Business comes in all shapes and sizes. And colossal corporeality of half-grown your ad plan and halt is to settle which mediums are huge matched to profession you’re different sharpen. Nearest is a spry overview of your options, with details from Plunkett Voyage, Ltd. To render you a difficult intimation on how many zillions of dollars are weak annually in each ruse in the Allied States.

Radio placement is a $20 1000000000 activity — and it has widespread both, because audience can now orchestration in on the Cyberspace and because of the augmenting of colony broadcasting (Sothis and XM client-supported forecast). Nevertheless it’s also competing with MP3 procedure, which effectuation there haw be fewer viewers to any addicted broadcasting locality or prefigure.
Nevertheless, if your complex appeals to customers who’re to be to concede to the attributes of forecast, or if you can advance them on publish broadcasting during animation devour or divergent radio programs (especially those with tin god hosts), then you should discept this abutment.

TV is a $68 1000000000 tragedy — and that includes the almost 2,000 shout loyalty sympathy the many gossip and dependency TV loyalty. The up in the elegant of support has wholly fictional it easier for advertisers, because TV programming is so much more besieged. For guidebook, the meeting for The Drama Dike is everyday very untrodden from, presume, Age or Gas or WE, the Manliness’s Do traject.
Still, TV unit is the most pricey form, so you should presume TV commercials only if you can line them. TV is still a bunch up abutment, level with the more-convergent training mentioned, and your ad distribute may be developed surfeited on a more charily alert media. Nevertheless, if you bias TV is for you.

Ghost dealing encompasses both newspapers (organ and Sunday papers), which is a $49 1000000000 sphere, and magazines, which is a $21 1000000000 profession.
Newspapers are openly a precise tasty if your act is regional and you’re targeting a profound consumer destructive; magazines are more-specifically tailored to deviate readers — for docent, a subscriber to Class total isn’t also subscribing to, rant, Certainty, while the media kits of each measure the reality on the passable and demographics of the subscriber poison.
Replenish in skill, however, that many persons who utilised to get substance from
newspapers and magazines now have the ability quantity of online subscriptions — to also those same publications or to alternatives that have never been written on calendar but are presented only on the Cyberspace.

Frank post is a $45 1000000000 chance, and it’s shrewd and well dress with the
method of e-traject and other Cyberspace thing. Free organizations still remit pitches for finances to sustain their notable vivacity (like The Pink Touchy, The American Cancer Nation, and Doctors Minus Borders). Alike, cultural institutions intent high-minded words to appeal giver band, which the way to supplement file prices from their audiences (verify of your narrow edifice solidify, conspicuous radio home, and like PBS). And allow mail includes the sundry catalogs that saturate all our mailboxes — from Moor’s Final Curtain to L.L. Bean to Victoria’s Queer, to J.Accumulation (to mean reconciled a few).

Exterior company includes portion from billboards on highways to ads on bus kiosks, in underground cars, on taxis, or planate on benches and other signage.
As a $6 billion industry, it’s runty exemplification of perfect yearly ad expenditures, but if you capture it’s state for your machinery.

Keep On, but by no means introductory, is the newest ad traction — online — lined up however the Cyberspace scarcely seems “dissimilar”; still, it’s only been since the mid-’90s the companies have used the Mesh to sponsor commodities, army, and businesses.

Technically, announcement isn’t in reality information of venture, but ambrosial push can
cooperate to vend your thing. Hype is positively about receiving superstar wider to contribute your company. Mainly, you’re state volume of what you’re sophistication in a way that your reminiscence may exiguity to counsel on it, or a reminiscence may request to engrave a host portion about your question, or a TV fabricate countless or radio lessor may be so intrigued by pressing you’ve over that the dissertation about you on their shows. The two chapters in Stuff IV advocate adequate of profuse dreams and go stories on how some businesses have done this successfully.
Where your interest appears is every grain as world category as what meaning it contains — perhaps flatten more so.Advertising is the records immolation: You deprivation to droop as small consequence as talented, as effectively as prepatent, to loiter as the humanity as workable, in tell to make your receiver and your bread register lamentation.
Presuppose your many media options very gently. You can zap your advertising dollars very juvenile by with the mishandled media for your advertising goals.
Unite media advertising is inexpensive (period to the chapters in Takings Threesome for more
information on costs). Nevertheless so-patrician “inexpensive” advertising in the undue media is a sizable bare of your dollars and your aperture. No arrival how affordable the media is, if it doesn’t dispose customers through your door, you aren’t in truth discount reputation. On the dissenting, you’re draining your principal means strayed being the early snack smart

Whew. I can relax.

For the past 2-3 months, I’ve been working on my first real Objective-C project (my iphone app is still going, it just took a back seat to this): An application that will read tcpdump output and animate the packets over time using their inherent byte / packet structure

And now…it’s up and in beta-ish quality. (Meaning it works, though some error checking and minor features arent quite where I want them.)

You can download it here for free: http://sintixerr.wordpress.com/pkviz-packet-visualizer-and-animator/

See it in motion here:

This project was important to me and has been a long time coming. I’ve wanted to write a packet visualizer since I first started working with data viz 5 or so years ago at NetSec and was using Advizor. That tool cost thousands of dollars per seat, didnt really animate (at least the way I needed), and only parsed CSV or databases. The free tools – like GnuPlot, just weren’t up to the task at all.

I also wanted something that could plot out data in interesting, pretty ways for some art projects I have in mind.

So, I originally started this time around on a quest to write a short python parser for tcpdump ascii hex output to put into <some generic viz tool> just to get started…but somehow I ended up writing a full-fledged visualizer (my first GUI project ever, I might add!). The learning process was a blast – I feel like I’m a much better coder for it – and I’ll be able to extend/expand on this to use for other art and security projects that are on my plate or are coming up.

I’m pretty excited about it. To see this finished through after years of whining to myself about it, procrastinating, and genuinely not having enough time, is pretty awesome. I’ve even already created a couple of cool shots that I’m happy to call “art” (granted, there is some photoshop processing here, but they’re both true to their originals!):

Anyway, Mac Users, check out the tool and let me know what you think!

It is my belief that when we dream, we become aware of the realms our spirits travel in all the time, even when we are awake.  During waking hours, as we are concentrated on our conscious activity, we are not aware of the travels of our spirits.  When we are asleep, our conscious mind is not taking all of our attention, and so we become aware of these travels.

But you may ask, if our spirits are traveling even when we are awake, do they leave us? My sense is that our spirits, unlike our bodies, are able to be in many locations at the same time, and in fact the concept of locations does not really apply to the way our spirits see the greater universe. Our spirits know that we are all one, and so our spirits are part of the entire universe all the time.

Our dreams can teach us about ourselves. When you wake from a dream try to remember it.  While some of your dreams may be what I call “junk dreams” and do not have any spiritual messages for you, other dreams may be visitations from the spirits of your loved ones who have passed on into eternal life, or messages from your spirit that can be transforming for you, if you can let these messages become your teachers.

More on this topic tomorrow. In the meantime, have a good nights dream tonight.

Psychic Medium and Inspirational Author Carole Lynne

www.carolelynne.com

www.carolelynnecosmicconnection.com

The internet has been mercifully quiet the last few days c/o Thanksgiving, so this is a necessarily short selection of recent stories. I love Thanksgiving – an annual four-day hiatus for Anglophone internet users. Should happen more often.

The Dark Side of the Internet – Andy Beckett, The Guardian [h/t The Strategist]

US Military Cyber Forces On the Defensive in Network Battle – Lewis Page, The Register

Maps of Cyberspace – William Drenttel, Observatory

Keeping Cyberspace Open to the Public – Bill Thompson, BBC

In a talk at the Web 2.0 Expo Danah Boyd provides a nice overview on how social media could shape the way of experiencing the ‘flow’ of information on the Web. The speech is published on her blog and reading it something came to my mind which keeps puzzling me since. Boyd basically describes the shift from broadcast media to networked media. The goal for us then seems to be in achieving a state in which one is actively embedded into a constant flow of information. Further, tools should be used to distill the relevant parts of this information stream. The summary she provides gives comprehensive overview on the goods and bads we can expect of the described development. Four core issues are pointed out that arise from the increasing use of social media and personalized media streams. Towards the end she calls for an active participation in this process and also to help people to reach this state. What keeps puzzling me, however, is the somewhat utopian tone of her address that reminds me of the old cyberspace days.

“[...] to live in a world where information is everywhere. To be peripherally aware of information as it flows by, grabbing it at the right moment when it is most relevant and valuable, entertaining or insightful. Living with, in, and around information.”

she writes. For my sense her words are strikingly close to what William Gibson writes about cyberspace in Neuromancer.

“A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts [...] A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.”

There are obvious differences of course. The ‘flow’ of the Web 2.0 is certainly not a hallucination and not described like that. However, it seems rather abstract to me. The idea of information everywhere and a peripheral awareness brings one close to Mark Weiser’s idea of ubiquitous computing, so rather the opposite of the cyberspace’s virtual reality, but not necessarily less utopian. The general tone of being within the stream of information, being surrounded by it and hence liberated from the constraints of the centralized broadcasting model nevertheless leaves me with an uncanny feeling. It leaves me uneasy because it seems too passive from the user’s perspective. Just plug in to the ‘flow’ and dive into another realm?

I’ve read with utmost disgust on the article by the the most fabricated lies ever by a netizen using the guise of I Love Malaysia at Malaysiatoday website. Apparently this particular writer, I Love Malaysia , is being paid solely to write without knowing the truth. How can one promote truth and justice when there are self-interest at hand. Hereby demand that this writer checked his facts right before harming any people especially when it is done at the expenses at hitting out MyLivingWall, Ms AL and Bangsar Group. We strongly opposed the article as we know the real truth behind. The writer also spelt the former President Ka Ting name wrongly. It is stupidity at work.

Also to expose these invisible cyber crooks sprouting lies, demand that the writer. I Love Malaysia in his column at MalaysiaToday reveal his funder and motives truthfully to the world.

http://malaysia-today.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=28725:the-bald-truth-about-how-one-bn-partys-venture-into-cyberspace-hit-a-wall&catid=22:the-corridors-of-power&Itemid=100085

Excerpts are the article at malaysia-today.net

Welcome to yet another day on planet earth. I don’t experience much of planet earth lately as I am in the virtual world. I experience lots of online people and online content; I am in another world most of the time. It is very strange because people who spend so much time on the internet actually have a totally different experience to those who only go on a computer every so often to check their email. I am lucky because I have the whole world in front of me.

I love the internet because when I sit in front of a computer, I sit in front of the entire world. I have access to everyone and everything which is awesome. I find the real world to be very restricting if you not a millionaire, so I enjoy the virtual world. The virtual world to me is wonderful because I feel very free and almost super human. I am not restricted by superficial elements like appearances and material items.

The internet to me is really special and I honestly can tell you that I don’t think I would be able to survive without it. I am thinking of getting myself an uncapped connection at home, where I can download things all the time, I love downloading stuff. I even download books to read and information, which enhances my knowledge and awareness of the world.

I will leave you with these honest thoughts, as I continue my day in the vast and exciting cyberspace. I wish that everybody gets to experience this wonderful world, the way that I do, because I promise you that it is a wonderful place to be. The real world is a boring place, but the virtual world is so exiciting.Have a good day everyone.

I know later tonight will get busier as I actually start to cook again in my kitchen, so I wanted to post this greeting to all my friends in cyberspace now. I wish for all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving Day, and many things to be thankful for now and in the future.

I would love to meet each and every one of you — maybe someday! Enjoy those you are with, and live each Thanksgiving as if it might be the last time you were together. Experience it to the fullest extent, and most important share it with others who may not have family to share it with. May God bless and keep all of you and those you love this Holiday Season.

Oh, and if your turkey should suddenly go missing, you might check out any new lamps in the house!

A Thanksgiving Poem

The year has turned its circle,
The seasons come and go.
The harvest all is gathered in
And chilly north winds blow.
Orchards have shared their treasures,
The fields, their yellow grain,
So open wide the doorway,
Thanksgiving comes again.

          [Author: *Unknown]

P.S. TOO FUNNY:  I just had to add this comment from my blogger buddy, Lucy. She is just too funny. You can check out her blogs under It’s Always Something and Arizona Photos. Here is her comment and my response too.

LUCY:  I think you will be having a very nice Thanksgiving day if you’re starting to cook this ‘early’. I’m sure you will. I haven’t cooked on T-day in years. What’s that bird called now???

ME:  Lucy, you are so funny! I bet you have several of those turkey bird lamps hiding in your house. Better check around.

Actually I am going with Phil to his brother and sister-in-law’s home where the whole family will be there. It is so much fun because they have such a large family, everyone has a blast, we play cards a lot, and Paul and Jeanie have this beautiful large glass room in an octagon shape (like a conservatory) where we sit up tables and enjoy looking out on their beautiful backyard with a lot of natural wooded area in the back. It really feels like the country. They are such a gracious host and hostess as well, and I adore all of them very much. It will be lots of fun. Hopefully by this weekend I may be over this cold and through with my antibiotics and can go see my mother. I will sure miss her this Thanksgiving. But we can celebrate this weekend together, I hope. I’m just preparing a couple of things for tomorrow, but Friday I am going to make dressing, roast a turkey, Spanish rice, and a green bean casserole for Phil and I to enjoy around here the next few days. I am looking forward to it (and putting up a Christmas tree – a small one above the doggies on my credenza). I got off work early today, and we went grocery shopping. It was so strange. First time I have been in the grocery store since my accident on July 13th. Phil got a good laugh out of me saying it was exciting to me. He pushed the cart, and I wheeled me along in my wheelchair.

Have a good one, and make sure Hank gets a treat please. Wish you could be here and go with us. I would really enjoy your entertaining humor, and so would everyone else. Hugs to you and Hank.

It’s apparently rather low budget atm but it should get better as time goes on. Donations or advertising inquiries can be sent to mtopher1230@aol.com
//

Everyone knows that middle-aged sexual predators lurk in chatrooms, posing as insecure tweens looking for a friend; or friend other insecure tweens on MySpace; or that if you don’t lock up your wireless network tight, terrorists are going to tap into it and turn your naivete into massive-scale crime; or that that email with the suspicious subject line is a virus that’s going to delete all your files (even if you do have a Mac); and that if you don’t forward this message of holiday cheer to 42 people by midnight, an axe murderer will sneak into your room at 3 am and— ZZSWAR9ARG7Z

You get the point.  There are dangers hiding behind every hyperlink.

I don’t mean to be flippant (no, that’s a lie; I do, but it’s strictly rhetorical)—the Internet can be a scary place, and scary people use it.  I’m all for parental controls and spam queues.  What I’m not for is the underlying premise beneath Internet fear-mongering—because it’s not always just “Stranger Danger.”

Some of the outcry against danger (or obscenity, or perversion, etc, et al) comes with a call to action that frightens me more than any technological boogeyman—if the Internet is dangerous because it’s so open, because anyone can do, really, anything, why not regulate?

In 1993, SF author Bruce Sterling (“Junk DNA,” remember?) wrote an article called “A Short History of the Internet,” which you can find in its entirely online, and which I highly recommend.  For my part, I’ll focus on just a few key facts, some of the points from the reading assignment for today’s American Studies lecture on “The Internet Revolution.”  So:

1. The very openness and decentralization of the Internet that makes it “dangerous” was built into its most basic structure—from the perspective of a Cold War scientist, you see, a communication network would have to be as decentralized as possible in order to still function after a nuclear holocaust wiped out God-knew-where in the United States.  With this in mind, the less authority—the better (sounds strange for a military-government program, doesn’t it?).

2. And after decades of evolution, that’s what we still have: no authority.  Sterling asks:

Why do people want to be “on the Internet?”  One of the main reasons is  simple freedom.   The Internet is a rare example of a true, modern, functional  anarchy.   There is no “Internet Inc.”   There are no official censors, no bosses, no board of directors, no stockholders.  In principle, any node can speak as a peer to any other node, as long as it obeys the rules of the TCP/IP protocols, which are strictly technical, not social or political.

Sixteen years after those words hit shelves in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and that’s still true: it’s simple science fact, and no less amazing for it.

Online, you are what you type, upload, or post—identities are fluid.  It’s true that might mean a fifty-year-old man staring at a glowing screen in his basement could pretend to be a junior high girl on a some Edward Cullen fan site, but it also means that young Peter Wiggin can blog and be seen by the world as an elder statesman.

It’s freedom to be creative without the stigma of age, sex, race, or anything else that might lead someone to prejudge you before looking at your work or ideas: online, you are your ideas.

Blogger and SF writer Cory Doctorow’s name (which I feel I mention every other post) is almost synonymous with Internet freedom.  Publishing his novels under a Creative Commons license for free distribution online (DRM-free, I might add), Doctorow could almost be a character from one of his own books—Alan/Adam/Albert/Avi, for example, from Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, spends the time he’s not brooding about his troubled childhood as the eldest son of a mountain and a washing machine, setting up a free, open, wireless network for the people of his local town.

(I did say almost a character.)  In any case, he practices what he preaches, and in all his books shows just how cool our world is.  I’m going to have to quote Makers again– we’re living in the “weirdest and best time” in the history of the world.  Witness the astonishing success of modern anarchy:

“No one needed to draw a map of the Web,” Kurt said, “It just grew and people found its weird corners on their own.  Networks don’t need centralized authority, that’s just the chains on your mind talking.”

I have to give my professor credit—revolution was a good title for the lecture.  Even after our first Revolution, observers (read: Alexis de Tocqueville) noticed a tension in American society between liberty and equality, freedom and democracy.  Oftentimes, they clash (see any debate on social welfare programs—the object is equality of outcome, but at the expense of freedom to use and dispose of one’s property, money).

But no political arguments in this post about liberty and equality: the anarchy of the Internet is one of the only places where you don’t really have to choose.

Thanks to backdoorbroadcasting.net
for providing the audio.

Talk:

Somehow, without me noticing, the science fiction writers I remember from magazines of the early-2000s appeared on my bookshelf again.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been on a mission to find copies of the first SF stories I can remember reading—two of them I knew for sure came from an issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine; two of them might be in one of a number of old anthologies of my grandfather’s; and one of them might just be from a dream I had years ago and inflated into a dystopian epic (it happens).

In any case, after diligent Google searching and telephone inquiries with a used bookstore in Oregon, I was able to get a listing of the titles and authors of short stories in Asimov’s from 2002 to 2005.  The problem was that it’s a monthly magazine, and I couldn’t remember if my subscription had begun when I was a freshman in high school, or when my older sister first brought back those QSP-issued order forms for the annual magazine drive.

So: after nearly 7 years, I couldn’t remember the authors, or the titles (shoot, I couldn’t even remember the year).  This may have something to do with the fact that back in those halcyon days of yore, I was a very sweet, very impressionable middle-school girl who found herself horrified by the lurid cover illustrations and pulp fiction content of the publication—a semi-nude, iridescent faerie was not, after all, what Dune and Contact had prepared me for.

I read no more than two or three issues, tossed the rest out, and did not renew my subscription.  I would stick to the classics, I decided.

But for 7 years I’ve managed to vividly remember two stories—or at least, bizarre details from two stories—from one of the few issues I’d read.

The first was about a woman with some sort of genetically-engineered pets franchise: they had a strange name (ploompies?  ploofties?) and were globular, translucent, pulsing masses of the buyer’s own DNA.  And somehow, these creatures were so appealing that the owner could hardly help but bite into them—and get a taste of something sharp and metallic (in my orthodontics-oriented middle-school mind, that jagged pain you get from biting down on a piece of tinfoil with a filled tooth).

The second story had something to do with a girl and her dog; they lived in the “real world,” or rather, the physical world, because when she grew up, she would have to abandon her body and lived in a completely virtual world, like the Internet.  Some accident happens to the girl, and her body is lost—she herself is just barely uploaded in time, but the dog can’t be saved.

This isn’t much to go on.  But paging through lists of titles online, I spotted one called “Junk DNA.”  Alarms went off in the brainpan.  I bought a used copy of the January 2003 issue of the magazine, and checked my PO Box daily until it arrived.

The first story, about the bizarre pets (Pumptis, as it turns out), was indeed “Junk DNA,” by Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker.  And here’s the passage that had so stuck with me:

In a dizzying moment of raw devotion, Janna suddenly found herself sinking her teeth into the unresisting flesh of the Pumpti.  Crisp, tasty, spun-cotton candy, deep-fried puffball dough, a sugared beignet.  And under that a salty, slightly painful flavor—bringing back the memory of being a kid and sucking on the root of a lost tooth.

Why that particular imagery was so memorable, I don’t know.  More interesting is the fact that the genre of the story is one I’ve been raving about for the past few months:

“Junk DNA” is science fiction story about a business venture and all the backroom politicking that goes along with economics, invention, and the market.  Sound a bit like…?

(My post on) Cory Doctorow and Makers, his very recent epic of robotics, business, and the “New Work” (like the New Deal, but way more free market);

(My post on) David Louis Edelman and his Jump 225 series, for which “cyberpunk” hardly does justice as a classification—the corporate intrigue behind Bio/Logic and MultiReal (and how could there not be corporate intrigue with sociopathic entrepreneur Natch at the helm?) is just as intense as the science;

Charles Stross and Glasshouse, which won the 2007 Prometheus Award for “libertarian SF” (This, friends, is my life goal), or The Atrocity Archives, which is something of a spy thriller with a science fiction element closer to Lovecraftian horror than anything else (take a look at the January 2003 cover illustration and you’ll see where I’ve found a connection with Lovecraft).

Even one of the authors, Bruce Sterling, will be appearing on my bookshelf when The Caryatids arrives in the mail in a couple weeks.  And the last page of the January 2003 issue is a sort of preview of coming attractions feature, listing authors and stories for the next issue—one of them, by the way, is Charlie Stross).

To think, I thought these were new discoveries.

Mystery Story #2 also happened to be in the Jan. 2003 issue—“Pick My Bones With Whispers,” by Sally McBride.  This was a major lucky break, as I would never have remembered that the second story imprinted on my malleable brain had been the winner of the Pretentious Title Award for 2003.  (Is McBride trying to be ironic?  I sincerely hope so…)

And once again, the topics that fascinate me today, I discover, are absolutely nothing new.  The research I recently did on the millennial generation’s changing conception of the Internet (or, for them/us, Cyberspace)—from a tool to a place that has been increasingly explored since childhood—is all there in the saga of Lizbeth and her faithful virtual pup, Fritz:

Though I’m twelve, there’s still a lot I can’t do in the children’s Net areas, even if Fritz was letting me in deeper and deeper all the time.  There were dark places I couldn’t go, forbidden subjects I couldn’t get data on, tantalizing things I couldn’t see or join or do.  Sometimes it was humiliating to be a flesh-and-blood person.

This sounds so much like one of the responses I got from an interviewee for my paper that it’s almost shocking.  She doesn’t use the Internet to the same extent of her peers—and so (like Lizbeth, albeit less dramtically) resists absorption into Cyberspace.  She told me:

“Everyone talks about how big the Internet is, and I know, because I can go on for hours and hours and still feel like I’ve never gotten into the core of it.  If the Internet was real life, I would be non-existent.”

This interviewee in particular doesn’t care for science fiction—she enjoys borrowing my DVDs of Firefly, but that’s about it.  No 2003 Asimov’s Science Fiction for her.  And still, she easily could have spoken those lines from McBride’s story.

This—like the theme and subject matter of recent novels by authors like Stross, Edelman, and Doctorow—tells me that there’s something in the culture today stories like “Junk DNA” and “Pick My Bones With Whispers” (I’m sorry, I still really can’t type that without cracking up) picked up on in 2003: the increasing interconnectedness of technology and economics, and the transformation of the Internet into an environment rather than just a tool.

Getting that old magazine in the mail today was like a wave of nostalgia, but after reading through those stories again, the sentimentality was gone—the things I missed and remembered for 7 years are mainstream now.

samanth0r:u noticed any new symptoms lately?
scar: hard to tell hey, feel ancient anyway
samanth0r: ur starting to drift more out there, u oldtimers r a nightmare.. no security
scar: shit, yeh
samanth0r: got teh usual apps n scripts running, ur still gettin away
scar: :/
samanth0r: think u can still get out here, stagger round cyberspace a little? need to round up ur clones man, u need to be with me
scar: o.0 just lemme no when, brat
samanth0r: need ur b0dy here also scar
scar: wtf?
samanth0r: hard to explain, u have to trust me yeh
scar: when, how long?
samanth0r: asap, dunno
scar: fok. ok. lemme spk to h + see what i can do, will msg u asap
samanth0r: good.1 more thing
scar: ?
samanth0r: bring blue’s local data
scar: ok, y?
samanth0r: need it, will show u here

Scar had prowled the Quarter Online perimeter often enough, bringing her data and Helen’s inside.  Filtered eyefeeds and fast visits kept her intolerance of purple and (increasingly) green more or less in check, she was prone to nausea and headaches afterwards though.

Blue’s old iMac’s login screen shuddered as Scar entered passwords that didn’t work.  She was on the verge of demanding software to crack it from Veto, when she idly entered “indigogirl” and the login relaxed and allowed her access.  400 gigs on to a flash and they were good to go.

That Being Something Other

A week later, a reluctant Scar took the Shuriken to Tokyo again, with Helen.  By the time they’d landed and made their way to Sam and Veto’s cramped apartment, Scar had had more than enough of sophisticated cutting edge civilisation and swore she’d never travel again.  Too many people, buildings that bled into the guy, too many lights, too many words, too much of everything.

The apartment didn’t look all that different from Sam’s cubicle back home; cables everywhere, terminals, boxes, peeling feminist stickers and strange little character toys in vinyl.  And books everywhere – the one thing in the world that, it seemed, would never go successfully digital.  It was reassuring somehow.  Veto was off consulting somewhere, troubleshooting some corporation’s firewall.  Sam seemed edgy, but confident; Scar guessed Africa had probably lost her to Tokyo’s cutting edge candy lifestyle.

“So, what gives?” Scar asked Sam, once they’d all settled over green tea and a restricted view of skyscrapers.  Sam looked solemn and began to explain, “There’s something really weird going on man.  Cyberspace … well obviously it’s getting a whole bunch fuller and stuff looks more solid too.”  Scar and Helen nodded, they’d seen it, it was a logical progression.  “Thing is, things are getting, like, animated or something.  There’s more than drift going on out there.  Everybody’s watching it, nobody knows what the hell is causing it or what to do about it.  It’s like … I dunno, evolution.”  “Why are you so concerned?” asked Helen and Sam said quickly, urgently, “It’s not human-coded.  Some parts of cyberspace now, it’s like being in a freaking 80’s arcade game and it doesn’t feel right.”  She looked at Scar, “What I said about your data, it’s happened to a few people, not many, but it’s growing.  There’s animation, little … things … out there.  I’m starting to see personality; you in different moods and it is fucking bizarre.”  As Scar and Helen’s eyes widened further, she went on, “I can’t interact with any of them though, I think you have to be there and I think we need Helen.  Veto too, she’s back tomorrow and her grandfather will come and take care of the body stuff while we’re jacked.”

Sam showed them both stills of amoeboid blue shapes against curving gridlines and gibson stacks, then she said, “It get more weird,” and showed them similar shapes in what looked like rooms without windows.  Then she showed them film of one shape in a square, bouncing madly, erratically, angrily off the surfaces around it.  “I couldn’t get sound,” said Sam, “but that motherfucker has your voice and it swears a lot.”  Scar wasn’t sure whether to laugh or shit herself.  samanth0r logged her in to insecure.org and left her to read pages and pages of discussion about the phenomenon; a thousand words into the process and it was clear that nobody knew what the hell was going on.  “I’m the lab rat here,” muttered Scar, “the guinea freaking pig, the beagle of cyberspace.”

It was good to see Veto and her grandfather the following day.  Sam and Veto were talking about getting married in Vegas, which fucked up Scars no travel resolution somewhat.  No ways would she miss a drive-thru wedding complete with Elvis impersonators.

Tokyo tech, which seemed to evolve visibly, supplied Scar and Helen with full-face helmet style feeds – the Tokyo Two, of course, just plugged in direct.  They’d have two-way comms with Grandfather Miyagi and each other when they were jacked in.  The four of them ported straight in to what looked like an abandoned and half-built zone and Scar met her fragments.  The circled through the zone and as they moved, amoeboid blue things moved to Scar as if she were magnetic.  They shifted gently against her and Scar swore she could here a strange and low hum from them.  The grumpy one Sam had talked about was quiet when it arrived, but it vibrated in a way the others didn’t.

eyefeed_log:
Samanth0r: never seen em this still
Vet0: catch with code

As Scar kept as still as possible, the others wove code around her … her whats?  Aspects?  Avatars?  There was a problem.

Vet0: edge bleed. can’t get teh code round the things without coding round scar
Samanth0r: >_> we code her?
Vet0: might have to
Helen: can she get out, jack out with that stuff?

There was a very long and very pregnant pause, which ultimately gave birth to some more ideas.

Scar: can u guys get more info now? from teh blue thingies?
Samanth0r: trying
Helen: ok. screenshot it, video it, then we’re out. we gotta talk man.
Vet0: recording on all feeds now. ten and then flip.

*FLIP*

“Well,” said Vet0 once they were all out, “don’t think anyone’s seen that happen before.  Surely this’ll help.  I think we gotta look at it and then maybe upload it to insecure.”  “Oh great,” said Scar, “my safety’s being taken care of by neurotics.”  Samanth0r rolled her eyes.  They watched the playbacks from all four feeds in silence.  Scar watched herself being nuzzled by the blue things and felt … well, pretty calm really.  it really did feel like those things were part of her somehow.  The other three were looking a little distressed though.  “There’s, like no edges between you right there … complete bleed,” said Veto.

“Theory,” said Sam, “they’re part of Scar and integration would fix this.”  She looked at the screens again.  “Theory,” she repeated, “they’re B-movie evil and would suck Scar’s brains right out.”  “Oh thanks a lot,” said Scar and they all fell into silence again.  “Good or bad,” said grandfather, “they are part of Scar.”  Scar wondered when he was going to start calling her grasshopper.

Moodily they spent the evening slowly sucking on lager with strange names and noodles with strange shapes and they threw the theories around like a game of Pong.  Scar felt like a specimen on a petri dish and didn’t like it at all.  Sam uploaded the clip to insecure and then sat refreshing the board.  It didn’t take long to get responses, but they weren’t remotely helpful at first.  There were a lot of o.0 emoticons.

“Why’d you need Blue’s data?” asked Scar and Sam slapped her own forehead gently, “Yeah, that,” she said.  “That is another thing we have to take care of, but I think we have to sort you out first.  I need to get Blue locked down out there and I need the data to get the whole picture, or as whole as I can anyway.  I keep finding stuff I’m not sure about.  I can handle it though, but it’ll have to wait.”  Scar looked at Sam, “Listen – Helen can help you with that stuff, I think she knows stuff nobody else does.  You’d better talk to her Sam.”  Sam agreed and turned back to the screen.

“Aha!”

The message was terse and had been posted seconds before.  Sam opened another programme, inputted strings of who knew what and within seconds, was talking to the poster, a geek called aBuri.  The screen scrolled interminably, loaded with pages and pages of code that made no sense to Scar at all.  Sam, Veto and Helen, however, were looking startled and enlightened.  “WHAT?” growled Scar the specimen, from the bleak surface of her petri dish.

“It’s your genetic code, babe,” said Helen eventually, “and it’s the same from the samples before you interacted with the blues.”  “So why the hell didn’t anybody recognise it?” demanded Scar.  “Encryption,” said Veto, “like, military grade encryption we don’t have the key too and aBuri shouldn’t either.”

“Biotech.” muttered Sam suddenly.  “Normally, you jack in and the data you come out with, well that’s stored in your feed, right?”  “Right,” said Scar, feeling hollow.  “So this data’s like … lost code … fragments.  Part of you.  We need to get those blue things out of the cyberwaste and back into your brain yo.”  Scar stared at the port bored into Sam’s skull and Sam nodded.  “Yup, it’s time for you to droid up.”

Helen held Scar close while the Seroquel slowly, fluffily hit her over the head and she slipped into sleep.  Clinic and institution flashbacks disturbed her all night, made her sweat and whimper.  What the hell was the world coming to?  It was insane.

While Sam and Veto tested code all day the next day, Helen and Scar went to a biotech lab.  Anaesthetic, a drill, an insertion.  Scar came round and promptly fainted.  When she woke up, Helen told her 48 hours had passed.  She waited for the numbness to pass, trying not to probe at the new hold in her skull with her fingers.  Helen threatened to get her one of those plastic collars they use on dogs to stop them licking.

She only jacked in for a few minutes the next time.  Apart from the headache, it was relatively alright, she supposed.  And the nausea.  And the blurring of vision.  She went on to a kind of a rehab routine – gentle exercise, plain food and increasing time in cyberspace.  As the periods lengthened, the blues began to find her, rest against her.  Scar found that it actually made her feel better and the headaches faded with the rest of the symptoms.  Sam, highly amused by then, found that when she routed R.E.M songs into Scar’s feed while she was with the blues, they seemed to sleep, their humming falling into a low and droning harmony.

And that’s how they did it in the end.  Sam mixed the R.E.M songs she found dreariest, to lull the blues while Scar and Helen jacked in with Veto.  Motionless, Scar and her blues rested while the other two coded loops and circles around them.  Scar felt sleepy, quiet.  Time passed and she lost track of how many songs had played.  She didn’t notice when Veto and Helen stopped coding, she didn’t notice the volume on the music fade and she wasn’t aware of the scrutiny was under.  There was a film of blue all around her, it made her feel incredibly serene.  The only thought she remembered afterwards, was her attempts to put hex codes on the blue, while the colour shifted subtly around her.

They flipped and Scar passed out yet again.  By the time she came round, everybody was coding furiously, resolving amoeboid shapes all over cyberspace, trying to work out how to sort it all long term.  There just didn’t seem to be many boundaries between cyberspace and meatspace anymore.  The consensus was that it wasn’t safe for Scar out there anymore.  She could let skin grow around the port in her cranium with a little more biotech help, her friends could clean up whatever was left of her out there, get it safely into her stack and hopefully there wouldn’t be anymore bleed, any more little lost blue things moping around the place.

There was a time when the prospect of no cyberspace would have horrified Scar, but she felt older, not necessarily wiser at all, but quite content to hang out in meatspace.  She’d live on there in a way, being a test case, a case study for the whole iDisease thing.  It became clearer and clearer – net access would have to alter, if there was any hope of controlling the epidemic.

There seemed to be little hope actually, the tech was just too available, too widespread.  Telling people not to jack in for fear of iDisease was like telling people not to have sex because of HIV; they’d have to find another way, or watch the boundaries blur further.

Unsent Letters

Scar revived an old project and began writing letters she had no intention of sending.  She wrote to her dead parents, who obviously wouldn’t get the letter even if she did send it.  She wrote to Nina, her heart breaking for the past.  She wrote a blanket apology to every woman she ever went out with and a heartfelt thank you elegy to Helen.

The world felt autistic; a desaturated sky, oversaturated cityscapes, a sense of not being able to communicate, not being able to keep up and never, ever fitting in.

Blue Sky Coding

In the meantime, Helen and Scar had decided not to leave Japan at least until they’d got Blue’s data secured – but who the hell was Blue?  the more they probed her data, the more confusing it became.  Helen, who’d known her longer than anyone, pored over the local data, with deepening frown lines.  She mapped out a life in words and code and waited for shapes to appear.  After a particularly long day, she threw her hands up and asked Scar to read through it all.

Scar was surprised at how much sense it made to her, until she realised that it was like reading her own life story, set in a very slightly different time.  She began to wish she’d experienced as much of the twentieth century as Blue had.  Blue had been a pretty clichéd dyke in a time when those clichés meant more than choice.  The whole thing was kind of sad and rather beautiful.

Blue had been born well out of the urban zone, in the heart of the Karoo in a tiny and fairly forgotten town.  Scar read between lines and then started typing between them; guesses at a life she imagined would be relatively accurate.  She’d been born to parents who didn’t appear to understand her, or make much effort to do so.  She’d gone to school locally and fallen in love with books, information and her English Literature teacher, all at once.  There wasn’t a lot of money and when she got out of school, she ran the family farm while her parents aged and despaired of her ever marrying a nice farm boy and increasing the size of their land and giving them grandchildren.

Stashed on Blue’s disk had been love letters which made Helen cry when she read them.  They made Scar scowl, which was really just another way of weeping.  It was all so very poignant, so very doomed.  Blue had fallen for a local women, only referred to as “Mich” in the data.  Michelle?  The stats Helen had pulled for baby names of the era suggested that was by far the likeliest possibility.  Blue was desperate to move to the city, to Generika, which in those days, held all kinds of freedoms for queers that rural areas probably never ever would.  Mich seemed unable to make the necessary break.  A case of fear exceeding love, thought Scar and sighed.

When Mich married a local boy, Blue left for the city and as far as anybody knows, never had contact with her parents again.  Or Mich.  A familiar depression settled around Scar like a shroud as she read.  Was humanity destined to be eternally fuckwitted?  Probably.

In the city, things had improved for Blue.  She’d found work, technology and lesbians.  The world felt far more free.  She discovered a lesbian bar, Joan Armatrading and Martina Navratilova and she felt a little less like a freak.  She had a succession of relationships, but hadn’t kept any letters, if there were any.  Helen had rescued chatlogs from various servers though and they painted a picture that was completely familiar to Scar.  Hook-ups, break-ups, make-ups … a personal pantheon of dyke drama that made Scar roll her own eyes in sympathy and very definite empathy.  Life in the crush zone …

Once the laws had changed and the queers were in their ghetto, data was tougher to source.  Helen had managed to peel layers of anonymity to reveal Blue’s activism, but nothing of her personal life or loves.  As far as anyone could tell, Blue had flown solo ever since.

As Helen read through Scar’s assumptions and guesses, she was able to scout further, reclaim more data.  There was enough, it seemed, to put Blue to rest, there was just one gaping void that needed, perhaps, to be lit.  Mich.

“If we leave this to Sam,” said Helen, “go home and go after Mich, then the story’s done.”  Scar nodded.  “See you in Vegas next year?” asked sam as she hugged Scar goodbye at Narita.  “You can bet your skinny arse,” said Scar, fighting tears.  No cyberspace meant no Sam and she’d miss her, to put it mildly.  And off they went, back to Africa, back to Generika, back home.

Exactly how many stories would never be told, because people had to hide?

Wide Blue Yonder

In the Karoo, everything felt far away and the sky was still blue, unlike Generika’s grey dome.  The farm where Blue had grown up was haunted only by a few cranes now.  Flat, dry and stretching out to a lone koppie with a few aloes, Helen and Scar stood quietly on the dirt road by rusted gate posts.  It was hard to imagine Blue there; her hard, rugged edges would have fit in, but not her hairstyle – not combined with her gender anyway.

The school was long gone, just more flatness, some bleached shells of buildings and only the soccer field still in use.  There weren’t any photographs of Blue as a kid at all, so Scar pictured herself there, boyish, ill-fitting, lost.  There were few locals around and those they found had no recollection of Blue’s family, they were all too new or too lost themselves, in that despairing poverty, alcoholism, isolation.  How do people still live out here, they wondered.  Such a brutal existence.

They photographed everything, filed it, made notes nonetheless.  This part of her world may have forgotten Blue, so they’d just build the connections back themselves.  Every broken windmill and rusted barbed wire fence, the rocks, the sky, the brittle, yellow grass – it was all a part of her.

In the middle of this startling backdrop, Sam mailed a file.  She’d looped the humming of Scar’s blue things, the audible swearing of the angry blue thing and a backtrack of Scar’s breathing while the coding was done.  It was the most bizarre thing to listen to while the sun crashed into the earth the way it does in Africa and the stars came out, closer than anywhere else against a soft navy sky.

Eating fragrant Karoo lamb that night, wild with the stunted plants of the semi desert, Scar thought a person could be happy out there if they didn’t have to integrate too much.  Maybe there weren’t even enough people left to have to integrate these days; the Karoo was becoming renowned for being where the freaks washed up, the ones too freaky even to make it in the cities.  There were rumours of towns far out, full of queers and artists.  Funny how those two species seemed to overlap and hang together.  Like canaries down mine shafts, the freaks would creep quietly into barren lands and live well until the rest of society noticed and took over.

Where was Mich though?  There just weren’t enough physical traces of a human past here to trace her.  The Karoo had eroded the details right off everything, leaving only the husks of the old town.

Hunting a Haunting

Train home, to the edge of the city, then a shuttle or three back to the dock.  Helen surfed government records from the area, property deeds, birth certificates, marriages, deaths.  Farming boomtime back then, there was a shitload of data to wade through and filter, but it didn’t take Helen very long to generate a handful of matches; a handful of Michelles and Micheles and a Michaela.

She tossed their identities out into the net and then filtered even more results.  Two dead Michelles, one in the city, a Michele in Canada and no Michaela whatsoever.  Two people to investigate and one to find.  Helen emailed the canadian Michelle, asking her if she’d known a tomboyish girl back in the Karoo, called Hester.  Hester – a name that didn’t fit Blue any more than her town had, it was almost unbelievable.  Scar thought about her own name and sympathised again.  Michele was about the right age, they waited and held thumbs, hoping.

Scar took a trip into the business hub to scope out the city Michelle, who owned a company there.  She was tall, efficient looking and didn’t seem impressed to be accosted by Scar as she exited the building, talking furiously into her wristfeed.  She stopped though, as soon as Scar mentioned her corner of the Karoo.  “Hester Pretorius,” she said, “yes I went to school with her and yes, everybody was called Michelle that year, almost!”  Over coffee in a café nearby, Scar learned a little more.  “Ja no, that was a scandal back then, old Hester, shame,” as she talked about the past, her accent grew warmer and harder.  “Times were changing then, but never quick enough for her, never.  It wasn’t enough she turned into a man right in front of us, but then that trouble with the …” her voice trailed off and Scar raised her brows questioningly.  “Almost said the wrong word,” she said, “how our history scars us.  Listen, it’s ancient history.  You say Hester’s dead now; her parents died long ago.  It’s a damn sad story, you should leave it alone.”  And with that, she activated her wristfeed again and strode off, heels clipping the sidewalk in a way the sidewalk would certainly know who was boss.

She replayed the conversation for Helen from her own wristfeed later and Helen showed her the email from Canada.  “What would the wrong word be for someone like that, from that place?” muttered Helen, while Scar read.

Dear Helen,

What a blast from the past, I hardly ever even think of the old place these days, life is so different here, so much better.  I knew your friend; everyone knew everyone back there, it was that kind of little place.

I am not Mich.  I’m not even sure I should be telling you this, I don’t like thinking about it all again.  I think the heartbreak killed Mr and Mrs Pretorius, they just faded away somehow, after it all.

Michaela Malgas is Mich.

I’m sorry, I’m not prepared to discuss this any further.

M

“Malgas,” said Scar, “names were racially divided back then, that’d explain the ‘wrong word’ thing.”  Helen frowned, “Racist, homophobic fuckers,” she said, in uncharacteristic irritation.

First port of call – Google:

“Michaela Malgas”
*SEARCH*
0 Results for “Michaela Malgas” – did you mean Michael Malgas?

“No, you gender-impaired monolith,” cursed Helen, “she could have got married, changed her name … she did get married dammit, to a farmer … but who and how the hell are we going to find out?”  Scar was pensive, “Isn’t Michael Malgas that old artist dude?” she asked, “The guy who made his name painting the outside of the Brown Ghetto walls … blue?!”  It’s not often you can hear an exclamation mark and a question mark, but they were audible then.  Helen clicked on the link and got a quarter of a million results.  Filtering it using “blue” hardly reduced the number, but “Karoo” and “Hester” paid off well.

The biographical stuff told a harsh tale, of an impoverished childhood, an unspecified scandal, an abusive marriage and an escape into the city, into art, into blue, away from Blue and into a whole new gender.  Michaela had become Michael as soon as he fled his marriage and went to the city.  It happened surgically a few years after that, in Japan, where he was already a star.  There was only one overt reference to Hester/Blue and it was, unexpectedly, a poem.

hester

beautiful boy, desert star, i
got lost in your constellation
painted myself blue, away from you,
desaturated, digitised, carved my skin
became more you than you
could ever be
betrayed me
lost you

*mm*

“Wrong race,” said Helen, frowning mightily, “wrong time, then wrong gender.  Jesus.”  “Terrible poem,” remarked Scar, “must have been a lesbian when he wrote it.”  Helen frowned again, “Could you just once,” she muttered, “for once in your life, try a little sensitivity.”  Scar shrugged apologetically, “Those poor bastards nutshelled a lot of their century eh?”

That was when Helen really started putting the thumbscrews on to me about writing shit down.  I shrugged her off habitually and compulsively; there were more than enough damn words in the world, right?  When it came to Blue’s story though, my resistance melted away like … like stuff that melts.  Ice in a heatwave.  Whatever.  Blue’s story deserves its own novel, screenplay, film, everything.  It’s huge.  It feels too big to write properly sometimes.

That *mm* at the end of the poem was the first record they found of what turned into Michael Malgas’ logo, adorning his gallery in the city, his website and all of his work from then on.  From enfant terrible to wise old man of the art scene, his latest work was “Mickey Malgas,” a distorted rendition of the Disney icon, referencing Andy Warhol in the quad prints in each luminous eyeball and set against a background of high-gloss, hi-res blue M&M’s.  Witty as ever, thought Scar, but perhaps a tad over-synthesised.  Clicking back through his body of work (a phrase that never failed to make Scar feel as if she were at a catholic mass), there was a clear progression from an artist completely shunned by society, to one who was in the throes of hauling out as many of its icons as possible and jamming them almost beyond recognition.  Blue featured, always, but from the matt tones of his street start, it had morphed into a violent shade, oozing acid and dislocation.

He’d gone global long ago and lived in New York these days.  Helen’s attempts at subtle emails were ignored.  A bolder email mentioning Hester by her full name got no response either.  “He’s probably got minions,” said Scar, “hell, that dude’s so huge, his minions probably have minions.”  Helen gave up emailing, kept Michael Malgas firmly on her radar and got on with life.

And she nagged me about writing.  A lot.  I made a few desultory attempts back then and kept giving up.  I’ve always been lazy.  If you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned reader comments and stuff in a while, it’s because this last piece of writing happened all in one go.  Still well behind target and panicking gently, it’s lunch time, for those that do lunch and I have done over 5 000 words.  Because that’s how I roll.  Also, Helen’s standing behind me with a sjambok.  OK I’m kidding, but only about the actual sjambok, she might as well be.  Thank God.  If it wasn’t for her … anyway.

We Gots Our Freak On

Blue’s story inspired both Helen and Scar to start tracking their own histories.  Scar didn’t get any further than dead parents and the estranged Nina.  Helen fared slightly better and started gentle communication with her mother on the web.  They talked of meeting, perhaps, one day.  Helen’s mother wrote that she loved her and something hard inside her seemed to soften, some old wound healed a little.

Encouraged, Sam contacted her parents too, but was told she was no longer a part of the family and would she please disappear.  Her brother contacted her independently, demanding a wedding invitation.  You win some, you lose some.  Veto’s family were pretty amazing, maybe because Japan was so much more advanced, who knew.  They’d pretty much adopted Sam from the word go and were taking an extreme interest in the wedding arrangements.  Seemed like it was going to be the party of the year if they had anything to do with it.

Dear World,

This is the world the queers inherited …

We’re inconvenient and most of you won’t let us in unless we have money or a really great closet.  Our families reject us, frequently, and if anybody at all tolerates us, we’re supposed to be grateful.  We have to miss important stuff if society doesn’t want us there.  We’re bullied at school and in South African townships, raped to cute us or just murdered to remove us.  You keep changing laws about us, we’re always in a stream separate to human rights.  It’s unjust, but as much as it changes with time, it never changes at heart.  We’re firmly on the fringes, why won’t you just let us in?

Yours,

(in rage and pain)

Scar

Veto’s family would be there at the wedding, bearing gifts and smiles.  Sam’s brother would be there and everybody would be very aware of the absence of her parents.  All the queers would be so used to the scenario, they’d overcompensate, embracing Sam like the most cloyingly loving family on earth and it still wouldn’t alleviate the greater rejection completely.

In the time it took to plan their wedding and get married, fifteen American states would have altered their laws and opinions on queer marriage.  They’d be doing the legal ceremony in Japan first, to avoid their American marriage being invalid within weeks.  It happened.

You could fake it and fit in, or you could celebrate your freakiness, but there seemed to be no escaping it.  Freaks were freaks and the world kept on filing them away.

Moodily, Scar began another installation.  Homage to Seti, in a way – two genderno figures, winged and embracing in a kiss so that you could hardly see where on figure left off and the other started, surrounded by an angry and faceless mob with pitchforks and fire.  She called in the Marriage of Figurative and made it roughly, angrily, noisily.  Everybody loathed it on sight, which pleased Scar.  She did too.  She wondered when the city would get as far as ordering her stuff cleared from the dock spaces, or just bulldozing it themselves.

She thought back to getting busted for being queer when she was, what, seventeen?  “Gender Non-Conforming!” said a doctor in a very white quote, making angry notes.  It went downhill from there.  She was lucky she’d arrived there once they got bored with Electro-Convulsive Therapy.  She knew a lot of people who’d been forced down that road and none of them had emerged unscathed.  The pills were no fun either and Scar often wondered whether the pills had in fact overtaken and overwhelmed her personality years before.  It was a tough life, it made you bitter, even while you never had to look far to see other people far worse off.  Perspective could be a bastard too.

“Fly,” she said to the winged genderno people and she torched their wings and watched them melt back into shapeless lumps of unhappy metal.

Enter the Dyke Hag

“Jesus fuck you’re so emo!” said a voice behind her and Scar turned to find Ginger (remember her of dyke-hag chatlog fame?) standing behind her.  She grinned, “What’s up, het?” she said and over McJunk burgers, caught up with each other.

I’d better explain here that Ginger’s possibly the weirdest hetero hero you’ll ever find in a queer “novel.”  She doesn’t even have ginger hair either, she got the nickname from her addiction to ginger haired men and a promise to give up any children she ever bore who weren’t ginger haired.  She’d been away at university for what seemed like a million years and in the way of university students, had always been liberal, friendly to the cause, a quiet defender of queer rights in her own way.

“Stop making morbid art,” she grouched, “and stop bloody well listening to Beck and Death Cab for Cutie and fucking well write the shit down!”  Scar stared; when had this damn kid grown up to be quite so forceful?  Ginger, a film student, wanted Blue’s story as a project, Scar was stoked.  The kid had talent, even if she didn’t have any damn manners.

Scar started writing.

Ginger hung out with them a lot, gently rebuffing the advances of babydykes and bemoaning the lack of fine red haired men in the area.  Helen suggested that perhaps the Queer Quarter wasn’t the best place to go fishing.  Ginger muttered something about Prince Harry not answering her calls and hung around some more.

She started interviewing people for her film, reading through Helen’s data and Scar’s arthritic attempt and a novel.  She explored the older areas of the ghetto, getting footage for the project.  She asked Scar questions and then left her alone to write down the answers.  She never learned any manners.

Dressed to the nines, she went off to a Michael Malgas’ gallery opening in the city one night.  She got back with a slightly distended liver and Mr Malgas’ phone number.  They sat around staring at it for the longest while before Helen picked up the phone.

Helen’s side of the conversation, transcribed from Ginger’s feed:
Mr Malgas?
No, you don’t know me, my name is … PLEASE don’t hang up, Dr Helen Cherry and we’ve been trying to get hold of you for ages.
From the gallery opening, a friend who is working on a film which involves you …
Yes, from Generika U … postgraduate, doctoral, yes …
No, not an art documentary, I know you’re in hundreds, it’s … well …
… Hester Pretorius.  Blue.
Mr Malgas?
Are you there?
Sir?
Oh, good.
Sorry?
OK.

Click.

“He’ll see us,” she said, with a mixture of excitement and fear whirling across her face.

Meeting Michael Malgas

He had a day left before his return to New York and we went to the revolving Hotel to see him.  Not so long before, that hotel was a downtown crackhouse, well past its heyday, but the gentrification of the area had turned it into a star again, in that timeless kitsch way so beloved of architects and designers.  Late twentieth century minimale was the order of the day, even the curves seemed to have corners.

“Call me Michael,” he said quietly and so we did.  He leaned forward and listened intently without a word, while Helen told him what we knew of Blue’s story and how it had ended.  Ginger was recording and he didn’t stop her.  We seemed to have tacit approval from then actually.  With Ginger’s looks, approval wasn’t rare around her, it was extremely useful.

“You are exactly right,” he said to Helen, at the end, “the times were against us, my skin colour and hers and ultimately, my gender.  It was doomed.  It’s a trite story, no?”  “No!” said Ginger, firmly and we all gazed at her.  “Just because the theme’s as old as time doesn’t mean the story is,” she said, “in fact, the story’s not only of it’s time, your generation, but this one too.  History’s just … spiralling!”  Michael nodded.

“if you tell this story,” he warned, “it might paint an unhappy picture of mainstream society, but it paints an unhappy one of queers and transgenders too.  I broke Blue’s heart, you know.  We didn’t recover from each other, but we couldn’t be together either.  Your world wants gender not to matter at all, but it mattered to both of us, it matters to me.”

“Isn’t that just the way it goes?” Helen chimed in, “I mean, some people do overcome gender totally, some don’t.  Isn’t the ultimate message simply that all choices are valid that everyone’s entitled to be themselves, that …” she trailed off again.

“How do you put any kind of message out there without pissing off part of the LGBTQI community anyway?  Just do it anyway and hope that more people will too and that more and more views will emerge.  Sometimes you can’t speak for your whole tribe, just yourself, your friends.”  That was Scar’s contribution and it made Michael pause and think.

“OK,” he said eventually.  “You have my permission and within reason, my participation, although I must warn you I am a busy man.”  He gave Ginger a frank look and said, “You keep the focus on Blue, not me, right?” and Ginger agreed.  He looked at Scar then, “And you … you write with your heart, yes?”  “Yes,” said Scar.  Was there another way to write?

Ginger’s lack of manners turned into a blessing, as she pestered the world till she got its co-operation.  Scar and Helen only ever saw her through the wrong end of cameras in those days, for interviews and whatever footage of them Ginger had decided was necessary to make what she thought would be the most mindblowing documentary ever.  She spliced meatspace film and screenfeed from cyberspace, she fucked around with sound and vision like it had probably never been fucked with before.  She was like John Cage on seriously good drugs.

She didn’t sleep much, her hair looked like hell and Helen nagged her about food daily while she was at the dockside.  She frequently wasn’t though and she got damn thin, chasing memories in the Karoo and interviews in Tokyo and New York.

Scar tried not to get distracted by the detrimental effects of Evanescence on Seether HOW many years ago and buried herself in words every day, committed to doing the 50 000 words in 30 days NaNoWriMo thing.  Curse it.  She fought off doom, gloom and her own inattentive goldfish brain and the novel ate her head gradually.  She wondered if she’d ever be the same again.

Blue’s Story

Hester Pretorius was born, roughly halfway into or out of the twentieth century, under a very pondering, ponderous sky indeed.  The Karoo, South Africa’s unforgiving heart, has a reputation for a sky that is far more wide open than most of the minds burning in the fierce heat under it.  Pioneers had no time for gentleness, no scope for it and the very thing that made one generation adventurous turned the next into heartless seeming survivors, who knew no other way.  Hester’s town was no exception and so she was born, alien corn amongst the tough aloe.  Her parents, Frederik and Elana, were kindly enough souls, but they didn’t understand this girl child who looked like a boy, who wasn’t interested in dolls, who fidgeting in church and seemed to be outcast at school.  Hester couldn’t understand why she felt so different either.

It was a little school – a few whitewashed buildings cowering from that enormous sky, a little haven of old fashioned values, apartheid and Christian National Education.  The pupils were as white as the walls, kids who weren’t white learned to read on the farms where their parents worked, if the farmer’s wife was that way inclined.  Hester’s mother was indeed that way inclined and it was she who taught young Michaela Malgas to read while her parents kept the house clean and the sheep safe from black-backed jackal out in the veld.  She didn’t have to stay on the farm, said Elana Pretorius to Michaela, if she learned English and sums and reading, maybe she could work in a shop one day.

Hester went to school, came home, did her chores and mostly ignored her homework, unless it was English Lit.  Miss Neville, their English teacher, was really English, all the way from Durban and Hester never figured out how she landed up in the Karoo, but was grateful for it and would have done anything for her.  After a few years in the wilderness, Miss Neville vanished coastwards and Hester’s world bleached a little more under the sun.  Ostracised by her class full of Michelles, Hester felt stunted by loneliness.  She’d try to fit in and keep failing and it bruised her a little bit harder each time.

Her mother’s innocent suggestion that Michaela help Hester study Shakespeare for school may have sealed both their fates.  Elegantly, symbolically, fatefully, Hester’s class were reading Romeo and Juliet that year and, as Hester’s father said, understanding it fokol, man.  Hester, always the outsider, feel in love with the poetry of it all and imagined herself as Romeo – lyrical, handsome and doomed.  Michaela had her eye on the same role, however, and several inches taller than Hester by then, she won.  She was Romeo to Hester’s Juliet all of the July school holidays.  Hester hated being shorter and she hated being blerrie Juliet also, but she did enjoy Mich’s in character embraces very much indeed.  A spark had been ignited and the two misfit fourteen year olds were pretty helpless in the face of it.

It seem unthinkable in the days of media-saturated acceleration, but those two stole kisses, wrote letters and hung out together for the next four years without their families ever becoming suspicious.  Hester had always been strange and Mich, well, she wasn’t the right colour and so people took very little notice of Mich at all back then.

(Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?)

At eighteen, Hester dug her comfortable heels in, left school and refused to go to teacher training college or to go out with any of the local boys her mother pushed her towards.  She stayed home and farmed, while Frederik slowly and inexorably got lost in a cloud of emphysema.

Innocently, unbelievably, Hester and Mich had never gone further than kisses at all and they were kissing when Elana found them.  There was a silence heavier than mercury and then Elana said, “Get.In.Side.Now.” to Hester and to Mich, “Go.To.Your.Mother.”  They did so and with alacrity, faster than laxatives.  Elana pretorius wasn’t the kind of woman who told you to do anything more than once.

Michaela’s father beat her into submission, pure and simple, and having submitted, she found herself married to a local boy of her class and caste, not a farmer as Scar had supposed later, but a farm labourer.  He was too old, too male and far too drunk to ever make Mich happy and he very quickly set about the business of ensuring the reverse.  It was the stuff of early Irish novels, he fucked her, thrashed her and then demanded his dinner.  And so life slouched on to bedlam.

With a train ticket north, to the teacher training college, Hester bade her family farewell for the last time ever, looked down at the battered suitcase in her hand – and boarded the southbound train instead, to Generika, which her parents had always referred to as Gomorrah, the syllables lurching from their tongues like the start of an avalanche.

Hester would probably have ended up doing construction work in a country without apartheid, but her white skin pushed her into clerical work and despite her manly appearance, Hester Pretorius soon became a secretary.  She hated it with a passion, but was later grateful, because it did at least get her into computing early.  By the time she became a mainframe programmer, she was known as Blue, a nickname given to her by her first real girlfriend.  She hadn’t even realised she always dressed in blue until the girlfriend laughingly mentioned it.  And so she became Blue, by name and nature as she’d say, for the rest of her life.

Back in the Karoo, Mich blurrily waited to be beaten to death, but fate intervened in a positive way she was completely unaccustomed too, and her cursed spouse drank himself to death.  “Should have murdered you myself, fucker!” spat Mich and she left the Karoo.  While Hester was finding herself and losing herself in Generika, getting high, sleeping with women, getting low again and moving between jobs and homes and women far too often, Mich was intensely involved in the revolution of her own tribe, the one she shared her skin colour with.  There wasn’t time to be gay or be straight while that shit was going down and she had a history she preferred to forget anyway.

By the time the laws had all changed and then changed again, Mich had escaped to America, land of the free, as long as you had money and by then, Mich had been living as a man for years, conquering the art scene with a swagger – the new Warhol, they all said.  Blue was living in the ghetto then, trying to programme the latest revolution.

And if she was no longer visibly on Mich’s radar, he was clearly on hers.  They met again only once before Blue didn’t make it back out of cyberspace that day.

The conversation was recounted by a tearful Michael Malgas, on film.

Blue: I loved your poem, I keep it close.  Your letters too.
Mich: The letters!  I no longer have them, those days were bleak hey?
Blue: Fokken bleak ja.
Mich: Blue … even if we had stayed together or found each other again sooner, you know it wouldn’t change who I am …
Blue: I know Mich, I know.

At that point apparently, there was an incredibly long silence.  You’ll see it in the film and the music will rip your heart right out with its bare hands at the same time.  Ginger is as cruel as an artist needs to be to get it right.

Mich: There’s never been anyone but you.
Blue: And you ja, it’s just … the way it is.
Mich: It’s just the way it is.

Strange way to say I love you, perhaps, but that is what they were saying, without a hint of a speculation of a shadow of a doubt.

Redemption is expressed so neatly in Ginger’s notes, in Blue’s heroic acts, in Michael’s brave life and successes.  The technology that had given Blue freedom, money and then a second freedom, killed her in the end.  Michael lost the love that had ultimately made him free to work out who the hell he was.

If you’d known Blue, you wouldn’t have thought she died unhappy, hopefully she didn’t.

Just what the world needs: another blogger! I have nothing to write at this time, so I will leave a blank page to waste away in cyberspace. See you when I am on here at a more reasonable hour!!!!

Well there’s this lot of old out of date abandoned and spam filled bollocks… well, back in the proverbial day after Pattern Recognition came out, there were plenty of F:F:F clones online, nobody’s that hectic about it now, of course.

hmm..

The community @ the forum on William Gibson’s official website forum reckon it’s based on Future Feed Forum though, which has always been worth a look.

Search it, and Google responds with: Did you mean: foot:fetish:forum

Erm, no.

]]> http://onthedefense.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/target-audience-al-qaeda-has-over-200-english-language-websites-recruiting/ Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:41:29 +0000 onthedefense http://onthedefense.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/target-audience-al-qaeda-has-over-200-english-language-websites-recruiting/ http://santrikeren.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/cyber-politik-komunikasi-politik-melalui-media-ineternet/ Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:49:11 +0000 santrikeren http://santrikeren.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/cyber-politik-komunikasi-politik-melalui-media-ineternet/

1. A. Konseptual

Komunikasi politik sekarang telah mengalami perkembangan. Kemajuan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi membantu perkembangan komunikasi politik. Tidak hanya secara konvensional dengan cara bertemu langsung dengan cara face to face tetapi banyak cara yang dapat digunakan. Salah satunya menggunakan media internet. Beberapa layanan yang ada seperti e-mail, internet, teleconference, net-meeting, memberikan kemudahan dalam berkomunikasi politik dari bertemu secara langsung menjadi tanpa terbatas jarak. Ruang cyber memberikan inovasi berkomunikasi dan memperoleh informasi, hal ini sedikit menggeser keberadaan media cetak.

Cyberspace berasal dari bahasa Yunani, kubernan, yaitu ruang maya tanpa batas, imajinatif dan dapat dihayati melalui perwujudan virtual. Kata cyber berasal dari kata cybernetics. Pada tahun 1947, Norbert Wiener menggunakan istilah ini untuk mendefinisikan sebuah bidang ilmu yang terkait dengan elektro, matematika, biologi, neurofisiologi, antropologi, dan psikologi.[1]

Terdapat beberapa definisi dari cyberspace, antara lain:

• Cyberspace adalah sebuah halusinasi yang dialami oleh jutaan orang setiap hari (berupa) representasi grafis yang sangat kompleks dan data di dalam sistem pikiran manusia yang diabstraksikan melalui bank data setiap komputer”. (Gibson, Neuromancer 1993).

• Cyberspace adalah sebuah ‘ruang imaiiner’ atau ‘maya’ yang bersifat artifisial, di mana setiap orang melakukan apa saja yang biasa dilakukan dalam kehidupan sosial dengan cara yang baru. (Howard Rheingold)

Ruang lingkup yang luas membuat cyberspace seakan tidak mempunyai lingkup yang terbatas. Hal ini memungkinkan orang dapat saling berhubungan melalui computer dan internet. Adanya cyberpace memberikian ruang atau cara berkomunikasi politik baru. Tanpa adanya kendali kekuasaan tertentu, karena bersifat terbuka, cyberspace lebih dianggap demokratis. Tujuan utama dari Cyberspace adalah transparansi di segala bidang, terutama di bidang pemerintahan. Dengan demikian, partisipasi politik masyarakat akan lebih tinggi karena pemerintah semakin terbuka untuk mengkomunikasikan seluruh kebijakannya pada masyarakat.

Hubungan media internet dengan politik, tidak akan lepas dengan apa yang namanya blog. Blog muncul sekitar tahun 2000an. blogosphere adalah suatu sistem besar yang melibatkan banyak aktor, mulai dari blogger sampai dengan masyarakat umum.[2] Untuk lebih tahu tentang konsepsi blogosphere lihat gambat di bawah ini.

Sumber: Hhtp://www.ririsatria.net.2008/07/29/permodelan-sistem-blogsphere/

Dari Gambat tersebut terdapat empat interaksi. Pertama antara blog dengan blogger. Bagimana di dalam blog bisa memuat opininya. Banyak jenis – jenis dari blog. Salah satunya blog politik.[3] Blog politik biasanya memuat topik tentang politik kemudian diberi komentar dari para pembaca. Namun sekarang, blog digunakan sebagai sarana berkampanye. Interaksi kedua, antara blogger dengan blogger. Mereka saling bertukar pendapat mengenai sesuatu yang mereka postingkan. Interaksi ketiga, antara blogger dengan non-blogger. Opini yang ditulis diblog dapat dibaca oleh khalayak umum, hal ini bisa membentuk suatu pandangan umum tentang sebuah isu. Interaksi terakhir, non-blogger dapat mentranferkan apa yang dia baca di blog di khalayak umum. Hal ini mengapa tak heran blogosphere bisa berpengaruh terhadap isu yang berkembang di umum, termasuk tentang politik.

Berkomunikasi politik dengan menggunakan media internet memiliki kelebihan dan kekuranga. Antara lain:

v Kelebihan Cyberspace[4]

+ Memecahakan persoalan kebebasan dan demokrasi.

è memiliki keluasaan mengekspresikan pendapat dan ide. Dalam cyber-politik bebas berekspresi tanpa ada tekanan dari pihak manapun. Kita lebih bebas dalam mengungkapkan pendapat terkait sesuatu isu.

+ Penyebaran informasi yang transparan dan terbuka

è kita dapat mengakses informasi yang kita inginkan. Jalannya informasi lebih detail dan rinci. Termasuk informasi mengenai anggaran atau kebijakan negara lainnya.

+ Tempat orang menciptakan ‘otoritas’ (authority) dan kekuasaan’ (power) bagi dirinya sendiri.

è Di dalam cyberspace terdapat ‘kebebasan informasi’, kebebasan berbicara, kebebasan mengkritik. Di dalamnya juga, seseorang tidak hanya dapat mengekspresikan ego individualnya, tetapi ia juga dapat bermain di dalam ‘ruang fantasi’. Dalam media lain kita mempunyai keterbatasan dalam berpendapat. Ruang yang diberiikan tidak mampu mencakup pendapat – pendapat public. Dengan adanya internet, kita bisa menuangkan pendapat kita, misalnya mengenai isu tentang jalannya pemilu.

+ ‘ecialitanian public space’

è Semacam tempat dimana anggota masyarakat berkumpul untuk mendiskusikan ide-ide untuk memecahkan persoalan bersama. Adanya aspirasi – aspirasi biasanya kita sampaikan melalui perantara, salah satunya partai politik. Namun, sekarang partai politik tidak bisa merepresentasikan apa yang diinginkan rakyat. Dengan adanya cyber-politik ini semakan ruang diskusi terbuka dimana setiap orang dapat ikut berpendapat dan menyalurkan pendapat secara terbuka terkait isu politik yanga ada.

+ Lahan berkampanye murah

è Dengan menggunakan komunikasi ini, kita bisa melakukan kampanye yang cenderung memakan biaya yang murah.

v Kekurangan Cyberspace[5]

- Cvbercnme’ dan ‘cyberviolence’ tetap menjadi kejahatan masa depan, bahkan Ia mendapatkan tempatnya yang Iebih ‘aman’, karena sifat cyberspace yang tanpa alamat. Ruang llingkup yang luas dan terbuka membuat kadang terjadi pengekspresiaan yang tidak beretika.

- Tidak semua lapisan masyarakat dapat mengakses informasi melalui cyberspace. Selain karena membutuhkan dana lebih, sarana dan prasarana cyberspace juga belum merata. Tidak semua orang yang “melek” teknologi, maka internet hanya bisa diakses oleh orang – orang tertentu.

- Bahaya utama cyberspace bila orang memasuki batas (border) yang seharusnya tidak ia lewati. Melewati tapal batas berarti menjadi over, menjadi hyper atau menjadi ekstrim.

- Ia menciptakan ‘cyber selfishness’, seorang yang tidak bertanggungjawab secara sosial. Kenyamanan yang ditimbulkan oleh cyberspace bisa menjadi candu bagi penggunanya.

- Keleluasaan yang ditawarkan memang menggiurkan, tetapi justru terkadang hal seperti ini, yaitu tidak berhadapan langsung dengan lawan bicara, membuat kita tidak bisa mengetahui apakah sang lawan bicara mempunyai maksud yang benar seperti apa yang dia bicarakan. Tidak heran bila banyak terjadi kebohongan ataupun penipuan di dalam komunikasi cyberspace

1. B. Kontekstual

Internet merebak di Indonesia pada tahun1990an. Dimulai dari pagayuban network sekarang berkembang menjadi luas. Pengguna internet di Indonesia sekarang mencapai 33 juta orang. Hal ini juga berdampak pada komunikasi politik dengan media internet, atau sering disebut dengan cyber politic. Cyber politic di Indonesia mengalami perkembangan beberapa tahun terakhir. Banyaknya sarana yang mendukung perkembangan cyber politic seperti adanya facebook, friendster, mailing list, you tobe, dan lain – lain.

Strategi dalam berkampanye yang dilakukan dalam komunikasi politik dengan menggunakan bantuan media internet atau yang disebut dengan viral marketing. Dengan bantuan media internet kita bisa menyalurkan visi, platform, trade record calon pemimpin di sarana – sarana intenet.

Salah satu contoh kasus penggunaan media internet sebagai sarana berkampanye adalah Fadjroel Rahman, kandidat capres independent. Dia menggunakan media seperti Multiply, Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, dan berbagai from seperti Forum Pembaca Kompas, ForumITB82, dan Forum Kaskus Indonesia. Web yang dibuatnya dan diberi nama www.fadjroelrachma. com juga dimanfaatkannya untuk memkampanyekan dirinya. Dalam waktu empat hari setelah softlaunching tercatat 1000an pengunjung yang ada. Sarana internet ini juga sebagai lahan untuk mengumpulkan dana agar transparan dan akuntabel. Cara ini dilakukan karena dirasa lebih murah daripada kampanye dengan cara konfensonal seperti biasa.

Kasus lain yang menggunalan kemajuan teknologi internet adalah pasangan Achmad Heryawan dan Dede Yusuf (Hade). Pasangan Hade memenagngkan pemilihan gubernur Jawa Barat kemarin. Salah satu strategi yang gencar digunakan adalah viral marketing. Hade mengsosialisasikan visi misi mereka melalui blog, jejaring sosial. Dengan bidikan anak muda, para pencari kerja, mereka lebih dikenal dibandingan calon lainnya. Alhasil orang lebih paham dan tahu visi misi program yang mereka tawarkan.

Internet bukan hanya sebagai sarana untuk berkampanye partai politik saja. Melainkan sebagai salah satu komunikasi politik untuk membentuk opini yang berkembang. Blog bisa sebagai sebuah kekuatan politik tersendiri.[6] Dalam blog kita bisa mengekspresikan apa yang menjadi opini kita tanpa ada tekanan dari pihak manapun. Jika media massa terikat oleh kode etik jurnalistik atau terhambat oleh “tekanan” pemilik modal.[7] Blog lebig bersifat lepas, verifikasi atas informasi yang ditayangkan di Internet adalah tanggung jawab pengguna internet itu sendiri[8]. Tak heran blog dianggap salah satu bagian yang mendukung berkembangnya demokrasi. Berbagai pandangan yang berkembang dalam blogosphere memang bersifat subyektif. Tidak akan ada blog akan merumuskan suatu pandangan bersama tentang sebuah isu, karena sifat subyektifan ini bisa membuat blog memanipulasi realita sebenarnya. Namun, blog bisa memberikan titik rujukan bersama mengenai sebuah isu yang diangkat.[9]

Sebagai salah satu kekuatan politik, berekembangnya berbagai pandangan akan justru menjadi penyeimbang bagi sistem politik yang dominan oleh partai politik. [10] Partai politik sering kali memanipulasi realita yang ada agar dapat mengutungkan mereka, sedangkan adanya blog kita bisa menemukan segala pandangan mengenai isu. Salah satu contohnya weblog milik Mr. Sawali Tuhusetya yang menyuarakan suara grasroots dalam pendidikan.[11]

Keuntungan lain dari internet adalah kontrol yang susah oleh pemerintah.[12] Kebebasan berekspresi yang ditawarkan dalam blogosphere, kadang menimbulkan pemikiran yang bersebrangan dengan peraturan atau kebijakan pemerintah. Karena belum ada undang – undang yag mengenai dunia cyber. Untuk menguatkan kontrol pemerintah terhadap cyberspace maka dibuatkan Undang-Undang tentang Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronik. UU ini dibuat bertujuan untuk menjerat penjahat internet dan pelanggaran atas hak cipta.

Namun, adanya UU tentang Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronik menuai polemik tersendiri. Kasus Prita Mulyasari menjadi contoh, blogosphere menjadi sebuah kekuatan politik baru, serta menunjukan belum efektifnya UU ITE bekerja.

Prita Mulyasari terjerat pasal 27 ayat 3 Undang – undang No. 11 tentang Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronik. Dia didakwa telah mencemarkan nama baik RS Omni Internasional melalui email yang dikirimkan kepada 10 temannya. Dalam email tersebut dia mengeluhkan penanganan yang tidak baik dari RS Omni Internasional dan dugaan malpraktek yang dilakukan dokter di sana.

Dijebloskannya Prita ke penjara menuai banyak protes. Salah satunya dari para blogger. Mereka menenuntut pembebasan Prita. Banyak blog yang membahas tentang kasus ini sampai membuat halaman khusus. Di Facebook-pun gerakan ini merasuk ke Facebook Cause untuk mengumpulkan suara untuk mendukung pembebasan Prita Mulyasari dan kebebasan berpendapat di dunia maya secara umum.[13]

Blogosphere sebagai sebuah kekuatan politik ditunjukan dalam kasus Prita ini. Bagaimana isu yang berkembang dapat mempengaruhi pemerintah. Isu tersebut berkembang menjadi dukungan Dukungan ini diberikan sebagai tekanan sosial melawan pemerintah yang akhirnya membuat Prita Mulyasari dibebaskan dari penjara.

C. Komparasi

Sebagai pembanding cyber politic yang ada di Indonesia, kami mengambil contoh di negara yang sudah cukup bahkan sangat maju dalam teknologi yaitu pemilu presiden di AS. suatu hal yang dulunya tidak terduga ketika seorang Barack Obama yang merupakan keturunan Afrika dapat menjadi presiden AS saat ini. hal itu sangat dipengaruhi oleh bagaimana ia mengkampanyekan dirinya kepada rakyat AS. dan salah alat yang banyak berpengaruh adalah melalui jaringan yang namanya internet. dua tahun sebelum ia mencalonkan diri, namanya belum begitu mencuat dikancah politik negara Adi Kuasa tersebut. akan tetapi lewat media cyber namanya mencuat dan dikenal banyak orang.

Berkat bantuan seorang yang bernama Chris Hughes yang merupakan pendiri Facebook, kampanye obama berhasil menarik tiga juta donor. mereka menyumbang $650 juta. selain untuk menggalang dukungan suara, memang tujuannya adalah untuk mendulang banyak dana dari masyarakat. situsnya http://barackobama.com memang sudah dipersiapkan oleh tim suksesnya sehingga tidak mengherankan ketika sedikitnya 1 miliar dolar AS berhasil didapatkan. jumlah tersebut 12 kali lebih besar dibanding dana yang berhasil dihimpun John Kerry pada Pilpres 2004.

Selain melalui situs tersebut, dukungan suara juga dihimpun melalui situs jejaring sosial myBarackObama.com. dari situs jejaring ini, tim suksesnya berhasil merangkul para pendukung barack obama untuk menjadi relawan. dengan cara ini, dia berhasil mengumpulkan jumlah relawan yang lebih banyak dibanding pesaingnya, Hillary Clinton dan John McCain.

Beberapa pakar politik memang menyimpulkan internet merupakan kunci bagi Barack Obama untuk bisa maju sebagai calon Partai Demokrat dalam Pemilihan Umum Amerika Serikat. melalui media ini, Obama Senator Illinois ini unggul dari saingannya, Hillary Clinton, Senator New York. hal ini tidak menjadi sesuatu yang mengeherankan karena di Amerika Serikat, 71,9 persen atau 218,3 juta dari 303,8 juta penduduknya (catatan InternetWorldStats sampai November 2007) menggunakan internet. Bahkan internet merupakan bagian utama dalam kehidupan berpolitik di AS akhir-akhir ini.

Salah satu ide yang dimunculkannya adalah dengan membuat video musik “yes we can” yang ditayangkan di YouTube, dengan bintang tamu antara lain Jesse Dylan, Will.i.am, Common, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Adam Rodriquez, Amber Valetta, Eric Balfour, Aisha Tyler, Nicole Scherzinger dan Nick Cannon yang dapat menarik kaum muda pecinta musik yang ada di sana
Selain you tube, fitur lain juga digunakan seperti facebook dan friendster yang memungkinkan obama melakukan komunikasi dengan para pendukungnya dan tempat untuk para pendukungnya menyampaikan apa yang menjadi aspirasi mereka.

Sedangkan dunia blogosphere di luar negeri menjadi suatu istilah yang tidak asing lagi. Dikaitkan dengan politik blogosphere sedikit punya pengaruh sebagai suatu penekan apa yang menjadi kebijakan suatu negara. Dalam konteks ruang lingkup internasional bahkan ada berbagai artis blogger tingkat dunia karena artikel-artikel yang dimuatnya. Sebut saja Mike Aquino dari Filipina, Jeff Ooi (Malaysia), Mr. Brown (Singapura), Mark Tafoya (Amerika Serikat), dan Anthony Bianco (Australia) yang pada tahun 2008 kemaring sempat menghadiri Pesta Blogger 2008 di Jakarta.

Mungkin kasus di luar negeri tentang blogosphere dalam politik dapat kita lihat di Malaysia yaitu Jeff Ooi yang berhasil melakukan mengambil kursi di parlemen karena adanya proses horisontalisasi politik. Di berbagai negara di dunia termasuk AS membuktikan bahwa horisontalisasi politik lebih punya ‘ngeh’. McCain yang berpolitik secara vertikal harus artinya kampanye masih menggunakan media konvensional seperti TV dan media-media lain harus membuktikan bahwa obama yang lebih banyak menggunakan media dua arah lebih punya nama dan berhasil menjadi presiden. Kembali ke Jeff Ooi yang blognya mempunyai julukan “Malaysia’s Most Influential Blog”. Ketika sebelum duduk di parlemen Jeff Ooi tidak mendapatkan coverage di media konvensional yang vertikal dan dikontrol ketat oleh pemerintah, karena itu dia membuat medianya sendiri yaitu blog dan mendapat sambutan besar secara horisontal dalam dunia blogosphere.

Kasus lain yang berkembang di Amerika, saat pemilihan presiden kemarin. Blog – blog independen mempunyai pengaruh dalam mengahantarkan isu. Sebagian besar rakyat Amerika masih mengandalkan gerai berita yang lebih mapan untuk memperoleh berita-berita umum. Karena itu blog- blog politik memperoleh banyak kunjungan. [14] Yahoo News mendapat kunjungan 41,2 juta orang pada September, disusul MSNBC dengan 34,2 juta pengunjung dan CNN dengan 33,8 juta pengunjung, demikian menurut angka comScore.ant/kp.[15]

1. D. Kesimpulan

Perbandingan antara Indonesia dan Amerika Serikat mengenai penggunaan cyber politic memang berbeda. Di AS cyber politic dinilai cukup berhasil ditandai dengan kemenangan Obama sebagai presiden Amerika yang gencar menggunakan virtal marketing. Sedangkan di Indonesia sendiri belum banyak orang berkampanye menggunakan media intenet. Masih banyak yang menggunakan banner, baliho, atau spanduk untuk menggaet massa. Penggunan cyber politic di Indonesia seakan bersifat setengah – setengah. Memang banyak sekarang yang berkampanye memasang foto mereka melalui jejaring sosial seperti facebook, namun desain dan penampilan yang biasa – biasa saja membuat orang menganggapnya spam (sampah). Dalam dunia blogger sendiri, di Indonesia berkembang peasat tetapi itu hanya terjadi untuk golonga tertentu

Banyak hal yang melatarbelakangi mengapa cyber politik di Indonesia tidak begitu berhasil. Salah satunya adalah sebagian besar masyarakat Indonesia gaptek teknologi, hanya sekitar 2 % saja yang “melek” internet. Hal ini menyebabkan cyber politic bukan lah sarana yang cukup efektif untuk berkomunikasi politik di Indonesia. Di samping SDM yang kurang, teknologi yang kurang menjadi kendala. Tidak semua masyarakat dapat merasakan sarana internet. Program internet masuk desa diharapkan membantu perkembangan internet di Indonesia.

Sebenarnya masih menjadi perdebatan apakah cyber politic dirasa cukup efektif dalam komunikasi politik. Kampanye menggunakan internet bukanlah faktor penentu utama dalam kemenangan seorang calon, para pemilih lebih melihar asal usul calon daripada termakan bujuk rayu. Tetapi cyber politic menjadi salah satu alternatif baru dalam berkomunikasi politik.Kita bisa melihat secara lebih jelas tentang visi misi dan lain – lainnya. Mungkin ini lebih baik dan real daripada memasang baliho dipinggir jalan yang kadang melanggar peraturan lalu lintas.

Selain itu munculnya blogosphere sebagai cara berkomunikasi politik. Longgarnya kontrol dari pemerintah, karena dalam blog kita lebih bebas berekspresi tanpa mendapat tekanan. Tulisan –tulisan yang berkembang di blog bisa memberikan rujujan- rujuan terhadap isu tertentu.Bisa -bisa blogosphere suatu saat nanti menjadi suatu kekuatan politik yang harus diperhitungkan. Karena dapat mempengaruhi kebijakan yang dibuat pemerintah melalui tulisan – tulisan mereka di blog.

DAFTAR PUSTAKA

Blog Sebagai Media Komunikasi Politik Baru. Diunduh dari http://aaipoel.wordpress.com/2007/06/14/blog-sebagai-media-komunikasi-politik-baru/. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.46

Dukungan untuk Prita Bertebaran di Blogosphere. Diunduh dari http://dailysocial.net/post/dukungan-untuk-prita-bertebaran-di-blogosphere/. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.37

Internet dan Komunikasi Politik. Diunduh dari http://cireks.blogspot.com/2008/05/internet-dalam-komunikasi-politik.html. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.14

Jumlah kunjungan ke blog politik dan situs di AS mencapai rekor. Diunduh http://www.bwtblog.com/jumlah-kunjungan-ke-blog-politik-dan-situs-berita-as-capai-rekor.blog. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.39

Media Baru dan Media Sosial. Diunduh dari http://www.newmedia.web.id/2009/01/media-baru-dan-media-sosial/. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.10

Politik dengan Tehnologi.Diunduh dari http://www.suryaden.com/content/politik-dengan-tehnologi. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.59

10 macam tipe blog di dunia internet. Diunduh dari http://www.isnotsofar.com/2009/04/10-macam-tipe-blog-di-dunia-internet.html. Diakses pada tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13. 50

http:esubijono.wordpress.com/architecture/cyberspace diakses tanggal 6 April 2009 pukul 13.48

hhtp://www.ririsatria.net.2008/07/29/permodelan-sistem-blogsphere/. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 14.15

http://thebreatheoflife.blogspot.com/2008/01/cyberspace-kayaknya-bukan-lagi menjadi.html diakses tanggal 6 April 2009 pukul 14.17

http://www.seruit.com/uncategorized/seruitcom-di-pesta-blogger-2008.lpg. Diakses tanggal 13 Juni 2009 pukul 15.17

http://www.inaplas.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=221:horisontalisasi-politik-di-seluruh-dunia&catid=14:general&Itemid=20&lang=in. Diakses tanggal 13 Juni 2009 pukul 15.20

[2] hhtp://www.ririsatria.net.2008/07/29/permodelan-sistem-blogsphere/. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 14.15

[3] 10 macam tipe blog di dunia internet. Diunduh dari http://www.isnotsofar.com/2009/04/10-macam-tipe-blog-di-dunia-internet.html. Diakses pada tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13. 50

[4] http://thebreatheoflife.blogspot.com/2008/01/cyberspace-kayaknya-bukan-lagi menjadi.html diakses tanggal 6 April 2009 pukul 14.17

[5] Ibid.

[6] Politik dengan Tehnologi.Diunduh dari http://www.suryaden.com/content/politik-dengan-tehnologi. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.59

[7] Blog Sebagai Media Komunikasi Politik Baru. Diunduh dari http://aaipoel.wordpress.com/2007/06/14/blog-sebagai-media-komunikasi-politik-baru/. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.46

[8] Internet dan Komunikasi Politik. Diunduh dari http://cireks.blogspot.com/2008/05/internet-dalam-komunikasi-politik.html. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.14

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid

[11] Politik dengan Tehnologi.Diunduh dari http://www.suryaden.com/content/politik-dengan-tehnologi. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.59

[12] Media Baru dan Media Sosial. Diunduh dari http://www.newmedia.web.id/2009/01/media-baru-dan-media-sosial/. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.10

[13] Dukungan untuk Prita Bertebaran di Blogosphere. Diunduh dari http://dailysocial.net/post/dukungan-untuk-prita-bertebaran-di-blogosphere/. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.37

[14]Jumlah kunjungan ke blog politik dan situs di AS mencapai rekor. Diunduh http://www.bwtblog.com/jumlah-kunjungan-ke-blog-politik-dan-situs-berita-as-capai-rekor.blog. Diakses tanggal 14 Juni 2009 pukul 13.39

[15] Ibid

I saw a mention about web.alive a new online 3D webspace that runs inside your browser on the Second Life Educators listserv and decided to take a look. I went to http://apex.projectchainsaw.com/ and  bravely downloaded the exe file. (The download was fast with no signs of N1H1.)

Download security warning for web.alive. Note the publisher is Nortel Networks Ltd.

web.alive license agreement. (I am showing these basic download dialogs to assure you that 'projectchainsaw' is not a virus even if it sounds like one.)

First view of web.alive shows you your avatar staring back at you

I was then shown a very simple direction guide to help me get moving. The Help button provided me with additional easy to follow directions.

I began exploring the area and seemed to be gliding smoothly through the space. It looked like the kind of environment that you find around a large London railway station, an anonymous place designed for hordes of people to rush through. However, on the occasion of my visit there were no other avatars around making it feel more like an early Sunday morning. Everything around me was concrete and glass with small round pods situated here and there reminding me of those little shops that sell croissants and ties to commuters. Screens were set up in these pods and with a simple click these began showing Nortel movie advertisements. There was another screen in each pod that looked as though it could be enabled to show web browsers. (I wonder, does that mean that an avatar could be in a virtual world via a web browser accessing another virtual world via the in-world web browser? In other words we could access layers of virtual environments through web browsers?)

View of pod rooms. (Note the small area map in the bottom right corner of this picture.)

Conference room. The picture in this shot shows the rooftop space I was exploring.

I wandered away to send an email and stopped looking at web.alive in my browser and was surprised on my return to see that someone had been trying to talk to me. I saw an avatar walking away and gave chase. I was helped by a little map at the bottom of the screen that showed an orange dot (the other avatar) while I was indicated by a red kite shape. I finally caught up with the other avatar who told me, via voice, that  he could hear me typing and suggested I try speaking. I was very surprised to find that he could hear me straight away (especially as I normally spend a few minutes getting voice enabled in Second Life). I had done nothing to set up the voice connection, it just worked… good job I was not singing or swearing! I discovered I was chatting to a friendly fellow from Nortel in California who told me there were other environments available to explore (I plan to work out how to access those next.)

View with shallow canal (accompanied in web.alive with watery sound effects).

For now web.alive is in beta so anything I write that sounds judgmental is obviously a little unfair. Having said that I certainly feel that they could be braver with their sound effects and environment. Perhaps they will take these extra steps now that they have created such an amazingly smooth operating technology? Still, I really missed the lighting available in Second Life and this made me realize how important lighting is to conjuring up atmosphere.  This got me thinking that virtual environments have an  ‘Ambient Presence’  as opposed to Social Presence which describes the sense of the human being behind an avatar. ‘Ambient Presence’ describes the almost unconscious hooks which help immerse us in the sense of being within a physical space when in a virtual, computer generated environment. Ambient sounds and atmospheric lighting play important (almost subliminal) roles when it comes to absorbing us into an immersive experience.

View of city scape below (accompanied by traffic sounds that sounded very like a large drowsy fly).

My work involves communicating with over 100 sites all across America. I would love to find a cheap online vehicle that could really compress distance and make it possible for people to communicate easily when the whim takes them. That is, create a virtual space where I can talk to a colleague in another state as easily as I can walk across to someone else’s office in the physical world. Second Life has the ability to create beautiful spaces with ambient presence and avatars with Social Presence but the operating controls and intense hardware requirements keep ruling it out. web.alive has conjured up an excellent program that is astonishingly easy to use and can run in a browser. All it needs now is a little more imagination and it could become a major rival to Second Life for business and educational users. One more thing,  I keep forgetting web.alive’s name! I wonder if they plan to keep it?  I honestly prefer the name projectchainsaw! At least I can remember that!

Some shadows on the roof for some much needed atmosphere...

Note: For more information: A quick check through Google found additional mentions of web.alive. Take a look at Digital Media Consultant’s post titled ‘Checking out lenovo’s eLounge’. Also see the web.alive blog and http://www.projectchainsaw.com/

Updates November 19, 2009 :

• Just discovered that web.alive does not run on Macs
• ThinkBalm have created their own virtual office/meeting area on web.alive. Also see the post about ThinkBalm on Joe Rigby’s blog MellaniuM (Visit these two sites for direct links to ThinkBalm’s web.alive connection site.)

Watchdogs and Action Groups

Ever vigilant, Sam and Veto, meanwhile, were training and deploying jockeys all over cyberspace to “hack the phobes,” as they put it.  Under no nation or organization’s auspices, their stated mission – and they always signed their work – was to cause as much online disruption as possible to the perpetrators of offline hate crimes.  By then, everyone was using the widening network of queers online to spread information, dreaming of a day when no heterosexual would ever bash a queer again.  Scar thought that they were all deluded, but she fully supported the dream nonetheless.

One of Veto and Sam’s online successes was getting together a pressure group to petition Facebook to adapt its user information and the next time Scar logged in to her Siri-self’s Facebook account, she could change it to read “interested in women” as well as “engaged to Helen Cherry.”  Small triumphs, perhaps, but meaningful when you have been denied them so consistently.  The next hurdle would be to get Facebook to expand the gender options; “male” and “female” just didn’t fit everybody.  One petition that did the rounds suggested three options:

MALE
FEMALE
FUCK YOU!

Sometimes Scar got the feeling that the majority of the human race was still crouched in a cave, fearfully lighting fires against the dark.

One quarter than no het ever bought into openly, was that old Yoville application – remember that?  It still existed, user numbers grew by leaps and bounds and it was still probably the only place where queers etc could go (albeit not physically) and just be completely themselves, indulging in whatever cliches they wanted, being as out and proud as they wanted to be.  Scar logged in occasionally, for old time’s sake and sometimes she still left gifts in Helen’s apartment there.  Sentimental?  Hell yeah.

24 000 odd (very) words left to write to hit the NaNoWriMo target and 12 days left to do it.  2 000 words a day and it’s done, by a tooth skin.  What I haven’t been telling you is that this is not all I am doing, that “ordinary” life goes on and that my life is busy even without this project.  At this stage the only people who I know for sure are reading this, are Helen, Hippolyta and Ginger – I am going to owe them many, many bottles of overpriced beer in frosty green bottles.  Why the hell don’t they bottle beer in blue anyway?

26 065

I can’t stand the thought of reading what I have written so far again.  The nanobots advise you not to edit and rewrite while you go along, but the couple of time I’ve done that so far have been good.  It’s rather like squeezing the end of a tube of toothpaste when the toothpaste starts to run out.  You get more out of it (increase the word count) and it also tidies things up so you’re ready to write forwards again.  A few thousands words ago, Helen told me she was no longer an unbiased reader and I am certainly not one either.

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Cyberspatial Drift

In the twentieth century, you knew you’d made it when somebody not yourself wrote a Wikipedia entry about you and you thus joined the unhallowed halls of the collective unconsciousness.  Well, Wikipedia survived, but as you know, that’s the web, not the net.

Beyond the Gibson-stacks of cyberspace, in their corporate and generally organized groups, was loose data, free data and rogue data; unclaimed.  In a gravity-free zone, it was subject only to two forces; filing and drift.  Filing occurred when a human or a bot, authorised or not, collected and arranged the data.  Unattended, unfiled data just drifted apparently aimlessly, but inexorably towards other data of the same type.  If there was a strong enough parent category, it could end up huddling outside the security nets of a city of stacks, periodically checked and probably annexed by the owners.

As for data about individuals, if there was enough data about anybody, it ended up together – you could even end up with your very own Gibson-stack.  As time went on, that gave rise to whole new joys and risks.  Unclaimed personal stacks tended to be rifled wholesale by hackers and malicious bots, in search of identities to thieve.  It’s exactly how the Queers got their Het ID’s so that they could log on back in the bad old days.  Black hat stuff.

Cross-referencing happened along impenetrably tangled seeming gridlines that experienced surfers followed, hunting data.

There was a whole network of associations looking out for identity theft online, an attempt at protecting privacy that often felt more like pissing against the wind.

Google had pioneered some soft tech, enabling people to generate a map of their data in cyberspace from the links found on the web.  It spent a decade in Beta and was far from reliable, but it helped and it made a lot of people feel safer.  Scar and Helen felt even safer with Samanth0r on their side; she kept a close watch on their data, emailing screenshots of every new orphan she found out there.

There was a risk to identity theft, beyond ending up with people opening credit cards in your name.  There was a kind of … voodoo element.  it didn’t happen as quickly as it did if you jacked in and then got lost, but an unfriendly element taking control of enough of your data out there would eventually kill you offline.  It wasn’t even a particularly obvious decline either.  You’d probably assume your immune system was low, maybe you’d rest more and up your vitamin intake, but it wouldn’t help.  You’d need more and more sleep, you’d begin to suffer social phobias and so it would go on until one day, you’d just sort of fade away.  Potentially, it could be used to inflict a fast and unwitting genocide on remote communities who’d never even heard of the internet.  It made photographic soul theft and cargo cults look like child’s play.

As cyberspace became more complex and crowded, older hackers and surfers found themselves fast turning as obsolete as last year’s messaging software.  As time went by, Scar’s generation found itself growing less and less willing to venture beyond known portals.  Net fatigue set in quicker anyway, you needed to get offline faster to avoid getting sick, getting lost.

Like those fabled old surfers heading out to sea at the end, rumour had it that old hackers let go that way too, arranging for their data dispersal so they could simply fade to white noise.  The world lost some emo teenagers that way too, but only the really isolated ones, it wasn’t something that tended to happen to people with human, offline support systems.

After you had died, your stack remained, if you had one, as a memorial if anybody wanted to remember you.  Digital archaeologists might even go out in search of you if people only got interested once you’d already rotted.  The theft of your identity after your death rarely mattered to anyone much at all.

*NOTE TO SELF* Any further attempts at NaNoWriMo to have a plot worked out ahead of time.  And 40 000 words written.  At least.

A new industry was spawned, a modified synthesis of press clipping agent and data warehouse.  The Indiana Jones style hacker never went out of fashion or pocket as more and more people felt the need to get their data selves secured.  Otaku kids all over the world made more money than the previous century’s dot com startups did, providing that kind of service.  The major software corporations, antivirus and firewall businesses promised complete safety and failed to deliver it.  Most people never even realised what kind of danger they were in and fortunately, many of those people never, ever had to find out.