Saturday, June 16, 2007

The DARPA Trip

We pause from our normal programming (or, maybe not) for a moment to take a brief – albeit hallucinatory – intermission.
If the ‘robo-snipers’ and ‘automated kill zones’ didn’t freak you out then perhaps this will. Check out this video – DARPA’s iXo Artificial Intelligence Control Grid: 20 cyber-bugged minutes virtually adrift inside the surreal cytoplasmic warfare-obsessed cerebral distortions of DARPA’s techno-militaristic planning regime. If the war machine could dream this would surely be it. Seriously, this is some freaky-ass shit.


The dudes over at Ignorance Isn’t Bliss put this together. In their own words:
This was constructed almost entirely using government / military quotes, animations, videos, images and photos. The narrative is sourced from government quotes from start to finish. It is the “official version”, if you will, but in an unprecedented format.

It unveils the governments numerous and ongoing programs related to A.I., “NBIC”, the “Global Information Grid”, nanotechnology, biotechnology, autonomous drones, “naval sea-bases”, space weapons, weather modification… or more directly: domestic and global totalitarian technological domination. American Imperialism meets Artificial Intelligence.

Needless to say, it plays like some narco-induced Rumsfeldian mash-up of war-play gameification, complete global surveillance mechanization, programmed battlespaces and landscape lobotomization, all timed to the frenetic and pummeling gait of a sci-fi drum ‘n bass soundtrack that is absolutely perfect in a swarming entomomechanophilic army kind of way.


I want to project the whole video onto a chunky battered bunker wall in some undisclosed location for a future subtopian meeting of the minds, so to speak, or, well, some other vaguely viable reason.
Though, I wonder if the good ol' boys at DARPA have seen this and whether they actually like it or not. You never know about the unintended consequences. Maybe they will use it as a "hip commercial" of some kind.
Either way, turn up your speakers, sit back and trip over the psycho-urban assault.

(via the Alien Intelligencer)

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You should google the term fifth generation warfare (or 5gw). They describe it as "secret warriors" or actors that subvert our observation processes, or, give the idea that some else is fighting the observer.

It would seem this fifth generation of warfare is the counter-strategy to the net-centric, total-sensory awareness of the U.S. By not giving the U.S. any sensory perception, or deceiving their sensors into thinking they are fighting someone else, they downplay the advantage this video portrays.

10:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here are two examples

10:18 PM  
Blogger Bryan Finoki said...

Thanks for the info.
I know this might be utterly cliché at this point, but to some degree the American psyche and military has always battled an enemy within, to the point where “the enemy” has been created, perpetuated, projected, in order to sustain a conflict perhaps when one does not inherently exist. That is to say, the American project is somehow intertwined with a dependence on having an enemy; an addiction perhaps to an enemy.
So, it doesn’t surprise me that 5GW would be such a type that it would reach a point where it seeks to fight a “ghost enemy”, I mean the DARPA video paints this picture of being able to fight everything even as the enemy may be totally invisible.
And it makes sense that the counter to that would indeed be a “ghost enemy” one that may or may not even exist.
Crazy stuff. I will have to look into the 5GW a lot more but thanks for bringing it to my attention!
Any other thoughts?

12:22 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

First: "Addicted to Enemies: A Radical Uncovering of the Engine at the Heart of America" there's the book we can actually realistically write together.

Second: offline....

11:48 AM  

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