I’ve got a new post up at Complex Terrain Lab Review, Replacement Geography - Get Off Yer Fat One:

Spotted at the Jewish Exponent, Andre Oboler, 3 July 2008, Google Earth’s New Platform for Anti-Israel Propaganda.

The influence of the Internet on our lives is increasing. The online world allows the creation of a virtual reality that at times bears only passing resemblance to facts on the ground.

The gap between reality and virtual reality is further exploited by political activists promoting what we term “replacement geography,” a means of controlling the virtual representation of land in place of controlling the land itself. In an information age, control on the common map may be worth more in negotiations than control on the ground.

Read the rest here. Also, check out Mike Innes’ piss-take of the recent Seven Meme business. Yours truly gets a public whipping. I’ll have my revenge, Mike.

I will be giving a paper, provisionally entitled ‘Violence and Virtuality: virtual ‘terror’ and the counter-strategic challenge’, at the British International Studies Association conference at the University of Exeter in December. Schedule details have yet to be finalised but I hear it’s usually a pretty interesting, if tough, affair. This is the abstract of my contribution to the ‘Virtual Politics’ panel:

Recent media reports have speculated on terrorists’ use of synthetic worlds such as Second Life for training and other purposes. The reality is somewhat different. Although terrorist-style tactics have been employed within synthetic worlds for political, economic and social ends there is currently little evidence to suggest that terrorist organisations or individuals, as normally understood, use synthetic worlds for nefarious ends, or demonstrate the will and opportunities to do so. However, in the global environment of fast-evolving computer-mediated communication (CMC), which terrorists and insurgents have been quick to exploit, this situation is likely to change. This paper explores the possibilities afforded to terrorists and insurgents, and potential options available to planners of counterstrategies. It will also address the issue of ‘virtuality’ and its unresolved relationship with the ‘real’. This has important implications for information strategies in global counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, which must be contingent on an understanding of ‘cyberspace’ as ‘physical’ rather than ‘virtual’ space.

I wish I had more time to respond adequately to a great discussion over at Savage Minds, so this is as much a reminder to self as anything else. Kerim Friedman posted his critique of Tom Boellstorf’s Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, a recently published ethnography of the virtual world I’ve been meaning to have a look at for a while. Kerim doesn’t try to hide his personal dislike of Second Life as a platform but does raise a series of excellent points to which Dusan Writer and Tom Boellstorf amongst others respond. Virtuality, subjectivity, anthropology, post mortem avatars and a lonely cat - all the fun of the fair.

[Cross-posted to CTLab]

Aside from being a fascinating graphic from K-Zero, it’s a sobering and exciting thought that over 300m people are now registered as users of virtual worlds. That’s the equivalent to the third-most populous country on Earth, the United States of America.

The list is not complete (it excludes 10m+ World of Wankcraft players, for example) but gives some idea of how many people are exploring these new online spaces. If I’m reading the chart right it’s the under-20s who comprise the bulk of these, and I suspect that more of these are active users than, say, in Second Life. Demographically that suggests a new generation of native users …

(h/t Metaverse Journal)

Nicholas Carr quotes from an article by BBC journalist Bill Thompson in Miasma Computing:

The metaphor of “the cloud” is a seductive one, but it’s also dangerous. It not only suggests that our new utility-computing system is detached from the physical (and political) realities of our planet, but it also lends to that system an empyrean glow. The metaphor sustains and extends the old idealistic belief in “cyberspace” as a separate, more perfect realm in which the boundaries and constraints of the real world are erased.

Bill Thompson raises a warning flag:

Behind all the rhetoric and promotional guff the “cloud” is no such thing: every piece of data is stored on a physical hard drive or in solid state memory, every instruction is processed by a physical computer and every network interaction connects two locations in the real world … In the real world national borders, commercial rivalries and political imperatives all come into play, turning the cloud into a miasma as heavy with menace as the fog over the Grimpen Mire that concealed the Hound of the Baskervilles in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story.

Now there’s a metaphor. I’m guessing, though, that the marketers aren’t going to allow “miasma computing” into our vocabulary. It’s kind of a downer.

Nicholas goes on to say:

The metaphor of “the cloud” seems to have been derived from those schematic drawings of corporate computing systems that use stylized images of clouds to represent the Internet - that vast, ill-defined digital mass that lies beyond the firewall. Those drawings always reminded me of the ancient maps of the known world, the edges of which were marked with the legend “Beyond Here There Be Dragons.”

The dragons are stirring.

These are wise words - I strongly believe the ‘virtual’ is the ‘real’, not the ‘Other’. In a previous blog incarnation I wrote something I titled Metaphor: Nature in Cyberspace, and thought I’d post it here again to see if I broadly agree with what I wrote back in March 2007. And (with some reservations) I think I do. Anyway, here it is:

The ever-excellent Roderick Jones at Counterterrorism Blog (who also blogs at MetaSecurity) posits a future in which virtual assassination could be deployed as an effective a tool as that of the 19th century anarchists:

… a cyberspace assassination would seek to achieve the following aims: prevent the candidate from actually being in cyberspace ( the equivalent of virtual-murder), instill fear amongst their supporters that the same may happen to them and as a side-effect force the political campaigns to spend money on their cyber security or force the Secret Service to protect cyber-personas (the protection of cyber-identities is clearly something that all protective security agencies are going to need to consider). The tools to do this arguably already exist - hackers or botnets for hire could be diverted to these ends. This of course is fast-forwarding to a future more virtualized point where society is more reliant on cyber-spaces but similar tools could be applied today.

As with all things virtual, the scenario can be flipped. The use of precision cyber-attacks (or virtual assassinations) against America’s enemies should be considered today as a tactic to disrupt cyber-terrorists.

Read the article here.

Michael Tanji’s Getting Serious about ‘Virtual’ Terror: Some Informed Comment About Online Hype and Reality lives up to its own billing as a well-reasoned and level-headed look at the the use of virtual worlds by terrorists and insurgents. The following passage exemplifies the approach we should be taking:

Virtual worlds are a potential breeding ground for new threats, but as with any sufficiently technically advanced or inherently dangerous prospect, there are real hurdles to overcome. The greatest threat however is not that terrorists will achieve some quantum leap in capabilities by operating online; it is that so many are so quick to dismiss the seriousness of this issue thanks to the hype perpetrated by the ill-informed. Death from the ‘Net may never become reality, but there will be no forgiveness if we allow even middling capabilities to develop – and eventually launch – from cyberspace unchecked.

Read the rest of this excellent article here.

John Robb’s thought for the day, Evolutionary Imperatives:

A person that can’t do some or all of his/her work in a virtual environment is evolutionarily impaired. This follows: an organization that doesn’t select for this capability is evolutionarily impaired.

That follows on quite nicely from the discussion over at ZenPundit on cognitive evolution and digital noise.

AFP (via Terror News Briefs), reporting on the World Cyber Security Summit in Kuala Lumpur this week (my emphasis, and with added links):

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) — The threat of cyber-terrorism is growing and most countries are vulnerable to attacks that can shut down critical infrastructure, global experts told a conference here Tuesday.

“The hard reality is that (information technology) has become a tool for cybercrime and cyberterrorism,” said Hamadoun Toure from the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union.

“Cybersecurity must be the cornerstone of every aspect of keeping ourselves, our countries and our world safe,” he told the conference, which the Malaysian hosts are billing as the first on cyber-terrorism and security.

Toure dismissed as a dangerous myth the idea that events in the virtual world have only a limited impact on the physical world, saying that technology has “changed the dynamics of terrorism”.

Small groups or even individuals are capable of gaining control of millions of computers “which can be used, for instance, to launch denial-of-service attacks on a nation’s critical infrastructure,” he said.

Malaysia said it was launching a global centre to combat cyber-terrorism which will provide an emergency response to high-tech attacks on economies and trading systems around the world.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the centre, which is expected to be built by the end of the year at the nation’s IT hub of Cyberjaya, south of Kuala Lumpur, will be funded by governments and the private sector.

“Every aspect of our daily lives, from communications, public utilities, financial networks to national defence … are highly dependent on information and communications technology to function,” he told the conference.

Abdullah said the threat of cyber-terrorism could no longer be ignored by governments, especially in the most “wired” parts of the world.

“The extent of harm and damage that these cyber-threats can pose to our societies and nations should never be underestimated. Any vulnerability can easily be exploited to bring about truly catastrophic consequences,” he said.

Eugene Kaspersky, founder and CEO of Russian-based anti-virus experts Kaspersky Lab, said the number of cyber-criminals had leapt more than tenfold since last year.

“This means the Internet environment is getting more dangerous… there’s nothing to stop them,” he said.

David Thompson, chief information officer of anti-virus systems manufacturer Symantec Corp., said that the risk of cyber-terrorism grew as nations became more developed.

“Most countries are vulnerable to cyber terrorism, it’s just that some are more prepared than others,” he said.

I would go even further than Hamadan Touré and say that successful counter-strategies should consider the internet as physical before treating it as virtual, rather than reverse-engineering the cognitive process. Whilst the latter has to be desirable for those some way down the track, some root-and-branch restructuring of perceptions at all levels, public, private, and policy, is necessary. Rather than treating the ‘virtual’ as somehow the ‘Other’, think of it more as ‘Self’.

A new mask from Frog Design:

The future isn’t all rosy. Increasing pollution, overpopulation, poverty, and climate change – society’s impact on the earth is reaching a breaking point. And while we may work to slow the onset of these catastrophes, reversing them is no longer an option. The question becomes, how do we live with the troubles we’ve already caused?

We don’t wish to make any prophecies – but if we fail to do more to mitigate today’s cultural, climatic, and economic dangers, the future may not be a pleasant one. Natural disasters will become more frequent, society more stratified, diplomacy more volatile.

Technology can be used to combat this dangerous new environment – but also to escape from it. We already use mobile devices to provide on-demand escapism, channeling movies, music, and other distractions. Increased processing power and emerging technologies will enable holistic computing systems to be stored in wearable devices, providing a more immersive personal media experience. In a troubling future, these augmented reality devices would offer a new dimension - a virtual layer that could be used to “re-skin” the troubling outside world. A boundary between the wearer and the world around him, the device would become a sort of visual drug, used to make the world appear a better place – even if just for a moment.

The device itself acts as a mask between the user and the outside world, expressing the internality of the human-device interaction. It offers a physical distinction between those moving in the real world and those who are “plugged in” to their private dimensions, the world as they wish to see it.

The visual design casts the mask as a lifestyle product of the future, as it plays with a glaring, exaggerated coolness of the wearer. It gives an almost robotic appearance, and suggests a diversion from what we define today as “normal” physical human interaction.

Within the mask, smells, sounds, even air quality would be imitated to create a full sensory experience. The facial expressions of those wearing the device would be detected and projected onto personal avatars visible to others also living behind the shield of the mask.

Similar technology could have military applications, re-skinning the contours of conflict environments according to gradations of risk, stripping out unnecessary facets of reality. Head-up displays are nothing new in military operations, of course, but a wholly immersive and transformative real-time wearable environment is, as far as I know.

(h/t Street Knowledge)