219 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 93 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing
Podcast    H4'ed 10/1/13

Peter Ludlow, on Systemic Evil, Whistleblowers and Hacktivism

Follow Me on Twitter     Message Rob Kall
Become a Fan
  (295 fans)

Broadcast 10/1/2013 at 2:08 PM EDT (51 Listens, 31 Downloads, 1156 Itunes)
The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show Podcast

Check out More Podcasts

Listen
Listen

listen on iTunes
iTunes

listen on SoundCloud
SoundCloud

Download
Download

View on Stitcher
View on Stitcher

Copyright © Rob Kall, All Rights Reserved. Do not duplicate or post on youtube or other sites without express permission. Creative commons permissions for this site do not apply to audio content or transcripts of audio content.


Peter Ludlow is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University and writes frequently on digital culture, hacktivism and the surveillance state.

i was inspired to invite him on as a guest because of this article he wrote for the NY Times, The Banality of Systemic Evil.  The article starts off: 

In recent months there has been a visible struggle in the media to come to grips with the leaking, whistle-blowing and hacktivism that has vexed the United States military and the private and government intelligence communities. This response has run the gamut. It has involved attempts to condemn, support, demonize, psychoanalyze and in some cases canonize figures like Aaron Swartz, Jeremy Hammond, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.

In broad terms, commentators in the mainstream and corporate media have tended to assume that all of these actors needed to be brought to justice, while independent players on the Internet and elsewhere have been much more supportive. Tellingly, a recent Time magazine cover story has pointed out a marked generational difference in how people view these matters: 70 percent of those age 18 to 34 sampled in a poll said they believed that Snowden "did a good thing" in leaking the news of the National Security Agency's surveillance program.

So has the younger generation lost its moral compass?

No. In my view, just the opposite.

Clearly, there is a moral principle at work in the actions of the leakers, whistle-blowers and hacktivists and those who support them. I would also argue that that moral principle has been clearly articulated, and it may just save us from a dystopian future.

In "Eichmann in Jerusalem," one of the most poignant and important works of 20th-century philosophy, Hannah Arendt made an observation about what she called "the banality of evil."


My very rough interview notes-- mostly my questions.

Can you talk about the Banality of Evil and Hannah Arendt

movie-- 

Let's talk about systemic evil.

Moral Mazes book-- 


You're a guy who studies writes about words. Can you talk about "Evil."

Dignity-- I recently interviewed Robert Fuller, who speaks about Dignitarism. 

Bottom-up 

cooperation

resistance to bottom up

Internet can be used to impose order in a top down manner-- as a surveillance tool. 

Why is metadata the most dangerous thing to give up?

Easy to identify leaders. I wonder if they use that info to disrupt communications-- literally screw up email. 

What do you mean by "impose order?"

Private intelligence organizations  like Stratfor". monitor orgs, use military strategies. 

So a lot of the order you're talking about is identifying emerging threats to the existing system or order.

This makes me think of Don Siegelman, how there are thousands of ways to disrupt and undermine 

Justice Potter-- 

Stratfor-- irregular warfare--  Jeremy Hammond did a dump of Stratfor info 

Barret Brown did a link 

Talk a bit about Stratfor and H.B. Garry

It looks like the government is spending 60% 70% on private contractors, so, the FBI has become these private companies.

Tim Sherrock book-- private intelligence business

Intelligence community that is un-regulated

Booz-allen, Stratfor, 

Have you thought about that group of people and how they fit into this picture (psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists) 

So, these systems or organizations get the psychopaths to manifest more openly, or create them. 

It seems that things are getting worse- we're not stopping the 8 million sociopaths, we're promoting them. 

We're promoting psychopaths. 

In your article you talk about the millennials-- it seems there's something hopeful happening there. 

"There is a new way of thinking about these things. " Talk more about that. 

Institutions we're supposed to trust are not trustworthy. 

Talk about heroes-- today, if a young person wants to be a hero, he should get a job, then tell the truth. 

I gotta say that I DO care about what a hero is. 

But your reference to the heroic action is central to what it is to become a hero. 

You've written about hacktivism. Can you talk a bit about that?

Repurposing technology for purposes for which it was not originally intended.

Hacktivism seems to be a very bottom up kind of activity. 

Are Cass Sunstein's ideas on using sock puppets and fake  personas on line examples of hacktivism.

    no

Denial of service attack that shuts down a website, like a sit-in. 

What are the different mechanisms in hacktivism

    Distributed denial of Service attack

   penetration of a system-- 

   helping people to communicate with each other outside the purview of orgs attempting to suppress them, like Chinese firewall. 

so, in  a sense, hacktivism involves providing defense against organizations like the NSA

      any system of power. 

Hacktivists have the ability to expose the secrets of empire---

Hedges-- hacktivists have the ability to expose empire and show how rotten it is and showing how it is completely rotten. 

Connection to job as a professor?

Philosophy of mind and cognitive science-- tie in with what we've been talking about?

What are you going to write about next?

Book from Oxford university press-- how we shift or modulate word meanings

Book on trolls-- "griefers"

scatologica and transgressive-- Barrett Brown was a griever in "Second Life."

Are you saying that griefers or trolls have some  positive aspects. 

You're talking more about digital court jesters.


Size: 30,461,600 -- 1 hrs, 3 min, 28 sec

Listen
Listen

listen on iTunes

listen on soundcloud

Download
Download

Must Read 1   Funny 1  
Rate It | View Ratings

Rob Kall Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
 

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Follow Me on Twitter     Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend