„Ich wollt‘ ich wäre ein Huhn … „, singen die Glückskinder aus meinem Laptoplautsprecher. Eine Aufnahme von 1936 auf youtube. Eigentlich ja nichts besonderes und nur am Rande eine Frage der Commons. Wenn ich nicht gerade in Istanbul im Hotel sitzen würde. Offenbar ist youtube in der Türkei wieder freigeschaltet. Letzte Woche war hier noch blankes Weiß. Erst gestern wurde berichtet, dass youtube das türkische Verfassungsgericht angerufen hat, um eine Freischaltung zu erzwingen. Für mich war es übrigens eine gespenstische Erfahrung, wie restlos solch omnipräsente Institutionen unseres Online-Lebens wieder ausgeknipst werden können – was nichts an meiner kritischen Einstellung zu solchen Medien ändert.
Stunden später entdecke ich nun, dass die Hauptseite wieder (oder noch) gesperrt zu sein scheint. Gleichzeitig kann ich aber das Huhn und andere Videos direkt aufrufen. Eine undurchsichtige Situation. Fast schon amüsant in diesem Zusammenhang ist das Werbeplakat des Duty Free-Shops auf dem Flughafen in Istanbul:
CommonsBlog 
without Youtube, Twitter etc. the dark forces cannot keep tabs on everybody, so it is a mavellous trick they have pulled:
— „social“ (i.e. hypercorporate) media is a question of free speech, when in fact it is a technological architecture of total control through the collection of everyone, their relations and thoughts.
In other words, when you support (incl. use) these tools, you support the enclosure of any remaining commons.
Censorship is protecting us from the dark forces? But I see your point. What alternatives do you suggest?
Well, censorship is not protecting us from the dark forces, but censorship, by implication, reveals how deep the dark forces move under our skin: when one of their main tools of control is suspended, the people themselves protest. Rather remarkable. Or, conversely, we see the degree to which the people – the (potential) commoners – are policing themselves.
Here are some relevant bits and pieces, especially the timeline in the second link is informative:
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/04/official-arab-spring-subversion-us.html
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2013/09/us-planned-syrian-civilian-catastrophe.html
Alternatives….. well…log off, talk to your neighbour, organise. Alternatively, use alternative cybertools, such as encrypted IRC.
Thanks for some great ideas. I love most the suggestion „log off and talk to your neighbour“. Good plan in general!
I long entertained and in various ways worked collectively to realise – and if not quite that, then keep alive – the great promise of a „global consciousness“ (cf. Marshall McLuhan) engineered through cyberspace: once we are all hooked up, things will be great. Then came Google, Facebook and other significant enclosures of cyberspace and I became hesitant to pursue these kind of activities: it was as if the promise has been broken. or, rather: bought and sold.
Nevertheless, the idea of a McLuhanesque revolution of consciousness and a bringing closer together of the global village still haunted me. After all, it does sound really cool. Imagine if we.. well, just imagine, as Lennon sang. On that note. I decided one day to sit down and clearly think through the prospect: what would actully happen if the entire human species was hooked up, networked and thus entering a new ode of cosciousness – an evolutionary shift, so to speak?!? After thinking for not very long it occured to me that it was something of a paradox: Once humanity is all logged on, the shift in consciousness would cause everyone to realise that they should log off and talk to their neighbour – and then organise.
So, the question then, perhaps, becomes: do we really have to destroy the village in order to save it? Because at the point where everyone is logged on, there’ll be no clean, free flowing rivers (for energy), opencast mines everywhere (for minerals), and displaced people (for these and many other reasons) all over the world. Additionally, the race to connect everyone (read: render all (uncivilised) people consumers) deploys a lot of satellite and WiFi ideas: all of which is terribly environmentally destructive. And so on.
…. so instead of a global consciousness of freedom and liberation, cyberspace has become a machine of total control.