The Debate on Human Male Extinction

"Human cells carry 23 pairs of chromosomes, including one pair which determine gender." Image Source: SPL via BBC.

Geneticists are debating whether the human male will become extinct between 125,000 years (5,000 generations) and 5 million years from now. 

Time and Politics 6: Dr. AntiSec, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet

X-Files, Tagline from Season 1, Episode 24, "The Erlenmeyer Flask" (1994). Image Source: The X-Files Taglines.

The political and governmental capacity of the Internet is evolving so rapidly that it outpaces all the analysts currently acknowledged as experts in the fields of international relations, political economy and foreign policy.  Every world trade meeting, high end newspaper editorial, and talking head session coming out of the MSM outlets looks moribund and woefully out of touch. Acknowledged authorities on these matters go on about the gold bubble and the price of oil, unemployment and the Arab Spring. A China slowdown and tax policy. Nuclear Japan and nuclear Iran. Analyses are politically skewed, and the audience is expected to be passive.  Viewers and readers are meant to believe what they are politically inclined to be told, whether or not those politics still reflect reality. 

No one in the halls of power observes that the pitched (and remarkably boring) right-left battle between global elites simply does not address current conditions.  To start, take the growing gap between rich and poor, the growing sections of a crumbling, alienated middle class in developed countries, and the disenfranchised everywhere else. The broad consensus attained through prosperity (or its promise) has been pulverized. The old Roman trick of bread and circuses no longer keeps the mob pacified. The Internet itself became part of a series of marketed distractions, petty consumerist addictions, and cheap sham equalities.  A gadget in every hand. But after the recession hit, neither right nor left formulas could hasten recovery, and the popularity of hacktivism increased dramatically. The online distraction became an obsession, and then almost overnight, the foundation of a new world.

Image Source: Ars Technica.

Meanwhile, the factor that authorities and commentators should try to understand, Cyberpolitics, is acknowledged by pundits via a superficial acquaintance with Julian Assange's shenanigans; or it is skimmed over out of ignorance; or it is derisively poo-pooed as the preserve of basement-dwellers and politically naive computer freaks, whose facility with the mysteries of technology is at worst unnerving. Since the province of computer hacktivism is virtual, it is deemed far removed from the gritty, physical day-to-day modern governmental realities of political parties, fund-raising, friendly think tanks and partial NGOs, lobby groups, private interests, intelligence reports, and back room deals. Instead of looking at and encouraging the positive governmental potential of the Internet, Cyberpolitics has been treated negatively as a security issue.

Being a hacker target had, until recently, been deemed by firms simply to be a security problem for their in-house IT staff or for an out-of-house IT security contractor (that is, until the security contractors got hacked - it was embarrassing). In that climate, hackers become king.

One glance at Twitter's #antisec feed, and anyone schooled in the history of politics, and more importantly, the structure of government, would start to wonder whether movements on the Internet could become the Millennial power groups. Beyond their pet causes, hacktivists might reshape democracy and anti-democracy, as well as the very form of the state.

On the one hand, I see why someone would tweet: "The time to act is now. If youre waiting for November, then you still buy into the lies. There r no political parties."  It is not just disenchantment and a bad economy.  It is not just - as some critics have said - bad character of entitled youth. The Internet is changing the fabric of statehood itself.

On the other hand, the blind support hacktivists receive is troubling.  They adore Orwellian language: LulzSec and Anonymous have joined forces for Operation Antisec. The forces marshaled under this banner are following a pretty straightforward radical political agenda that appeals to any angry youth culture. On Friday, Anonymous targeted a private prison Website in Florida. Another attack took down an Ohio-based FBI affiliate, with its compromised site playing the 1995 Dangerous Minds Soundtrack hit, the Coolio redux of "Pastime Paradise" (incidentally, the song is based on J. S. Bach's Prelude No. 2 in C minor (BWV 847): listen here and here, and compare here and here - the provenance of modern media is amazing).  WikiLeaks and Anonymous are promising more big announcements this week: "There's some massive win heading our (and your) way. We we we so excited! In the meantime we continue to root & leak & rm."

Hackers have been steadily ramping up their rhetoric and actions from pranks to serious threats. It is already Monday 27 February in the UK, and while America watches the Oscars, WikiLeaks have begun publishing the Global Intelligence Files and over 5 million confidential e-mails of the Texas-based security company, Stratfor. It looks like Stratfor's site has been hacked at the same time as well, since they currently have a 14 February 2012 page up advertising: "Jihadist Opportunities in Syria."

Tweets in the past few hours give the tone: "We aren't born under the law. Laws don't apply upon us.. we are legions."

And: "Yikes RT @AnonymousIRC: A wild wiki leak appears: http://pastebin.com/D7sR4zhT | Bringing #Stratfor emails right in your face! #Antisec"

And: "http://is.gd/ZltFas @WikiLeaks to publish security think tank #emails | #Stratfor #Antisec"

And: "Greece Ministry of "Justice" Website http://ministryofjustice.gr has been Hacked and Defaced by #AntiSec #Anonymous Always Expect Us."

And: "Something dark is churning in my heart. I like it. #AntiSec"

And: "#OpGoya2012: Academia de Cine / #premiosgoya... YOU´ BEEN HACKED!! #d0x http://www.pastebay.net/308294 #Anonymous #AntiSec We do not forgive."

And: "Federal Trade Commission Server Breached By Anonymous #Antisec (#ACTA Protest)"

And: "#Cyberwar #Infosec University of Washington hacked by xdev @b4lc4nh4ck http://bit.ly/xuNqsb #Antisec #Anonymous"

As the actions escalate and the evolution takes hold, you have to wonder where this will all go. I sure miss the 80s, when we looked at tech with wide-eyed wonder and boundless optimism. The mood of the 1990s, the decade when popular access to the Internet was born, was awash in paranoia.  This was the Dawn of the Paper Shredder, when the X-Files ruled the television. With its smoke and mirrors, virtual Potemkin Villages, invisible hierarchies, unknown authorities and special-access-class of users, I'm not sure the Internet was ever free, or ever lent itself to freedom.  The Internet is very good at setting up online institutions that look like they are dealing with freedom when they are in fact dealing with its opposite.

Human Consciousness: The New Survivalist Adventure

Awake. Image Source: NBC via Wiki.

This week, a highly anticipated series begins on American television, entitled Awake (thanks to -J.). The premise is that a man survives a car accident, after which his reality splits in two. He wakes up in one, red-hued reality, and his wife has also survived the car accident but his son has not. He goes to sleep at night, and wakes up in another, green-hued reality, in which his wife died in the accident and his son survived. In each reality, he has a psychiatrist and he works as a police detective solving crimes. Eventually, the details between the two realities begin to overlap. Since this divided virtual dreamscape is the only way the hero can keep his family alive, he does not want his psyche to recover. You can see the trailer for the program, which debuts on NBC on March 1, below the jump.

The Oldest Profession, Redux

Everyone knows that one of the big factors that drove the Internet's exponential explosion over the past 15 years was its less wholesome side.  Those who cruise the Web's seedier alleys often are watching slaves at work.  Unfree people engage in forced labour for the surfer's online pleasures.  This is one not-so-secret, hideous fact on which the Web is built: slaves are never further away from us than a couple of mouse clicks.  One Google search makes the global virtual world more decadent than ancient Rome.  This is another great Millennial disconnect between the hype about our reality - and our actual reality.  The Internet is supposedly the high tech bastion of the shiny, seamless, progressive, Singularity-ridden  future.  Even more ironically, the Web is home to hackers and Cyber freedom fighters who are fixated on the free sharing of information and oppose what they characterize as evil capitalist copyright enforcers. 

But down in its basements and not-so-secluded corners, the Internet has been a medium built by the slavery. One glance at today's virtual reality is that not much has changed over 2,500 years: when they defined the oldest profession, the Greeks classed the lowest stratum of slaves as pornai.

Contemporary slavery is now predicted to outstrip illegal drug trafficking.  This year, CNN is publishing articles to raise awareness that slavery is not a lost, purely historical phenomenon.  In fact, seemingly abolished slavery never disappeared at all.  It is integral to global manufacturing, especially performed by children, in the clothing industry, the production of chocolate, and many other foods and household goods, from women's underwear, to rugs, to designer running shoes.  In addition, the myth that life was cheap in the past, but now - after decades of politicking and progressive legislation - we are more humane, is not true.  When it comes to slavery, human life is cheaper than it was two hundred years ago.  A human being can now be bought for under USD $100; in 1809, a slave cost the equivalent of $40,000 in today's US dollars.  Life is cheap, and the Internet is free.

The Waters of Mayan Prophecy

Uxmal's Temple of the Wizard.  Image (24 February 2012) © A. Evans / National Geographic.

300 days left.  Only National Geographic's Digital Nomad, Andrew Evans, could make the end of the world look like a sight for sore eyes. He is currently traveling throughout the ancient lands of the Maya to get to the bottom of their prophecies about 2012 (see my earlier posts on his journey, here and here). Today, he traveled through the Mayan provincial capital of Uxmal, where he pondered the Mayan politics of rain-making. Above, a zoomable photograph of Uxmal's House of the Magician, also known as the Pyramid of the Dwarf or the Pyramid of the Soothsayer, whose business was to appeal to the Mayan rain god, Chaac.  A deficit in rain over 150 years now appears to have caused the death of the Mayans' civilization.

Imagine their mounting desperation, building ever more sophisticated buildings, with pyramids that reached higher and higher, ever more obsessed with numbers, so that they could appeal to a mystical environment that grew increasingly deaf to their pleas.  Instead, the waters finally yielded foreign explorers and conquerors, who hailed an end that had already arrived for dominant Mayan society.

Interlude: The Ambient Tones of the Millennial Consciousness

Erik Satie (1866-1925).

Ambient music as a distinct genre in popular music dates from Brian Eno's work in the late 1970s.  Eno has cited the minimalist influence of La Monte Young (listen here), but according to xtimeline, Ambient music has its roots in the turn of another century and artistic movements such as Futurism:

Ambient music is a musical genre in which sound is more important than notes. It is generally identifiable as being broadly atmospheric and environmental in nature.

Ambient music evolved from early 20th century forms of "semi-audible music", from the impressionism of Erik Satie, through musique concrete and the minimalism of Terry Riley and Philip Glass, and Brian Eno's deliberate sub-audible approach.

Later developments found the dreamy non-linear elements of ambient music applied to some forms of rhythmic music presented in "chillout" rooms at raves and other dance events, but always with the primary feature that the music is intended to drift in and out of the listener's awareness while creating its effect on the listener's consciousness.

This type of music fits very well with the floating, ever-present now of constant Millennial change.  Ambient music fostered a family of sub-genres that now provide the background sound to the whole Technological Revolution, from club music, to meditation music, to mood music, to film and video game soundtracks. Some newer forms from the 90s and the 00s include (click on the links for samples): Organic Ambient; Nature-inspired Ambient; Dark Ambient; Ambient House; Ambient Industrial; Space Music; Isolationist Ambient; and Ambient Dub. Ambient music has also influenced a lot of Millennial music that would not fall neatly under that category, such as some of the videos below.

Cloning Our Way Back to the Deep Past

Image Source: Wiki via I09.

Woolly Mammoths have been extinct for at least four millennia (most Mammoth populations died 10,000 years ago, but a small pocket survived on an island in the Arctic Ocean until about 1,700 BCE). Several specimens of these great Ice Age elephant cousins are so well preserved in Arctic ice that there is a lot of speculation that they could be successfully cloned within five years.

Malaria Studied in 20 Million Year Old Fly

Image Source: Parasites and Vectors.

From Twitter: "Whoa! 20 million year old fly in amber was carrying malaria, and sucking bat blood" (Hat tip: Bug Girl).  This fly, encased in amber, lived in the mid-Tertiary period, a violent time running from the extinction of the dinosaurs, to the beginning of mammals, to the onset of the beginning of the most recent Ice Age. This period featured one of the largest volcanic eruptions ever to occur on the planet (it took place in Colorado).  The Tertiary period was initially classified in the 18th century by Italian geologist Giovanni Arduino as the period of the Biblical Flood.  The tweet refers to an article at Parasites and Vectors, concerning research into the form of malaria carried by this fly.