This article was published in the December edition of Wizzbang : the technology magazine
Today's network economy - fast moving, instant reactions, feeding from the demographic information supplied by literally millions of everyday surveys. Ubiquitous and basic, these surveys, filled out by billions of customers worldwide - the raw materials for an action economy. We've all filled them in - we just don't often think about what happens next.
They are the slickest corporate property on the market - demographics - names, addresses, likes, dislikes, desires, resources. Backed up by thousands of 'cookies' hiding and watching, charting your way, your imprint on the net. These are the human maps decision makers use to calculate billions of individual decisions, each in turn effecting the decisions of suppliers and so on throughout the global economy. Collected and collated this information is utilised as soon as it comes in - you snooze, you looze as the man said. Of course demographics are only valuable in the shortest of terms. Old information is like unwanted frozen fetuses: worthless potential, this info chaff hits the trash.
This is a world in which search engines make money from selling lists of search queries to hungry advertisers, trawling the web for the latest niche. This is a world where 'intelligent' engines order their search returns according to the cookies which hold your surfing profile. This is a world where sites can pay for 'relevance'.
What if this life blood of the cold-light of this instantaneous economy were to be systematically, globally tampered with? This is the twisted vision of the Wizzbang exclusive:
Feedback for the Information Economy: A Neophyte Manifesto
We have seen the greatest minds of our generation sell their identities for nothing more than a prepackaged choose-your-own-digital-adventure cyberworld with all the interactivity of a 19th century pop-up-novel. Zipping around the web, buying a bit here, reading a bit there, perving a bit now, laughing a bit later. All these bits and bytes wrapped up and sold off, the promised digital revolution floundering on the rock of rampant commercialism.
We say enough - it is time to twist the demographic fibres of the information economy. Let us hold a fractal mirror to the designs of those that would track us as we communicate, educate, entertain and create ourselves on the net.
We will work slowly in a world where the time-scale winds ever faster, ever shorter. We will slowly manipulate the data flow until the human map which cuts, drys and segments creativity is infected by an econo-virus spreading not-so-random noise. Let us respond to ubiquitous surveys with ubiquitous nonsense.
Propaganda by any other name is marketing. Information, the bits and bytes doesn't mean anything. It will not bring any revolution, any freedom but the freedom to sell. What this society has got to start to do is link up information to its effects. A 'human map' should not be about selling, it should be about understanding social links, the effects of people on others. If we could create links which point back to the people just trying to get along : that is when we will hear from those shadows of self, our common imaginations screwed on a silicon - chip. But while information and identity are nothing more than fuel for a machine which seeks only to sell, let us spread disinformation through the system, disrupt in order to rebuild.
Never forget the truth - 'I want to know more than I can afford - I need to know more than you can sell'. We gotta fight our way out! Until then remember : you are political prisoner of the information age. Keep it hyper-real, G!
Well - let us adopt this challenge! I call on all Wizzbang readers to rush to Yahoo and kick start the revolution by searching for the little-known-but-soon-to-be-famous 'Sydney Extroverts Anonymous'. Respond to all demographic surveys simply by adopting the persona of Data from Star Trek, mix it with a twist of Mahatma Ghandi : then sit back and laugh as the spammers spit back whatever they think they can sell to those two! If we work together, my sisters and brothers - no, my comrades! - I'll wager that before long we will see the ripples in the carefully planned corporate slick that passes for most of the internet today.
I personally undertake to chart the rise and rise of this demographic group. Who knows, perhaps we will create enough havoc to answer the Manifesto's call - if not at least anyone interested in the cyborg who cannot speak his name will have a whole new outlook on life, the universe and the sheer banal power of demographics.