[Air-l] Witchtrial
Lachlan Brown
lachlan at london.com
Sun Mar 10 17:01:42 PST 2002
air-l at aoir.org
Cc: mcrobbie at gold.ac.uk,d.morley at gold.ac.uk,n.rose at gold.ac.uk, p.gilroy at gold.ac.uk,s.lash at gold.ac.uk
Subject: Witchtrial
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 19:57:05 -0500
Barry,
It is true that ad-hoc, learnt and
taught techniques of WorldWideWeb search, surveillance and internet investigation
have become normalised, but they haven't
been normal activities for very long, and
they remain normal practises only among a
few.
Competence in these techniques or practices are unevenly distributed even among those
of us 'in the know' of Internet and its cultures, and are uncanny, indeed worse
than the uncanny, among those unfamiliar
with the technology and its cultures.
The fascination of the social geographer
for physical, urban, social and human
mapping and interrelations is familiar to
me - I can be content with a map of a city
or a mapping of human interraction for
hours - but it might not be familiar to
others, and one can forsee how, during a
time of 'emergency' where 'public safety'
concerns override all other concerns
including birth rights, paranoia
produced by these uneven distributions
could be articulated, opportunely, to
advance a particular career, political
or personal agenda as a charge in public,
a witchtrial, or, worse, imagine the case, imagine the consequence, of rumour,
innuendo, defamation and lies, without a 'charge' ever being laid.
I hope I have illustrated how.
Lachlan Brown
--
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