[iDC] activism now and

[Trebor Scholz]

>Megan wrote:

>"The centers of power are now distributed. Deviance is about hot bodies and the
dark fiber of cold
>cables. Resistance is about the "streets," about demonstrations,
>door-to-door grassroots campaigns, in-flesh sit-ins, and other affective
>manifestations of contestational presence."

>say more about hot bodies and dark fiber and what this really means or how
>it plays out and which bodies?

In 1994 Critical Art Ensemble claimed that cyberspace is the only effective
site for resistance. Power had moved away from the corporate HQ to the WWW
connecting geographically dispersed nodes.  But the democratic globalization
movement kicking into gears in Seattle in 1999 clearly showed that there is
massive value to protests in physical space. It's no secret that affective
strategies often involve hot bodies and collaborative technologies.
SMS-driven swarms of protesters at the Republican Convention in New York
showed that. One does not cancel out the other. Dark Fiber or "unlit" fiber
is optic cable that has not yet been used. The potential of deviant actions
is as much about hot bodies on the plaza as it is about this unused promise
of cooperation-enhancing technologies.