Comments on: You Only Link Twice: Spying 2.0

By: Radder Than Thou (The Anthropik Network)

Radder Than Thou (The Anthropik Network) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:44:14 +0000

[…] The simple fact that tribal systems work, that they are so deeply ingrained in human nature, means that they crop up anew even in the most civilized of endeavors—which is precisely what we should expect. The most obvious example is the open source movement. Richard Stallman began the free software movement on principle: to develop software in a way that respected human freedom. Of course, such respect inevitably creates community, and when humans organize themselves, the patterns they naturally fall into are distinctly tribal, as one would expect. The “open source movment” branded a different name to shed the ethics of Stallman’s crusade, and sell it to companies as simply a better method of creating a product. It’s that, too, of course, and in the end analysis, open source has done more to advance tribalism than all the primitivists in the world combined, by proving that when you respect freedom, the communities that emerge are more powerful than any stale hierarchy one could ever erect. Open source warfare has caught the world’s military “hyperpower” in a quagmire in Iraq, blogging and wikis are threatening journalists and even intelligence. Rhizome is ascendant, not because it won a philosophical battle, but because it works. […]

By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » 2006 Highlights

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 23:12:32 +0000

[…] Anthropology of the Spirit: “everybody’s got a body, and it is surprising and interesting to learn about how the taken-for-grantedness of that body is historically/socially/culturally constructed. But not everybody has a spirit.” What is good anthropological writing?: “Which were the texts that made an indelible impression on you, and why? Any answer to this question has to be biographical.” The Invention of the World: Islam in the West: “the importance of Muslim scholarship to Columbus’ voyage cannot be overestimated” Found Mag meets Savage Minds: “Sometimes it’s better to have a hand-scratched, seat-of-the-pants expression of deep knowledge over a real-time, social software, scale-free, really simple, ajax-enhanced, web 2.0 instant access to scholarship.” World Simulation: Part One: Constructing the World: “In my last post, I described my ‘anti-teaching’ philosophy that led me to experiment with different ways of teaching cultural anthropology in very large introductory classes. So far, the most radical and intensive experiment I have tried is the ‘World Simulation.’” Technology in the Classroom: PowerPoint Alternatives: “Power corrupts: PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.” Reading circle: let’s do Friction: This page archives all of our posts from this summer’s discussion of Tsing’s popular experimental ethnography, Friction. The American Anthropological Association’s lobbying against open acess is so, so misguided: “In other words, in order for publishers to argue that it will become unprofitable for them to run a journal because of competition from open access repositories, they must argue that they provide very little value to a journal as a product.” 30 Days of Cinétrance: “Despite the fact that one of the prime motivations for producing reality TV is saving costs on writers and actors, it does seem to draw heavily from the social sciences.” In the Flesh in the Museum: “From the first European contact with the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere onward, Indians had been exhibited in royal courts, traveling shows, circuses, and world fairs and expositions.” Junking the Nature/Culture Divide: “Pharmaceutical projects and products redefine the horizons of possible human being.” Places and Frames: Reading Bruno Latour on Holiday: “Latour proposes that there is nothing intrinsically contextual about place, that place is simply a staging or framing for traces and associations, near and distant, past and present. Context as such does not exist as a factor which explains or accounts for a place.” Conspiracy Theory and Social Theory: “in many ways conspiracy theories are like social theory” Is motherhood natural?: “. Many introductory kinship texts begin by pointing out that while fatherhood is frequently non-obvious, motherhood never is.” Book Review: The Politics of the Governed, Part 1: “’Political society’ is the politics of subjects who wish to have the same rights as citizens, but are excluded (by dint of their very marginalization) from civil society.” You Only Link Twice: Spying 2.0: “an article about the US and defense intelligence agencies’ attempts to generate as much useful information as the blogosphere and wikipedia.” […]

By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 23:02:17 +0000

[…] Via Kevin Drum, a press release about an article in the New Yorker. With a title like “Can Social Scientists Redefine the War on Terror?” it seems right up our alley. (See previous posts on the topic here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) In the New Yorker article George Packer talks to “a remarkable theorist named David Kilcullen, an Australian anthropologist who is also a lieutenant colonel in his country’s Army and the chief strategist in the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Coördinator [sic] for Counterterrorism.” There isn’t much saying what makes Kilcullen so “remarkable” except for his willingness to actively work for the military, but it seems he isn’t the only one: Anthropologists and former military officers in the Pentagon are currently working on a new project called “Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain,” which is recruiting social scientists around the country to join five-person “human terrain” teams that would go to Iraq and Afghanistan with combat brigades and serve as cultural advisers on six-to-nine-month tours. Pilot teams are planning to leave next spring. […]

By: Rhizome Ascendant (The Anthropik Network)

Rhizome Ascendant (The Anthropik Network) — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 20:27:26 +0000

[…] On the anthropology weblog Savage Minds, a recent article—”You Only Link Twice: Spying 2.0″—discusses the problems of today’s spies. They’ve noticed that they cannot keep up with the open source warfare used by the rhizome networks that Robb calls “global guerrillas,” and so they’ve started a project to begin a more open approach to intelligence. […]

By: Rowan

Rowan — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:13:38 +0000

Could someone start a thread on blogs and Wikipedia etc.? Its something which probably hasn’t taken off in the rest of the world (e.g. Australia, where I am) as compared with the US, but it is fascinating to think about the nature of this new knowledge system. Is it/is it not reliable? Who holds Intellectual Property rights over it? Can they be invoked to stop it?

The comments about the institutionalization of DoD employees is interesting. In Australia, our intelligence agency has been doing a roadshow at universities, and actively seeking nerds with a sense for limited adventure (no weapons, but lots of gadgets, pretending to be someone you are not to get informants etc.), and there is transferability from other walks of life. Perhaps the pawns of DoD are institutionalised, but are there also IT contractors, people who get a sense of importance by being asked to mine information for the sake of it?

By: Erkan's field diary

Erkan's field diary — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 01:01:37 +0000

Happy birthdays, anthro news etc……

Yann has put up the 4th Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival! as Kambiz notifies. Kambiz liked Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto and provides a review here. In another blog, AP piece is quoted: Mayans excited, but unsure on ‘Apocalypto’ It hasn’t……

By: Interprete » Spies like us (geeks)

Interprete » Spies like us (geeks) — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:22:48 +0000

[…] Because the web 2.0 “crowd” is so “smart” the intelligence agencies are thinking of tapping into this so-called collective wisdom and you can read about new efforts designed to create open source spying in the NYTimes. And make sure to check out Chris Kelty (who was on my dissertation committee) excellent commentary « Small Claims Court and the Insurance-Industrial Complex […]

By: Jim Stogdill

Jim Stogdill — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 01:13:24 +0000

There is a concept in DoD circles called NetCentricity which is an idea that falls under the “revolution in military affairs.” In short, NetCentricity is like Web 2.0 for the military. It states basically that if people form networks (made possible by new communication networks) they will have better shared situational awareness and they will be able to self synchronize without waiting for higher authorities to tell them what to do. (I apologize if you already know this).

The reason I’m saying this is because despite the word NetCentricity being bandied about like you wouldn’t believe, very few systems in the DoD enable it; and it is not resulting in much of a web 2.0 revolution in the department (at least not yet). You won’t find many wikis or social networks in the DoD either.

The reasons are typical big organization change kinds of things, but they are made worse by the fact that there is little interchange across the boundary between DoD and the rest of the world. People come in right out of high school or college, get institutionalized, and stay until they leave or retire. No one comes into middle management after gaining enriching experiences somewhere else. So, for example, there is probably not one military officer in active duty at a decision making level (e.g. Lt Col or above) who had even the slightest exposure to the dot com boom; or even to the web. It’s not like Silicon Valley with the constant turnover and mixing.

It is VERY difficult for people who have lived and breathed in this world for their entire careers to imagine what is possible with tools like the web and web 2.0 concepts of participation. I often speak on web 2.0 tools to military audiences and it is rare that anyone in my audience has ever heard of Del.ic.ous or Wikipedia, or has even purchased a book on Amazon!

I have no experience with the intelligence community but I imagine it is very similar and the sheer institutional inertia makes this move toward Intellipedia and the nascent acceptance of blogging absolutely amazing and to be applauded.

Finding the balance between openness and secrecy will be hard and very important.

By: The Gideonse Bible

The Gideonse Bible — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 17:24:36 +0000

Best of the Feeds…

I’m going to try to start a “feature” on this blog–a post that happens on a regular basis, like JoeMyGod’s Homoquotables or Wonkette’s Rumors on the Internets or Daily Kos’s Dairy Rescue. I’ve tried this before, with my Top 14……

By: ckelty

ckelty — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 02:17:24 +0000

This must be part of the Total Assemblage Awareness Program I’ve been hearing about at the AAA. Fortunately, I’ve an alibi and proof that I did not write that post, but someone posing as me with admin privileges…

By: Jeff M

Jeff M — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 01:51:37 +0000

Great post as usual, Chris. Sadly, however, in the current climate it will behoove you to become more reserved about putting thoughts you have about the American intelligence community into an open source forum such as this blog. After all (based on what you are reporting here) what you have just posted is certain to be harvested by the CIA as grist for their dark satanic mills, thereby bringing you afoul of our nascent anthropological imperative to unequivocally oppose any use of our knowledge by torturers.

Because of the novelty of the Resolution on Moral Purity, you will not be censured for the present transgression. However, to prevent such violations from becoming chronic, it is urged that you immediately convert Savage Minds from an open source “blog” to a more secure channel, accessible only by persons fully vetted by the AAA Commission on Maintaining the Torture-Knowledge Distinction.

By: Kerim

Kerim — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 00:01:46 +0000

Great post. I’ve always been shocked at anthropologists who keep their field notes in a shoebox under their desk. I know of at least two people whose notes were destroyed by flooding. If you aren’t up to typing it into your computer, at least photocopy it and put a copy in a safe deposit box somewhere, or better yet – scan it to a CD…