here an inspiring text from my friend Rob, political reflections going
well beyond the project we are developing as a concrete answer to the
questions and worries raised by IoT and identification regimes

----- Forwarded message from Rob van Kranenburg -----

Date: Thu, 19 May 2016 08:36:03
From: Rob van Kranenburg

This is a tactical withdrawal.
I
In my dreamy moods I wonder and think there is only one purely rational
explanation for the transition we call Internet of Things, #IoT: we are
building a space ship; some organizational entity that is able to make
contact with other spaceships out there. Hmm, I do admit that I have been
watching all Star Wars episodes lately running up to the most recent one. 
Still does anyone have a better explanation? The scope, size, speed and
synergies fueled by #IoT, aka pervasive computing, aka ambient
intelligence, aka ubicomp is like nothing we have ever seen on the planet.
Making every object on the planet identifiable? (barcodes, QRcodes, RFID,
NFC..) Ipv6 in any object that can hold a minimum of software? Is this not
an attempt to turn the once unpredictable planet into a giant factory
where every operation, every single everyday existence is subject to
predictive maintenance? 
The fact that most children in the Western world are growing up in light
of sight of their parents leads to being fully surveilled in the cities is
not perceived as problematic, but very ‘normal’. Generations glued to
screens and happy with that, are they not being groomed for a life in the
ship? They might still want to walk in the woods (sometime sometimes), but
what about their children? For these children the fact that an NFC tag
triggers a movie has become a quality of the object, of the shirts.
Objects trigger events, movies, other objects, of course! Was there a time
this was not so? How boring!
Maybe I should say ‘it’ is building a space ship; some overtone in techné
as we know it since the first tooling of chisels. Just look at worried
Heidegger walking his hills, pondering what is happening to that ‘extra’
force that mechanical engineering brings to machines, adding force to
human biceps. This overtone, this accumulation of extra, now picture that
in software writing software and self learning algos in big data
environments. Has this not always been our main worry as humans? Freud
already identified that the ‘unheimliche’ was not something strange to us
but the hyper-familiar, our home becoming ’smart’ maybe?
According to Antonio Gramsci: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact
that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a
great variety of morbid symptoms appear. The old world is dying away, and
the new world struggles to come forth: Now is the time of monsters.”
[1]https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/855705-quaderni-del-carcere
Indeed, we see the monsters all around. Large corporations building
intranets of things accumulating value just for their shareholders (for a
while until they break). Decision makers tuned to the 20th century,
politicians in ‘political parties’ keep chatting while existing only in
the 8 o’clock news, fully void of any operational agency. Board members
and CEOs functioning out of ego and superficialities clinging to what
seems to define them, their ‘job’ description. No, it is difficult to find
some style, some dignity these days.
Now if old can not be defended, it is the new we should support. 
Yet if the real goal of IoT is bringing radical (Luciferian) transparency,
then paradoxically we have to support the Borg; the drive towards a
oneness of global protocol, identifiers, database, and supported algos.
Are we then on the side of Anakin, or Darth Vader? Can our minds
synthesize a new order in which there is no dichotomy between the Empire
and the Rebellion? Can we, in other words, build a federated yet global
system in which radical transparency reigns as the new caste of rulers
that we have seen on this planet from hunters to farmer-tribes to
warrior-rulers, sages, priests and citizen-politicians?
After all, it is just a small planet, one of many in the universe. We
should be able to manage that without heating it out of orbit?
II
"Truth is ugly………for its eventual “objectivity” – the latter understood
not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is incoherent and nonsense)
but as the ability to hinge and unhinge and to hold sway over its pro and
con, so that one knows how to make the very diversity of perspectives and
affective interpretations useful for knowledge" - Nietzsche, on the
Genealogy of Morals
 “We would certainly be happy if we could all get along well together and
unite all the forces of anarchism in a strong movement; but we do not
believe in the solidity of organizations which are built on concessions
and assumptions and in which there is no real agreement and sympathy
between members. Better disunited than badly united. But we would wish
that each individual joined their friends and that there should be no
isolated forces, or lost forces.” – Errico Malatesta
The key to #IoT is identity management. However, before you can manage
identity, it needs to be made manageable. In this brief post I will
explain how this has come to pass, or actually how the fact that there was
no fixed identity ever has been hidden in a historical narrative of the
individual vs the collective.
You can call it a ship. You can also call it a 'smart object':
“The idea is turning the world into a smart object that can be
continuously improved, and we couldn’t be more excited,” said Matthew
Wood, the general manager of product strategy at Amazon Web Services, or
A.W.S., the retailer’s giant cloud computing business." 
[2]http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/technology/looking-beyond-the-internet-of-things.html?_r=1
Ted Hughes poke of the grin hat was trying out faces. 
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_(poetry)
In our case it is fear attempting to become integral. Fear is trying out
all human capabilities. This has come to pass as generation after
generation of corrupt, spineless and greedy people have been in the
drivers seat. We cannot call it leadership. These people, let’s say
Bilderberg, Fortune 500 and MBA globally have facilitated anything ‘easy’,
outsourcing anything ‘hard’ to places that could be exploited. So now
there is no more place to exploit.
Hence the fight for the internal space, the very notion of what it means
to be human. If people can not be exploited and enslaved but would wake up
the shame some would feel of having been deceived for so long in what it
means to be living, hmm hara-kiri would be their only option.
Most of them cannot wake up, however, as there is no longer a self to wake
up to. They are zombies. No it is not a coincidence that we have them on
our tv. The writers feel they are real. I too see them every day. They
have been among us for quite some time. I just never thought there would
be so many.
So it is up to us to make things find the hard road again. This is not a
mass movement. We will see you when you see us. 
III
So there I was one night.
 “Historical ‘evidence’ itself tells us that hegemony has always been a
process of conflict and struggle, and that this conflict often took place
at the level of the subjective. Human nature, the human self, has always
been the terrain of conflict because it is first and foremost human beings
who constitute social relations – these relations are not made by some
invisible hand of god, or even of capitalists, without either the
consensus or coercion of people themselves.” – Kylie Smith
The heart of the matter is that empathy is necessary for the functioning
of any group or society. Without it, it breaks down. Every generation
negotiates the meaning and scope of empathy with the tools at hand. Among
the tools of any given period is the notion of the individual and identity
itself. It is a tool with which to construct the space where empathy can
work and be negotiated. Identity itself is a tool. That is something to
ponder for some time.
If there is a mismatch then every action in any given arena - political,
social, economic, personal - feels ‘off’, not really matching. Hence the
short but fundamental success of periods that feel well rounded and
functioning well with each and everyone and thing to its “proper” place.
The notion of a single consciousness in individuals as a proper sense of
undivided self can no longer be strived for but also no longer perceived
as operational. It is a historic definition tuned to the scope of the
tools and tooling at hand.
Current evidence from all kinds of sources and a wide variety of thought
points at a plurality in the very heart of what it means to be an
individual. This plurality is a given and a capability, not as a drawback
of the ‘original’ concept of being undivided as there is no original
concept, just a series of actualizations of consciousness reacting to and
consequently shaping its environment.
The environment that we have to operate in is defined by a successful
combination of the results of the outsourcing of meaning in the Shannon
paradigm of communication (allowing the engineers to ‘innovate’ only on
nodes that they can identify - thus not including social structures, other
forms of intelligence, concretely: electronic and other waste, job loss,
changes in power structures…) and the radical cheapness of hardware,
software, database storage and analytics facilitating a world in which
every object can (and will) be connected either passive (RFID, NFC,
barcodes, QR codes) or actively through IPv6 in any object that can be
embedded with a chip and software (Raspberry Pi Zero cost 5 dollars).
This environment foregrounds monitoring, classification, optimizing the
classified, and operational efficiency in feedback and response loops
favoring communication that is immediate, well identifiable as
communication and direct. As such it is tailored to the functional
qualities of a particular type of intelligence, not to all known forms of
how humans have been known to act and feel.
At the same time does this operational technology allow for an immense
variation in idiosyncratic and iconic language as every particular event
is filmed, every particular first step of any particular baby is captured
and transmitted and shared and commented upon by others that consequently
share their stories the lead to new quite different yet similar but very
different to the people doing them.
Our paradox then is that the sharing that we see forces individuals to be
more unique and thus create as many different but similar stories still
trying to tie these to some kind of Uber-ich, some kind of I that is no
longer there. It is no longer living at home, as there is no more home to
live in.
So that what was once seen as a dangerous way of living or thinking - to
let go, to lose yourself, to be ego less - from an institutional point of
view of a structured society becomes the default for a world in which
connectivity is ‘integral’. This means that ways of thinking that were
deemed ‘sick’ or “ill’ now seem to be the ways that a ‘modern’ individual
should try to incorporate in order to survive in a world of less and less
certainties.
Among these is the notion that an individual is a series of interactions.
This notion then becomes a tool for which we can begin to negotiate
empathy in private and public space.
As there is no ‘self’ we also have no more ‘ethics’ to engage as a tool,
for this very notion assumes that there is a relatively stable ‘self’ that
can be addressed and more important ‘grow’ and learn.
If we cannot have ethics, if we can not build 'hegemony as there are no
actors to build it with, we need rules. We not just need rules, we ask for
rules as we feel 'lost'. And we 'are'. With rules comes a system. 
Full circle.
Our very self has become or is again more determined by the actual daily
interactions that we have. Our daily interactions are fully immersed in
brief burst of continuous short focused engagements in which 'we' fully
lose ourselves. 
In those we feel vulnerable and seek protection. What else is that but a
social contract?
And what else can that be but the world as a 'smart object' or the world
as a space-ship?
IV
Angry Samson
by Robert Graves
(1895-1985)
"Are they blind, the lords of Gaza 
In their strong towers, 
Who declare Samson pillow-smothered 
And stripped of his powers?
O stolid Philistines, 
Stare now in amaze 
At my foxes running in your
cornfields 
With their tails ablaze,
At swung jaw-bone, at bees swarming 
In the stark lion's hide, 
At these,
the gates of well-walled Gaza 
A-clank to my stride."
So our very self has become or is again more determined by the actual
daily interactions that we have. 
Our daily interactions are fully immersed in brief burst of continuous
short focused engagements in which 'we' fully lose ourselves. In those we
feel vulnerable and seek protection. What else is that but a social
contract?
So who can protect? Who can guide, shelter and comfort our individual
attempts at being in this world?
No longer the warrior-soldier, as the warrior can protect inner territory
only after the fact. The warrior function in the state has become drenched
in moments of mourning and remembering. With every new attack or event we
see bigger spectacles of mourning. As is it not real territory that can be
won or is under attack, we cannot turn to the warrior for help.
The merchant-warrior has build a global order in which half of the global
wealth is held by the 1%. It has run out of clear and believable arguments
of why this should be so, even within its own framework. 
[4]https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/19/global-wealth-oxfam-inequality-davos-economic-summit-switzerland
The sage-priest is lost in reconciling stories of old (mostly build on
rituals around food) with meaningful stories about life and death in the
current circumstances and thus focused on detail, turning every tale into
a puzzle.
I have borrowed the terms from Merchant, Soldier, Sage, A New History of
Power from David Priestland and his model is very helpful.
[5]https://www.amazon.co.uk/Merchant-Soldier-Sage-History-Power/dp/0241955211?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
We can now see what is at work in our current daily world. All the above
categories of power are helpless in the face of the growing new caste that
they all have helped to build: the technocrat. This category does have
qualities of the merchant, the warrior, the sage, but as it is also this
accumulation of extra's it has grasped at the potentials for an autonomous
trajectory and is now actualizing itself.
At its core it is empty in values, economics, wisdom, morals or ethics as
it purely the optimization of the things-at-hand. It therefore as
Heidegger predicted will turn every thing and object into 'something at
hand', 'some thing in reserve' hence the very notion of the 'smart' city
that should consist only of sensor-readable objects.
The reaction of the old categories of power are predictable; their main
qualities become hyper foregrounded. Their supporting qualities disappear.
Examples are the very appearance and success of Donald Trump on the
political scene as the Uber merchant, the actual occupation of territory
by Putin at a time where we all thought that this was so un-digital and
the full disappearance of any intellectual global sage- elite into
entertainment and 'stardom'. The sage-merchant fully becomes a
techno-bureaucrat as we can see in its best example: the European Union.
When giants fight and clash and finally die, it is best to stay out of
their way. 
What can simple people like us do anyway? 
Under certain circumstances when the rule of a particular caste is clear
we have clear ways of acting. For example, if you were living in the
thirties in Germany you could go into Innere Emigration as a sage, you
could rebel and oppose as a worker-warrior (communist) or you could fully
support the growing fascist camp. You could even try to influence key
actions directly by talking to one man. On 17 February 1940 Manstein
traveled to Berlin to breakfast with Adolf Hitler.
"Lieutenant Colonel Henning von Tresckow, one of his staff officers, had
invited his old friend Schmundt, Hitler’s chief adjutant and personal
staff officer, to Koblenz. Schmundt reported the observations of
Headquarters Army Group A’s thinking to Hitler, and came up with the idea
of a breakfast meeting so as not to incur the suspicion of OKH. In Inside
the Nazi Warmachine we read: “Reported to the Fuhrer with the others.
Breakfast followed. [He displayed] amazing knowledge over
military-technical innovations in all states. Afterwards I was detained
for an hour to discuss operations. I presented the essentials of our
memorandum to OKH. Had full agreement. Indeed an astonishing convergence
of thinking from the same points of view that we had represented right
from the beginning.”
[6]http://bevinalexander.com/books/inside-the-nazi-war-machine.htm
The rest is history.
So this is the simple observation that explains the current situation. We
as simple people, as citizens, we see all the categories of power of old
overreact in our eyes and lose credibility. They have supported the view
of life as convenient and consumerist. We accumulate things and the more
we have the happier and 'full' we should be. Once there were still other
values that framed this view of the world. Now, it is framed no longer. It
is in the drivers seat.
It has no vision of where to go. It does not really know what to do. So it
starts connecting the other cars in the hope that the granularity of that
very action brings new use cases.
The first and foremost duty that we have is to stare reality in the face
and confront it.
This then, is the situation. It cannot be changed by any action of us. We
have to sweat it out and see what happens.
As Sheryl Crow sings in Leaving Las Vegas: "No joker, no jack, no king can
take this loser hand and make it win."
It is clear that the situation is serious. The old forms of power will not
give in and will keep pushing their core qualities into more wars, more
inequality and more spectacles. That much is certain.
So, tell me, how difficult is it to unlearn literally every thing you have
been taught and realize the truth and then lean back against the wall of a
three-store apartment balcony?
In a moment like this it does not make sense to try to be part of any of
the processes that any of the giants is leading. We can not change the
drivers behind the actualizations of these struggles. So let those who
still profit from the hegemonic fictions that they have build around their
core qualities; as if there still is a society, as if there still is
peace, as if there still is rationality behind political action, well, let
them stand on their own.
I think it is best to withdraw all support and focus only on what you can
change, namely: yourself and your immediate surroundings.
This is a tactical withdrawal. It is not a surrender, nor an act of
selfishness. "I am a north wind to ripe figs" Nietzsche said. Until that
wind blows it is best to stay put and become ripe.
-
Concretely?
Download the latest release of Dowse, [7]dowse.eu and let’s start to work
with real building blocks, step by step,  (free from the ‘guilt’ energy we
lose as we were made ‘responsible’ for these current realities, for which
we are clearly not,
So let’s kick it and get lighter (and lighter….:)
Salut, Rob
Founder of Council, [8]theinternetofthings.eu
@robvank

References

Visible links
1. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/855705-quaderni-del-carcere
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/technology/looking-beyond-the-internet-of-things.html?_r=1
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_(poetry)
4. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/19/global-wealth-oxfam-inequality-davos-economic-summit-switzerland
5. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Merchant-Soldier-Sage-History-Power/dp/0241955211?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
6. http://bevinalexander.com/books/inside-the-nazi-war-machine.htm
7. http://dowse.eu/
8. http://theinternetofthings.eu/

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Denis Roio aka Jaromil   http://Dyne.org think &do tank
  CTO and co-founder      free/open source developers
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