Occupy The Cloud – James Bridle (via @jamesbridle)
I realised it would be possible to make a very public work; and there was no point in being subtle…
Edward Snowden has revealed that we are not moving toward a surveillance state: we live in the heart of one.” Paglen asserts that networked technologies as they are employed now do “not merely provide the capacity for “turnkey tyranny”—they render any other future all but impossible.” Powerful organisations which are cavalier with democratic rights are also cavalier with personal data and privacy: the two are linked, directly.
The depredations of corporations and governments on the internet reveal that it, too, is only a potential commons: not a zone of freedom, but one of conflict and power. We have re-discovered the efficacy of spatial protest: we can take the banks to protest unjust tax arrangements, but can we occupy the datacentres over the same issues?
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 