My last point. When we begin to measure in new ways, new thresholds and power systems will arise.
When certain thresholds are invented, in order to make measurement for any means, we begin to exert control at the points. Consider phone bills. These are used for monitoring and for control (over ourselves, to be sure). Where else could we moderate our behaviour, if not at the measured points?
But these threshold points, are also the places we play with the difference in value at either side. We try to reside at these points, to profit. My relationship with Linden Lab is based on the fact that I get more value out of owning something Second Life – measured in fun – than Linden Lab are charging in money, which is their form of value. And vice-versa, of course.
But in Second Life, Linden Labs also own the very concept of ownership. What happens when I get kicked out? I don’t own anything I assembled while I was logged in. The word “ownership” is meaningless outside that universe.
Definitions, thresholds, measurements… these are the pivots that are used for control of us, by the state and by ourselves.
I don’t mean this as a bad thing. It’s natural. We profit by it, we want it, we depend on it.
But thresholds are governed. Thresholds – protocols, right? – attract government. And people have to game these forms of measurement, sometimes even to stay alive. In Iraq, Sunnis are getting ID cards with Shi-ite names to get through dangerous check-points.
When the space is fluid, the power, and the struggles over power, occurs where people are tracked and taxed crossing over thresholds. Look at the way Microsoft can manipulate life on the Web by controlling the web browser, but not necessarily the actual websites.
All well and good. But people who break the protocol become criminals, because we don’t like people who don’t work with our form of measurement. Think of illegal immigrants. Again, this isn’t the authority deciding that people are criminals. We, the inhabitants, decide so too!
Since we – all of us – both depend on and play at these threshold points, including how we define words and make any kind of transformation, anything which is disruptive of that measurement strikes at the heart of the state or the community. We call it hacking, or we call it terrorism. It is often condemned.
In monitoring spaces in order to iterate them, we will introduce new ways that people can transgress, and new forms of terrorism. We have to be careful about that, for everyone’s sake.