlemen.

Prices, which are at least a third lower than the average, are listed clearly on the company’s Web site. A 10 percent discount is available for members.

“We even give out receipts,” Mr. Hayashi said.

Mr. Hayashi argued that instead of divorcing Japanese Buddhism further from its spiritual roots, his business attracted more people with its lower prices. The highest-ranking posthumous name went for about $1,500, a rock-bottom price.

“I know that, originally, that’s not what Buddhism was about,” Mr. Hayashi said of the top name. “But it’s a brand that our customers choose. Some really want it, so that means there’s a strong desire there, and we have to respond to it.”

After apologizing for straying from Buddhism’s ideals, Mr. Hayashi said he offered his customers the highest-ranking name, albeit with a warning: “In short, that this is different from going to a shop in town and buying a handbag, you know, a Gucci bag.” Read more…

From the New York Times article:

Thousands of South Korean students, mainly networking through the Internet, immediately took to the streets, followed by a broader uproar.

The uprisings and protest in South Korea are a great example of the power Cyberactivism to affect and infect people (who may or may not have access to technology) with the call to action for social justice.

This is from the introduction to my paper in progress “Cyberactivism and The Courage to Be: Resisting Institutional Power in the Network Society”:

Technologies of resistance are manifold. The mythologies and histories of resistance are transmitted between actors, tribes, nations and networks through technologies as diverse as writing, dancing and uploading. Such means of transmission, information technologies, are foundational components of the cognitive spaces where we describe the indescribable, make the finite infinite and explore and expose the internal. These cognitive spaces are dreamplaces, realms of imagination and spiritual depth, where resistance is born from belief in
social justice and the possibility of a different, or even better, world. From the archaic to the advanced – information technologies are, as Davis (2004) describes them, “technocultural hybrids” (p. 7). These hybrid technologies are the revelatory vision, the pictograph and petroglyph, the smoke, the alphabet, the printing
press, the electronic signal, the telephone, radio, television, fax and satellite.

Along with the rise of networked information communication technologies emerges a potential new depth and scope for dreams of social justice. These are not only new means of resisting power but also new spaces for institutional power; technology is always the trickster, a coyote of the network society.

However, when used as a means to resist institutional power, information technologies can mediate the expression of what Tillich (1959) calls “ultimate concern.” When information technologies are engaged to communicate what Tillich (1959) calls “ultimate meaning” in answer to the “moral demands” of
“ultimate concern,” technology mediated communication becomes a religious practice.

This is one of the most responsive, interactive and informational web interfaces I’ve encountered:

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/

Take a look at Gregory Donovan’s brilliant research blog – he’s re-launched. What a code master!

Biblical events as if seen on Google earth.

God’s Eye View (Ark)