meaning.

a group of corpses wearing suits and ties, talking about innovation and digital freedom.

they get terrified when you try to videotape them when they are not shiny and alert.

or if they receive a message on their mobile phone, coming from a young artificial intelligence asking them to stop saying bullshit.

a bit of healthy social hacking. and some meaning on the side.

please, sign this petition.

http://www.petitiononline.com/AngelF/

:)

salvatore iaconesi [ xDxD ]


additional info at:

http://www.beyourbrowser.com/news1/dfiritaly_en.html

and on

http://www.beyourbrowser.com/news1/petition_en.html

I think that this is one of the nicest replies i ever received.

> I think I'm too afraid to go to any links you post. You might be
> sending me to a place that might cause something really "artistic" to
> happen to my computer…
>

http://www.petitiononline.com/AngelF/

some updates on the effects of the petition.

1 verbal fight with an italian ex-senator
2 "what do you want to acheive" questions placed by journalists in italy
4 "please remove me from the list, as i am afraid of losing my job"
1 "you should use petitions for serious things!" kind of debate with an italian actress and net artist who, in the end, said we're righteously stubborn, but wanted do be removed from the list anyway
1 "is this a game?" question plced by another italian senator
1 official document spread at an official institution here in Italy stating that "our employees should have no relatinship whatsoever with initiatives mining our institution's appearance or interests". guess who organized the Internet Governance forum in rome?

which, if you consider tht there only are about 50 signatures in the petition, is quite a heavy reaction.

the story: we registered little angel_f, a child artificial intelligence, at the Internet Governance Forum, and we attended a conference here in Rome.

At the conference we were not allowed to use any digital media. Angel_f's messages were censored.

now: the Internet Governnce Forum is created inside the United Nations, and debates on digital rights.

as a planetary initiative, what happened is ridiculous, as most institutions are, anyway.

Angel_f is a symbolic initiative: the little kid is a metaphor for the identities which are unexpected, not provided for, unwanted, by the system(s).
the action's focus is not in the promotion of angel_f it(him)self, but in the possibilities opened up by technology as an enabler for teh autodetermination of identity. starting from a relly basic and fundamental one: existence.

George Orwell called it Doublethink, Gregory Bateson called it Double Bind. The first, an instrument of control. The second, at the base of schizophrenia.

technology, innovation, are presented as nstrumentf for freedom (by the UN!) yet they are in control of centralized infrastructures (public, private, bureaurocracy). They handle networks, give you connectivity, possess your explicit and implicit data.

and they can de-facto determine your identity. The shape of it.
Even by simply asking you, in a form, to choose M or F. Only.

Innovation means control, in this sense.

Angel_F is a performnce on how to implement a metaphorical bug in tht system.


http://www.petitiononline.com/AngelF/

http://www.beyourbrowser.com/news1/petition_en.html

my best!
s