The Cloud, the State, and the Stack: Metahaven in Conversation with Benjamin Bratton

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MH

We agree. Isn’t Anonymous itself an example, if not the clearest one, of this? All their videos are on YouTube. Anonymous, as opposed to the cyber-vegetarians of yesterday’s “critical media,” are the biggest all-you-can-eat omnivores of the internet… Otherwise your point is very clear.

BB

As someone who very much appreciates a lot of what the two groups do, let me speak somewhat critically of Anonymous and WikiLeaks. My points are somewhat obvious and not meant to heap scorn. Anonymous does some interesting things, but the 4chan angry teenager roots also steer them off into predictable dead-ends. Their YouTube videos seem straight out of a 1999 videogame about “Hackers in Cyberspace vs. The Man.” Nevertheless, they are a clear example of what a Cloud Polis might look like, and to me much of what they do is about clearing the way for something more substantial to emerge. Hopefully their model of Cloud Polis is one among many, because in the constitution of deep alternatives, it’s not only about subverting and liquifying Oedipalized power, it’s also about knowing what to do with power once you have it, how to compose with it. WikiLeaks is a method and ethos raised to the level of an ideology—Assange’s interview in e-flux with Hans Ulrich Obrist is great, by the way—but it’s not clear what the next move might be, even if Assange were free to move about. Open it all up? OK. Everyone will see what’s really happening? OK. This is a basic Enlightenment aspiration, but the idea that once the primal evil is exposed the public will not tolerate it is insufficient to say the least. Even as they evade and escape legal harrassment, I don’t see alternative architectures other than an anarchist tabula rasa, and some fragile and absolutist paranoias. Building what is next is perhaps not Assange’s job, I understand. But I am sorry, it’s obvious that a world without authority and opacity is entropic; it would have no music (or very bad music). It’s not only not possible, it’s not desirable. A field without solid lines cannot sustain interesting forms of tension for very long. I am more interested in the very long expanse of composable time than in any purifying first principles regarding the legitimacy of authority. By the way, apropos of nothing, “cyber-vegetarianism” is always a great phrase. Thank you.

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