HyperNormalisation Page #13

PHONE CAMERA WHIRS

- There you go.

- There you go.

They play with themselves.

But what they don't know...

As the intelligent systems online gathered

ever more data, new forms of

guidance began to emerge.

Social media created filters -

complex algorithms that looked at what

individuals liked - and then fed more of the same

back to them.

In the process, individuals began to

move, without noticing, into bubbles that

isolated them from enormous

amounts of other information.

They only heard and saw what they liked.

And the news feeds increasingly

excluded anything that might challenge people's

pre-existing beliefs.

And now it's all right

I know my own lie

Is coming to say

You will call out

Yourself

I know I thought

Makes my face and hands cold

And I

Ooh

Ooh

Ooh...

The version of cyberspace that was

rising up seemed to be very much like

William Gibson's original vision.

That behind the superficial freedoms of the web

were a few giant corporations with

opaque systems that controlled

what people saw and shaped what they thought.

And what was even more mysterious was

how they made their decisions

about what you should like.

And what should be hidden from you.

But then, the other utopian

vision of cyberspace re-emerged.

Taking over the roadway.

CHANTING:

Take it!

CHEERING AND WHOOPING

CHANTING:

After the financial crash of 2008

the politicians saved the banks.

But they did practically nothing

about the massive corruption

that was revealed in its wake.

And the reason they gave was that it might

destabilise the system.

Public anger burst out. The Occupy

movement took over Wall Street

and then the Senate in Washington.

The issue is that certain individuals

that are very wealthy, have pretty

much corrupted our political system

and this is like the heart of it.

This is the Senate building.

These people have been cut off and

they've corrupted our democracy

and it's literally killing people.

I'm an Iraqi war vet.

I went to Iraq in 2009.

I've seen what happens first

hand when we let corruption

rule our elected government and democracy.

And we're coming here today

basically just to raise awareness.

What drove the Occupy movement was the

original dream of the internet that people

like John Perry Barlow had

outlined in the early 1990s.

In his Declaration of the

Independence of Cyberspace,

Barlow had described a new

world free of politics and the

old hierarchies of power.

A space where people connected

together as equals in a network

and built a new society without leaders.

Now, the Occupy movement set out to

build that kind of society in the real world.

The camps were to be the models.

All the meetings used the

idea of the human microphone.

People throughout the crowd repeated a

speaker's words so everyone could hear them.

ALL:

We are now going to vote...

SPEAKER:
...on whether to stay

here for the next two hours...

ALL:

...on whether to stay here for the next two hours...

SPEAKER:

...or leave now.

ALL:

...or leave now.

But if someone wanted to challenge the speaker,

the human amplifiers also

had to repeat THEIR words

so their voice had equal power.

SPEAKER:

...what she said...

ALL:

...what she said...

- SPEAKER:
...was that...

- ALL:
...was that...

SPEAKER:

...the proposal...

Each person was an autonomous

individual who expressed

what they believed.

But together they became components

in a network that organised itself

through the feedback of

information around the system.

You could organise people

without the exercise of power.

CHANTING:

CAR HORNS BLARE:

The crisis in Egypt.

CHANTING AND SHOUTING

A march through our main streets.

Looks like chaos. Looks like

police is running around

and a few hundred people walking down the street.

Then, almost immediately, the Arab Spring began.

The first revolution started in Tunisia,

but it quickly spread to Egypt.

On January 25th 2011, thousands of Egyptians

came out in groups across Cairo and then

started moving towards Tahrir Square.

It seemed like a spontaneous

uprising but the internet

had played a key role in organising the groups.

One of the main activists was

an Egyptian computer engineer called Wael Ghonim.

He worked for Google in Egypt

but he had also set up the Facebook site that

played the key role in

organising the first protests.

As hundreds of thousands took over Tahrir Square,

Ghonim gave an interview on Egyptian TV.

But Ghonim was also overwhelmed by the power

this new technology had,

that a computer engineer with

a keyboard could call out

thousands of people...

some of whom then died in

the midst of the protests.

Many liberals in the West saw this as proof

of the revolutionary power of the internet.

Again it seemed to be able to organise

a revolution without leaders.

A revolution powerful enough

to topple a brutal dictator

who had been backed by America

and the West for 30 years.

But the internet radicals were not the

only ones who saw their dreams being fulfilled

in the Arab Spring.

Many of the political leaders of the West also

enthusiastically supported the revolutions

because it seemed to fit with their

simple idea of regime change.

It might have failed in Iraq

but now the people, everywhere,

were rising up to rid

themselves of the evil tyrants.

And democracy would flourish.

So when an uprising began in Libya,

Britain, France and America supported it.

And suddenly, Colonel Gaddafi stopped being

a hero of the West.

All the politicians, and the public

relations people, and the academics

who had all promoted him as a global thinker

suddenly disappeared.

And Gaddafi became yet again an evil

dictator who had to be overthrown.

His son Saif said, "The way these people are

"disowning me and my father is disgusting.

"Just a few months ago, we were being treated as

"honoured friends.

"Now that rebels are threatening

our country, these cowards

"are turning on us."

Colonel Gaddafi retreated to

the ruins of the house that

the Americans had bombed 30 years

before and addressed the world.

TRANSLATION:

Muammar Gaddafi is the glory.

If I had a position, if I were a president,

I would have resigned.

I would have thrown my resignation in your face.

But I have no position, no post.

I have nowhere to resign from.

I have my gun, I have my rifle to fight for Libya.

Withdraw your children from the streets.

Take your children back.

They are drugging your children.

They are making your children drunk

and they are sending them to hell.

Your children will die. What for?

In November 2011 a large convoy

was spotted driving at high speed

away from Colonel Gaddafi's home town of Sirte.

An American drone,

controlled from a shed outside Las Vegas,

was sent to follow it.

CAR HORN BEEPS:

CAR HORNS BEEP:

The operator fired a missile

at the lead car of the convoy.

Gaddafi then fled - looking for shelter from

the oncoming rebel forces.

He hid under the road in a drainage pipe.

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