Virus

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Virus!

• mdcm2000
• week 6 2007

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VIRUS! Mdcm2000 Wk 6/07
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what is a virus?

• http//www.dform.com/projects/t4/virus.html
• Viruses made people cheerful and helpful and
  honest. Their manners were impeccable, their
  conversation well-informed, their work speedy and
  accurate. They believed the same things. (Ryman,
  19901)
• Viruses are sticky. Viruses spread. They tend to
  replication.
• Media as facilitator- as vector- rather than
  hypnotiser.What sticks?

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received 13/9/01
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How do they work?

• The trojan horse- the protein shell
• The distribution- the syringe
• Replication- the mutating memes

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• tomkat virus- www.freekatie.net
• eg RFID viruses. http//www.rfidvirus.org/
• Wag the Dog- a movie about media viruses.

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eggt melissa virus

• http//www.jrwhipple.com/virus_melissa.html
• trust- a name you know
• protocol- generic name - .doc
• replication. 50 n

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what environments foster viral growth?

• viruses tell us a lot about network conflict.
• the very homogeniety of systems is fertile ground
  for viral spread
• replicative softwares need numbers to grow.
• tactical media- virus- protocol.
• pragmatic engagement as politics
• Form rather than content politics

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speed and spread

• The instantaneous quality of today's media
  provides us with relatively uncensored, direct
  feed from the front, wherever that may be. More
  significantly, its speed and distribution allow
  for participatory, culture-wide events to unfold
  in the present tense. rushkoff- the datasphere

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VIRAL DEFENSE

• hierarchies have trouble dealing with networks
• it takes networks to fight networks
• whoever controls the networks first gains a major
  advantage. from galloway and thacker (defiance
  of existance notes on networks, control and life
  formsin Feelings are Always Local NAI 2004)

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contagion control
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(No Transcript)
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Connecting the viral with virtual

• point to point transmission.
• cross intersecting networks of contagion- the
  end of common borders- (animal/human (avian flu),
  science/humanities (biopolitics) nation states
  (global capital).
• (self generating) mutations.
• words and matter meld, penetrating/creating new
  systems of meaning and action.

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so whats the big deal?

• Keith Ansell-Pearson, writing in his Viroid Life
  'they viruses stand at the border between the
  living and the non-living ... defying any tidy
  division(s) of the real into organic, inorganic,
  engineered, manufactured.
• they open up the world. Like stars, viruses are
  alchemicists

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New languages for new media contexts

• ' we need to take advantage of the heterogenous
  mixtures of energy and genes, germs and words
  which allows us to conceive a world in which
  geology, biology and linguistics are not seen as
  three separate spheres' but as three perfectly
  coexisting and interacting flows of energetic,
  replicative and catalytic materials.' (manuel de
  landa A Thousand Years of Non-linear History).

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new contexts/new vocabularies

• move from media to information
• decentralization ( bureuacrarcy) to distribution
  (protocol)
• http//freekatie.yuku.com/topic/1808/t/InTouch-Wee
  kly-Exclusive-KAK-Looks-Pregnant-Again.html
• cybernetics
• dynamics
• surveillance and filters

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so we are talking about

• 1. reproduction when mechanical and biological
  reproduction converge and
• when reproduction is self-generating and
  unpredictable. (it is the opposite of the fordist
  model)
• 2. how to think about life itself? if organic and
  inorganic can merge and reproduce (something
  else?)

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• What we call 'beliefs' are actually 'memes' or
  'replicating information patterns' which spread
  from person to person in much the same way that
  viruses spread from body to body.

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How to inure yourself against contagion?

• Lets discuss in the tuts.