Communication Catastrophe

"That which can be said must not be said." - Antagonist

The virus scare logged into the PC proletariat by the world government is 
inspired by its apprehension that it is not the free data flow between 
civilians, but the absence of exchange which threatens its omnipotence. 
Through delete and overload, the virus creates a temporary sanctuary, 
previously occupied by data communication. The virus is a full member of 
the democratic community and participates in every debate. It is not a 
disease, but an experimental mode of argument. The virus is the 
consistent extension of the long institutional march, which intended to 
change society from within. It has discarded the masquerade of meaning 
and good intentions and treats the data world at hand as material to be 
used against itself. No new creations are being dished up; 
techno-revisionism remains forever empty. 

The data nihilist heeds the words of the political anarchist, Bakunin: 
"Even destructiveness is a creative impulse." The deposition of spirit 
into information was never in itself subversive. Information itself is a 
virus, infinitely multiplying. The effort to contain hacked data requires 
more information, which requires more information, etc.. The ecstatic 
virus brings this festering growth of information to a climax by causing 
the network to head straight for total overload. The hungry virus, on the 
other hand, drains off information and aims at total delete. It creates 
emptiness by burning up data. It prevents the computerization of 
consciousness, which is always a process of pacification.

Every nomadic thought must account for itself as historical information 
in the full light of political codification. A lack of consciousness is 
the biggest crime; antisocial, immoral, unrealistic, irrational, mental. 
The virus has turned its back on common sense, to defect to the paranoid 
pole which is after antiproduction, after absolute, data-free 
communication. The virus is the computer's prayer.

The virus is a data string which sets out on a journey of its own, 
leaving its author behind within the social to be labelled a "criminal." 
Since the virus builders can never reveal themselves, they have no choice 
but to participate in the dialogue concerning the democratic significance 
of information. Here, they are up against the classical hackers, who 
think of their network rambles as a struggle against secrets. The hackers 
claim that all information must be made public to give meaning to the 
concept of democratic citizenhood. To them, info is not a toy but serious 
business. Because from a technological standpoint the distinction between 
0 and 1 is immaterial, they find themselves forced to fall back on old 
social techniques to regulate information communications. 

Hacker ethics attempt to revive the classical discourse of police 
thinking by taking metaphors from the "regular world" and introducing 
them into the network. Traffic rules, responsible driving, clearing the 
bicycle path, cleaning up behind you ... The fleeting contacts engaged in 
by network users are sexually charged and burdened with the demand for 
safe hacks. But the data world is nothing like that which used to be 
forced upon us as social reality until quite recently. Nothing exists by 
itself; there are only character sets and their compulsory reading codes 
("common sense"). Whoever masters the code is fit to rule, control, and 
exploit the world. Still, even within the global system, ethics have been 
abandoned ever since chronological time was swallowed up out of the 
historical order and into catastrophic chain reactions.

For instance, environmental pollution cannot be controlled through a 
change of attitude, because it has left the human standard behind. It 
appears that cyberspace's virtual reality still resides within the human 
condition. Hard- and software have been cooked up by businessmen looking 
for patents, and are every bit retracable. This is why the ethics hackers 
still think they can appeal to the possibility of sensible keyboard use. 
But the virus is already one step ahead. It has abandoned the human, all 
too human and places its bets on the inconceivable that lurks beyond the 
world of ideas. It sends out a message to the network aliens, the 
other-circuit warriors, the pink panthers who have escaped the 
cyberzoologists' bestiary. It feels at home within the biological 
complexity of infinite relationships, mutations and crossovers. Free of 
objectives, it is only alert to the chain-reactionary liberation of the 
astonishing. The virus may appear catastrophic to the order of rule and 
control, but in fact it is the messenger of a different, metarealistic 
order. 

During the first stage of the computer medium, the hacker's movement 
supplied the military instruments with a democratic ideology. Thus, the 
merging of military and civil space through the massive PC armament of 
the population could take place under the historical heading of liberty, 
equality and fraternity. Once the electronic cottage industry had been 
fully accepted, the traditional military apparatus could be dismantled 
and we entered the stage of the disarmament race between Gorbachev (1985 
- 1991) and the Natos. Its stake was no longer to hold the global 
population as hostages, but to enforce a global consciousness among the 
legions of utterly isolated PC civilians. Thus, the awareness (still 
doubted during the Cold War) has now become generally accepted that we 
are all on the same disk together, which may be erased at the flick of a 
wrist.

During this second stage, the professional hacker community is 
unpleasantly surprised by the sudden emergence of cybergoofs, software 
traitors and wise guys who are frustrated with hacker hierarchy and carry 
out their own radical data actions on the principle that "We are the 
hunter/gatherers of the world of CommTech." Its answer consists of "one 
network or none" thinking. Since absolute security is impossible within 
the data industry, the hackers need to secure their morality through 
"information responsibility," quite aware that this is a one-way ticket 
to rejection and rebellion. After all, they themselves, too, once started 
out as whiz kids who stood up to info screening by data Securitates in a 
techno-revolutionary spirit. 

What lies ahead of us is not data traveling along secured roads but 
absorption into cyberecstasy. It may as well be governed by the hacktic 
riot of a total sensory clash, as by the New Age's spiraling bliss. Even 
in this respect, there will be nothing new. Still, in its imperturbable 
urge to multiply, the virus already transmits a message that metareality 
is prepared to enter any zone suffering from deranged codes. The alien is 
not yet among us - but she is ready. She knows. She waits. She awaits us. 
It is up to the cyberpunks to make a pact with her. The future is 
outside.
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