Stateless issue 2

Stateless NEW THOUGHTS ON WEB, TECH & CULTURE

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STATELESS MANIFESTO Your pre-internet mind is gone for good, but with the situation as volatile and exciting as it is, you don’t need it.

STATELESS EDITORIAL TEAM XAVIER BOUCHERAT MAX GOLDBART EMILY BURT STEWART HUME ROBIN NIERYNCK JESSICA RAYNER AMELIA JONES TANGWEN ROBERTS JACK WETHERILL HANNAH SEATON MATTHEW EVANS

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The digital landscape is an increasingly dangerous realm.

This danger prompts resistance, and the creation of strange and fantastic digital subcultures. As such, it should be celebrated.

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Disconnecting from this landscape is not an option for most - provided you have access in the first place, which some 4 billion of us don’t.

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Therefore it is essential we equip ourselves with the tools and knowledge needed to counteract state surveillance and attacks on our privacy.

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Web users everywhere need to familiarise themselves with basic concepts like dark web, encryption, and the consequences of burgeoning artificial intelligence.

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Even today there exist publications that, despite their preoccupation with future web and future tech, refuse to acknowledge the Orwellian situation that we’ve arrived in.

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Silicon Valley giants continue to push outdated, utopian visions of the net, free of hierarchies and collectively controlled by

JOMEC.CO.UK/STATELESS

@STATELESSMAG

the people. These same global companies are compliant in mass online web censorship, state surveillance, and attacks on net neutrality.

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Stateless will speak for everyone who rejects this vision. We recognise that the internet, far from disseminating power, has further concentrated it in the hands of the few. It has provided underground platforms for criminals and creatives alike – platforms that, with a bit of knowledge and skill, anyone can access.

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As such, our editorial independence is paramount. We will never run advertising in our print publication, nor will we fill it with kneejerk reactionism – releasing bi-monthly allows for well considered and thought provoking content.

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The Internet has permanently transformed the way our minds and memories operate. We do not forget like we used to. Interactions that were once common place in real life are now considered strange, even inappropriate.

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Your pre-internet mind is gone for good, but the truth is, with the situation as volatile and exciting as it is, you don’t need it.

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STATELESS April 2015

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CONTENTS SOCIAL MEDIA ARMY

Wars aren’t just fought on the battleground anymore. They are fought in cyberspace.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE ALONE

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Meet Madeleine, Stateless Magazine’s one-time invisible girlfriend.

WEB

CULTURE

PAGE 4 FCC votes for tighter net neutrality F*ckingweird.Com: perpetual digital art PAGE 5 Interview: Arjen Kamphuis PAGE 6 Programming languages: a guide PAGE 7 Digital Institutions: Prisons PAGE 8 #White Genocide PAGE 10 Stateless Pioneers: Josh Harris and Aaron Swartz PAGE 14 Hack for Big Choices heads to Africa PAGE 15 Source Code

PAGE 22 The fucked up world of revenge porn PAGE 24 Freaks, fakes and faceless names PAGE 25 Documentaries

TECH

FARSIDE

PAGE 16 Simple Hacks: make your own app PAGE 17 Reality is overrated PAGE 18 Weird App PAGE 19 Google farms PAGE 20 Privacy fears reach new heights PAGE 21 Cyborgs saving humanity

PAGE 34 Human microchipping PAGE 35 Faces of Farside: Salad fingers

ARTS PAGE 28 Museum of Gif PAGE 29 Illustration PAGE 30 Arts PAGE 32 I remember the future: SPF 420

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FCC votes for tighter net neutrality laws New Federal Communications Commission ruling looks to promote greater openness on the web LAST month Stateless discussed the issue

currently shattering the illusion of the web as an open and balanced space: net neutrality.

On February 26, after buckling to public demand and with Barack Obama’s backing, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted in favour of tighter rules for Internet service providers, enforcing net neutrality and the notion of an open Internet. Before these changes, ISPs could effectively take money from global giants and corporations to speed up traffic to their sites, simultaneously slowing it down for their smaller competitors to create ‘fast lanes’.

The new rules reclassify broadband as a public utility, giving the FCC more regulatory power over ISP’s. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler had previously claimed that such action constitues, “the strongest open Internet protections ever proposed by the FCC” and a step forward for net neutrality.

But the issue remains controversial and contested. The vote amongst FCC commissioners was split 3-2 down party lines in favour and has kicked up a storm amongst House Judiciary Committee Members who have since written to the FCC chairman

branding the new rules as the “most oppressive and backward regulatory option possible.”

Global ISP Verizon, one of America’s top communications companies, released a furious press release in morse code which branded the decision a "throwback that imposes 1930's rules on the Internet.”

For the time being it seems that the fight for net neutrality is ongoing and, although these new rules have taken a step in the right direction, there will always be someone tugging on the other end of the rope.

Stateless will be watching closely as the debate hurtles on.

F*CKINGWEIRD.COM: perpetual digital art Weirdest website of the month explores the spiraling art of Zoomquilt

TODAY, gripping an online user’s attention

for more than a few passing seconds is a difficult skill to master, but Zoomquilt achieves it with style.

Upon entering the site, your eyes are drawn into a mesmerizing, immersive and surreal experience, the ultimate escape from reality.

Be prepared to enter a world of dark fantasy that draws from popular cultural texts such

as Disney, but with a sinister twist, moving inwards on itself in an endless artwork animation. Reddit user nomoreinternetforme claims “this is what happens when you spill a cup of crazy on a blanket and zoom in on it,” but surprisingly it is a relatively calming experience.

The brainchild of Nikolaus Baumgarten, Zoomquilt is a collaborative effort between a

number of illustrators and artists, and draws inspiration from an early Internet platform of patchwork paintings.

The platform was Gridcosm, a similar ongoing immersive project, but Zoomquilt aimed to make the abstract experience more seamless. The second edition allows you to control the speed and direction of the immersive art and when knocked up to high speed creates an almost trippy experience.

In terms of how it works, the concept could be replicated by anyone with the right software. The middle image is a third of the size of the previous level and artists add images around the centre until a new grid is completed. That level then shrinks and becomes the seed for the next level of the image, creating an ever-expanding tunnel of images which, once completed, will work in either direction. Simple yet confusing, we know – it’s a mind fuck.

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INTERVIEW: Arjen Kamphuis The information security specialist offers some tips on staying off the grid ENCRYPTION expert Arjen Kamphuis is

a man in demand. Since the Snowden revelations he has gone from a conspiracy theorist to one of the dominant voices from the world of internet privacy and encryption.

For the longest time, those campaigning for the right of privacy online have been deemed cyber-criminals. Only recently are many people becoming more aware of the the extent of the threats against our privacy.

In 2014, along with his co-author Silkie Carklo, Arjen produced Information Security for Journalists, a guide to online privacy and the protection of sources for investigative journalists. However, it’s not just journalists who need to be aware of surveillance. Arjen is with Stateless in belief that society as a whole needs to be better informed.

But what measures should you be taking to keep your private information just that private? Arjen talked us though some simple measures.

Searching the Web One of the simplest things that you can do is use multiple browsers: “Personally I always have three browsers” he explains. “One I use for social media stuff. Then I have another browser, Firefox, which is my main work browser were I do all my work related reading and then finally I have the Tor browser.

It is slow and clumsy but perfect if I want to do research on certain companies and I don’t want them knowing about it.”

Despite all these measures, however, Arjen explains that if you are using a computer built in China and that works on an American operating system (so a Mac of a PC), you are already at a disadvantage.

These systems have back doors in place, meaning that any interested party can access your information with minimal effort. To combat this, Arjen

suggests using Tails, a complete operating system that runs off a USB rather than your hard drive, as well as the Tor network which allows you to privately browse the web without potential data leakage.

On the subject of web browsing his main message is that people should be separating their most private information from their most public. Keeping your social media openness on a different browser to your private internet activity lowers the level of information that can be easily pinpointed to you. For those of you out there that really want to start searching off grid Arjen suggests using two laptops: one to search with Tails and the other completely offline, with all of your encryption keys.

That Smart Phone in your pocket “Right now phone security is lagging 15 to 20 years behind what we have with laptops,” explains Arjen. In his opinion all smart phones are fundamentally unsafe.

It is not just hacking your emails but the whole device that can be compromised, from pinpointing your locations to using your phone’s microphone to listen into your conversation. He makes the point that one way of scuppering surveillance on sensitive meetings is to leave your phone at home, thus increasing the costs and effort involved for those who are tracking you.

What about emails ?

So what email services should you use if you want to be private? Certainly not Gmail, according to Arjen. Although using GPG email encryption can protect context, the details of whom you are emailing is still compromised as many of the servers are still based in the US. One step that you can take to keep correspondence secret is by using an email service based in countries such as Switzerland, Germany or Austria. A Swiss example recommended by Arjen is Kolab which he explains, “provides a nice email service and they run it all with public source codes and run it on Swiss soil.” You will have to pay for a service like this, but it does mean that your data is not compromised. Team European email services like Kolab with email encryption and you are getting close to being off the radar.

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Programming languages: A guide Small Basic Difficulty Level: Primary School

A Stateless introduction to coding scripts

Microsoft Small Basic is a package designed exclusively for beginners – mainly kids, but it’s a good place to start at any age. The primitive programming language allows for the creation of programmes like an in-browser Tetris and a simple physics collision simulator. Nice.

HTML Difficulty Level: High School First used by teens as copied chunks of text to add glitter effects to Myspace profiles, HyperText Markup Language isn’t strictly for programming: It uses tags to create and tailor web pages rather than programmes. But it’s a versatile tool that’s well worth a novice programmer’s time.

Java Difficulty Level: Graduate

In a recent post for Forbes online, functional programmer and machine learning engineer Micheal. O. Church summed up why many people aren’t fans of Java Script: “The vision that seems ensconced in the modern Java community is one of Big Programmes where the programmer-to-program ratio is many-to-one. This leads inexorably to political behavior and low productivity.” But it has its place. An object-oriented programming language, Java’s English syntax and its few ‘magic’ characters (like generic angle brackets) make it reasonably simple to grasp the basics.

Machine Language Difficulty Level: C3PO talking to the Millenium Falcon Now we’re getting deep. Whereas most of the languages listed are systems designed to create programmes that run as software, machine languages are systems understood only by the hardware itself. Any programme in Java, Python or C ++ is converted back into machine language by a compiler. Naturally, a few brave souls have attempted to cut out the middleman. Not for the faint of heart.

C++ Difficulty Level: 90’s Action Movie “Hackers” C is like the Beatles: The basis for the huge variety of programming languages (including Java) that came after it, whilst not being overly technical itself. Initially standardised in 1998, the first edition of The C++ Programming Language was released in 1985 by Bjarne Stroustrup and is still widely used. You don’t necessarily need to be an experienced programmer to use it, but the intensive use of specific characters makes it more cryptic than simpler counterparts.

Malbolge Difficulty Level: “I can see the Matrix...”

Named after the eighth circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno –no, we’re not kidding – Malbolge is an exercise in futility that is only a workable programming language thanks to a weakness in it’s construction. No one would actually try and code in this unless they were willing to risk a tear in the space-time continuum. Avoid like the plague.

STATELESS april 2015

In a new series of features, Stateless examines how the digital revolution is affecting institutions.

This issue - PRISONS IF you were to think that the social media

revolution had escaped America’s deep industrial prison complex then you’d be mistaken. While in the past the only form of outside communication for prisoners was epistolary, modern systems are allowing them to communicate swiftly with the outside world and get involved with social media.

And they are going about this with relative ease, both legally and less so. The main source of access for convicts to this pacy new medium is the Trust Fund Limited Inmate Communication System, or TRULINCS. TRULINCS allows prisoners to email content to relatives or friends who can then upload it onto their respective social media pages. Once they’ve sought out TRULINCS, prisoners can request to exchange electronic messages with someone from the outside.

After this has been approved the nominated individual receives an automated email from a company called CorrLinks, asking that they accept future electronic communication. If accepted, correspondence can begin.

Seth Ferranti is an ex-prisoner and author who now writes for Vice and The Daily Beast on issues concerning prisons in the digital age. He was sent down in 1993 for 25 years for his part in an LSD conspiracy, selling acid to students on the East Coast. Now a hugely successful writer and commentator, Ferranti is quick to point out the changing landscape of American prisons and how this had such an impact on his career: “Before TRULINCS my wife acted as a facilitator for me and I ran everything through her. She would print and send me my emails through regular mail. I would get two to three big manila envelopes full of my correspondences and emails every week from her. I would reply on the same email and send it back out. I designed my website, Facebook page and everything like this through the mail.”

But what of the prisoners who don’t have this connection with the outside world, those who don’t have a loved one prepared to click ‘yes’ on that CorrLinks automated message?

There are other ways, but they are by no means ideal - one legal, one not so much.

In the legality game, there are other far-less sanctioned services, which offer prisoners email communication with the outside world.

Voiceforinmates.com is just one of these specialised services, and stylises itself as an “advocate for fair and humane treatment

of inmates.” In reality it doesn’t shape up to the efficiency of the TRULINCS service.

One prisoner bemoaned to Vice that he paid $100 for the service for the past three years and was “rarely satisfied”. However, Ferranti is quick to point out that for some, where these services aren’t the only option, they aren’t necessarily all bad, “I know a lot of dudes that used those services, some were good, some were bad, but there are a lot of them so they must be making money.”

On the shadier side of the law, contraband smartphones are seeing a steep rise in their availability to prisoners and with these devices email communication can be bypassed and posts delivered straight to the social media platforms for which they are intended. Ferranti explains, “Prisoners still want smartphones because that is unmonitored activity and you can go on the Internet and watch videos and everything.

You can’t do any of that on TRULINCS.” Considering the dangers associated with sneaking them inside, prisoners tend to have to pay vast sums of money for smartphones but the demand, of course, remains. The posts are all made from false accounts for fear of prison officials bringing down the hammer. And this fear is by no means misplaced. In the South Carolina prison system, where accessing social media is a Level 1 violation, more than 400 disciplinary cases have been brought forward against prisoners using Facebook. According to Spate Magazine, one inmate has been sentenced to 37 years solitary confinement… for accessing Facebook off a smartphone?

It’s difficult to believe.

Whether through the regulated government channels, proxy sites such as Voice For Inmates or just straight-up contraband, prisoner interactivity with social media is growing. The question now for the authorities is whether to strengthen and popularise legal channels, and thus prevent convicts from gaining control of social media in ways detrimental to the justice system. For now, the punishment for accessing social media platforms in states such as South Carolina appears ludicrously harsh and demonstrates a gaping chasm of understanding that the authorities have towards prisoners’ relationship with social media.

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DIGITAL INSTITUTIONS

WEB

For the full uncut interview with Seth Ferranti, visit www.jomec.co.uk/stateless

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#WhiteGenocide

ISIS aren’t the only social media savvy extremists. Meet Joshua Bonehill, self proclaimed right-wing theorist, author and politician - and founder of the increasingly popular hashtag #WhiteGenocide IN some parts of the world contraventions

of UN law on genocide are infamously ongoing (the international Genocide Watch are currently monitoring events in Darfur and Iraq among others), but it’s actually happening on your doorstep. That’s right, the mass annihilation of human life is happening within UK borders and you are either wilfully ignorant or knowingly accepting. At least that’s according to self-proclaimed political theorist, author and politician Joshua Bonehill. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the “founder” of #WhiteGenocide and self-titled, “Rising star of the Right-wing community.”

Bonehill: Online activist?

Like many 22 year olds, the Yeovil native is no stranger to social media – his unfounded defamatory accusations of paedophilia, false Facebook profiles and homophobic and antiSemitic Twitter tirades to Labour MP Luciana Berger have landed him in court twice in the last month and seen him branded by a lawyer as an “Internet troll”.

In February 2014, he was responsible for creating and spreading a social media hoax about an Asian child-grooming gang that kidnapped a six-year-old girl. Later, in September, he issued a fake story about an assault on a baby by (you guessed it) an Asian youth. And he was even behind the unfounded story of a Somali Ebola victim living in Leicester.

Much of Bonehill’s racially-aggravated scaremongering can be traced back to his personal WordPress site and The Daily Bale, his online “news source that cares about the British people.” When he is not issuing moral diatribes and libellous character assassinations against the “Fascist Left” (which appears to consist of Jews, Muslims and feminists), Joshua organises and promotes political actions and justifies his runins with the law. Which, incidentally, amounts to 15 separate incidents in the last two years.

Stateless approached Bonehill through Joshuabonehill.net and in our short email exchange he was very happy to propagate his downright racist politics and to educate us in the dire misgivings of the “Left-Wing Fascists” ruling Britain (but

little else). Sorry, we mean anti-white’s, because, as Joshua puts it, any proponent of diversity, “Wants to see the complete destruction of the white race in white countries.”

After a colourful history of wars, invasions, and a successful stake in the slavery industry you could be forgiven for thinking that Brits and the vast majority of the global white population have had it relatively easy so far. But not now, according to @TheVoiceofBonehill and #WhiteGenocide’s most active users.

Popularity boost

Bonehill claims to have set up #WhiteGenocide after coining the term some time in 2010. At first it gained very few followers but the many thousands of people following his personal account (over double that of

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett), and the marked increase in those using the hashtag in the last half decade not only reflect the increase in popularity of the British Far-Right, but the development of their community online via social media.

Despite the academic and media attention garnered by other fundamentalist movements, such as the so-called Islamic State, #WhiteGenocide has gone relatively unacknowledged. As Dr. Lina Dencik, lecturer and researcher in media technology and political and social change at Cardiff University explains, “There is a natural tendency amongst academics to study progressive social movements that resonate with their own beliefs and values.” And these are important developments because the hashtag has since sprawled across the Internet, spawning radio stations, YouTube

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The reach of #WhiteGenocide on Twitter channels and websites dedicated to the cause.

Stateless took a snapshot (using followthehashtag) of the Twittersphere in the final week of February to gain an insight into just how influential #WhiteGenocide has become. In 193 hours, the hashtag was tweeted a total of 3, 568 times, making an impression on just under 6 million twitter feeds. Despite accusations from EDL news (an online group ‘keeping an eye on the far right’) that most of his 111k followers have been bought by Bonehill, the rate of retweets and replies signals an alarming amount of sympathy for and interaction with his cause.

Explaining the origins of the hashtag, Bonehill tells us that White Genocide is happening now and that it is only “through the love of our race that online activists have decided to spread awareness.” If your stark-raving-racist alarm bell just went off, brace yourself ‘cause they’re only going to get louder.

He goes on: “White Genocide is the moving of millions of non-white immigrants into traditionally white countries over a period of years combined with legally chasing down and forcing White areas to accept ‘diversity’.

This is known as ‘Forced Assimilation’.”

For Bonehill and his acolytes the toxic combination of mass immigration and the requirement of native Brits to accept and accommodate these ‘different groups’ amounts to a contravention of Article II, part (C) of the United Nations Genocide Convention. That’s right folks, immigration is the deliberate infliction of conditions of life on a group which are calculated to bring about its physical destruction. And Bonehill is the White Man’s saviour.

In the good old days, threats to British/ English/White jobs and cultural identity were from a specific immigrant or ethnic group.

In the thirties it was Jews fleeing Fascism in central Europe; in the late 1950s/1960s,

Afro-Carribeans from the West Indies; in the 1970s/ 1980s, Asians from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, who were targeted and attacked by the National Front, which was then replaced by the British National Party. Professor Peter Dorey, lecturer and researcher in British Nationalism at Cardiff University explains, “The ‘enemy’ [has been] identified either as East European migrants - which UKIP are campaigning against, or Muslims, which is who the EDL are agitating against.” Unlike these forbearers, proponents of #WhiteGenocide are actually incredibly non-discriminatory in their discrimination, with personal attacks against Muslims, women, Jews, homosexuals and left wing politicians.

The ideas behind #WhiteGenocide are, ironically, incredibly black and white, with little room for manoeuvre or debate. As Bonehill puts it to us, you are either with him or against: “The people who take issue with it are the anti-racists, the anti-racists are in fact anti-whites because they want to enforce diversity and see the complete destruction of the white race in white countries. Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white. Anybody who is not pro-white or proud to be white is antiwhite by default.”

Such is the sentiment Bonehill and his supporters promote via Twitter and in their attempts to silence the voices of what they see as their political opponents.

So far social media has been celebrated as a means to connect people and create a shared platform for progressive movements.

But as events of the last year have shown, it is also a space in which hatred can be kindled and spread, with little effort and huge impact. Beyond actually denying these people access to the net, if freedom of speech is to be valued, it is vital that the methods of online intimidation and false accusations which Bonehill and his followers resort to are at the very least monitored.

White Genocide is the moving of millions of non-white immigrants into traditionally white countries over a period of years combined with legally chasing down and forcing White areas to accept ‘diversity’ JOSHUA BONEHILL

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Stateless Pioneers JOSH HARRIS can best be described as one of Web 2.0’s leading contributors. Growing up in an environment where television was his best friend, this young, rather odd twenty-something travelled to the Big Apple in the mid-1980’s to seek his fortune and found success with an incredible speed and immeasurability. He began with just $900 in his pocket and within a short period had founded the technology consulting firm Jupiter Communications; from where Harris launched a platform for himself to imbue the at-that-point barely-existing Internet with his weird and wonderful influence.

Cue Pseudo.com. Pseudo was the first website dedicated entirely to live audio and video webcasting. It was a platform for a new wave of farside and intrigue to sweep across the Internet, containing such programmes as Launder My Head, a computer animation two years in the making. Launder My Head featured Harris and co-creator Jaques Tege with their heads encased in televisions delivering their dystopian visions. What Harris achieved with Pseudo was to develop the Internet less as a profession and much

Shining a light on some of the best hackers, geeks and creators who have shaped our online world

Josh Harris “Lions were kings of the jungle, one day they wound up in zoos. I suspect we’re on the same track” more as a culture. Nerds being cool was his legacy. Internet culture was real and with the dot com bubble of the late 90’s, this culture fed even further into society’s psyche.

But the noughties, for Harris, were only to bring with them a descent further into the world of the weird. He cut ties with Pseudo, claiming a few years down the line that it was simply a “fake company” and “the linchpin of a long form piece of conceptual art.” To fill his time, he attempted further trailblazing works including an Orwellian megaproject whereby volunteers were placed

inside a huge terrarium in New York, and weliveinpublic.com, a 24-hour surveillance project shadowing him and girlfriend of the time Tanya Corrin.

Now a self-proclaimed ‘Ethiopian national’, Harris spends his days far-removed from Internet culture. But trundle through its endlessly dense array of forums and mediasharing sites and his influence can be found in all corners. Today’s web is allowing everyone their ‘15 minutes of fame’. For better or for worse, Josh Harris is one of those most instrumental in this.

Aaron Swartz

articles from leading academic research collection JSTOR, to be accessed for free. He was immmediately placed on the FBI’s radar.

This was to signal the beginning of the end for Swartz in the US government’s eyes. He was to be ‘made an example of’ - a phrase to be heard consistently and punitively in reference to Swartz over the long course of his ensuing trial. Not content with being hushed, Swartz used his jail time to further his political campaigning, trying to halt the advancement of SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. The campaign culminated in an epic one-day online blackout in January 2012.

As many will remember, it was a beautiful example of collective activism, led in the most part by Swartz. The legislation is still yet to be passed.

Almost a year to the day later, and with a final trial looming, Swartz was to tragically take his own life. He has left behind him a legacy of free knowledge and the mantra that ,“If you’re not working on the most important thing you need to be doing right now, then you must ask yourself why.” It s eems fitting then that the counter-proposal to SOPA has been dubbed ‘Aaron’s Law’.

“If you’re not working on the most important thing you need to be doing, ask yourself why?”

FAR more than just an internet-shaper,

Aaron Swartz spent his limited number of years on this Earth as one of the most important political activists of the millennial generation. Born into a loving home, early indications that Swartz was streets ahead of his peers, intellectually and mathematically, were plentiful. By age 12 he had developed infogami.com, a platform for like-minded individuals to upload content, and not much later he played a major part in the formation of Reddit in 2005.

But once mass media company Condé Nast had enveloped the community-driven UGC site, he became disillusioned and was

all but voluntarily fired. Swartz despised the control Condé had exerted over the supposedly free-minded forum. He developed aspirations of a totally opposing nature: That of releasing American government and multinational control over research and public online content. Swartz’s philosophy centered on trying to break what is essentially a highly depressing publishing cycle in which large companies force students to pay for access to cutting-edge research that may have taken years to develop. Yet the money doesn’t trickle down to said researchers, it remains with the publishers. In an act of defiance, he downloaded and shared thousands of

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STATELESS APRIL 2015

THE SOCIAL MEDIA ARMY

Wars aren’t just fought on the battleground anymore: they’re fought in cyberspace.. .

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“77 Brigade will play a key part in enabling the UK to fight in the information age” “WE shall fight them on Facebook, we shall

fight them on Twitter,” a 21st century take on Churchill’s words to send fear racing down the spines of the enemy. The British army is a rapidly changing institution, with numbers and funds being cut. Since the gradual removal of troops from war zones in the Middle East, plans for widespread changes in the setup of the army are now in full swing. Troop numbers are set to be cut to the 80,000 mark by 2016 and the importance of reservists looks set to rise, most likely in order to cut costs.

This is Army 2020, a grandiose set of changes to be introduced over the coming years, in an attempt to instill within the army a far greater degree of fluidity. Part of these changes will institute the creation of a new brigade, not one that fights on battlefronts with weapons and tactics but one that uses social media and psychological operations to infiltrate the enemy in a manner befitting the 21st century. Psychological operations, or ‘psy-ops’, are methods of winning back the ‘hearts and minds’ of those on the home front. The landscape of war is changing, and those in authority know that we need to keep up.

But what do we know so far of this new outfit? The new 77th Brigade will become fully operational on 1 April and is currently in the process of recruiting. Its badge has been loosely based on The Chindits, a special force serving in Burma during World War Two who employed the innovative tactic of “long-range penetration”. 77th Brigade will be based at Denison barracks, Berkshire and will draw from both those experienced in army life, and skilled reservists. Stephanie Mann, spokeswoman for the MOD, informed Stateless that the Brigade “is an organisation that sits at the heart of trying to operate smarter.” The unnaturally high percentage of reservists is by no means unintentional; drawing from a wider pool of civilians will allow those with ‘bespoke skills’ to work alongside their military counterparts and bring the army up to speed on this fresh brand of warfare.

The majority of the armies’ ‘enemies’ today are smaller in size but far more reactive in the world of social media. There is no better example of this than the striking social media strength of an organisation

who’ve been getting a lot of airtime over the last few months; The so-called Islamic State.

When Robin Williams tragically took his own life last August, the outpouring of support from Twitter was colossal. Amongst the various celebrity condolences came one tweet of support from a more unexpected source. An account with the handle @Mujahid4life praised Williams’ starring role in Jumanji with this: “Good movie. Loved it as a kid.” Mujahid loosely translates as ‘Jihadist warrior’, and further inspection found it was an account belonging to a British-born ISIS supporter named Abdullah. It is a practice that lends the supporters of the ISIS machine a sense of personality; if Abdullah can be a fan of a much-loved western comedian, then he can burrow into the psyche of potential western recruits. Brigade 77 take note - the conversation doesn’t have to start with extremist ideology. Far better to filter it in later.

Elena Cresci, Community coordinator at the Guardian, was heavily involved in an investigation on the influence ISIS yield online. “It was literally a case of trying to figure out which accounts were actually ISIS fighters and what information we could glean from them as a result. We mainly did it via

Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook.” Elena and colleagues found that ISIS were attempting to hijack popular Internet hashtags in order to best spread their message. Back in September the ISIS Twitter account of Abdulrahman al-Hamid sent out a tweet to over 4,000 followers in Arabic asking for the top British hashtags At this point in time, they mainly centered around the Scottish referendum. Followers were told to embed #voteno hashtags “with the video of the British prisoner.” And, with that, British space had firmly been invaded.

The issue can barely stay away from our tabloids and broadsheets for more than a few days at a time; only in the last few weeks did we see three British teenage girls fall victim to the ISIS social media drive and make the crossing to Syria using fake black-market smuggled passports. Telegraph Women’s editor Emma Barnett claimed that the girls were in control of this decision and that it was made fully ‘of their own volition’.

This is willful ignorance. The disturbing reality is that ISIS is using social media to ensnare potential western recruits, and the practice is spreading. Bethnal Green Academy, the school from which these girls were lifted, has now blocked access to Facebook and Twitter

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from school computers.

Gawker’s Sam Biddle mused, “ISIS has nearly perfected the dissemination of violent propaganda, much as BuzzFeed has nearly perfected the dissemination of quizzes and videos.” American tech companies have since caught up with these accounts and have instituted a policy of en-masse deletion but this can hardly halt tech-savvy militants who can simply create dozens more accounts under pseudonyms to evade the social media authorities.

The focal point for ISIS social media control is the Al Hayat Media Centre, which has been in operation for almost a year now. The beating heart of the propaganda machine lies here, pumping blood through 20 further bases spread across ISIS territory.

From the glossy ISIS magazine Dabiq to the most gruesome of torture videos, recruits are highly trained in the use of social media, as well as visual design and editing software.

And those at the Al Hayat media centre are not short of innovation either. In April 2014, the ISIS Palestinian branch was

commissioned to develop an Android App, dubbed the Dawn of Glad Tidings. This app, which “gives news from Syria, Iraq and The Islamic World”, is available to download from Google Play and now has thousands of users signed up to it. Once again we see propaganda not confined to the underground, but well within our media sphere. Dawn of Glad Tidings could easily have played a part in encouraging Western recruits to make the trip to the Middle East.

All these examples are indicative of one thing; the grasp ISIS have on social media is exemplary, and a response is required. With said response now impending, the question remains as to what will be the effectiveness of Brigade 77. According to Stephanie Mann, “77 Brigade will play a key part in enabling the UK to fight in the information age.” Fighting talk, but there is much that the brigade needs to counter. With the ISIS media dragon now nestled firmly in the Western consciousness, the lines between us and them are blurred. In order for the Brigade to be successful, it needs to be savvy

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and work out how to win back those being lost to the fight in the Middle East.

An understanding of just what it is that is allowing ISIS to have such a master grasp of social media is paramount, but the fear remains that the armies’ reaction time has already been too slow. Too many have already been won over and it is hard not to imagine the British army will continue to lag behind, failing to wrestle away a digital stranglehold from a collection of the most 21st century of extremists. 77th Brigade will commence operations in April 2015; where were they in April 2010?

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wEB

HACK FOR BIG CHOICES HEADS TO AFRICA What chances do hackathons have of boosting developing economies?

NOT everyone will be aware of the fact that,

measured over the last ten years, Africa contains six out of ten of the world’s fastest growing economies. The majority of these are situated in West Africa, a developing area with a population of 340 million people, its recent economic successes encapsulated by one country in particular: Ghana.

Ghana’s economy has grown by over six percent in each of the past six years and it is forecast for an eight percent growth this year.

However, while things certainly appear to be improving for the country, what these growth rates require is sustainability.

So it seems right that Ghana is advancing in the technological sense as much as it is in the more traditional economic sense, and for the source of this activity there is no better place to start than Accra, hosting the biggest hackathon yet to hit West Africa.

Hackathons are designed to bring tech experts alongside ambitious innovators from all fields to compete against each other, and improve certain aspects of an economy.

Event organisers Hack For Big Choices organise hackathons all across the globe, from Mexico to Colombia to Santo Domingo.

This particular marathon hack was many months in the planning, and brought tech entrepreneurs from all walks of life to the

impressive Hub Accra in the centre of Ghana’s capital city.

On 20th February 2015, the hackathon commenced. Participants descended upon Hub Accra from all corners: Togo, the Ivory Coast and even Central Europe to name but a few. It lasted a mammoth 48 hours, with participants battling to outdo each other in fixing bugs and developing new software.

They looked at issues in areas such as health, education, design and technology and nutrition with carefully selected judges prowling the room, on the lookout for innovation and competence.

After much deliberation, the judges awarded the three prizes for healthcare, education, and design and technology to teams PharmaSee, Prepa and SmatGreen respectively. PharmaSee winners Laud Bentsil and Ikeh Owoh came in for particular praise after developing a checking app where pharmacists can list their stock on the platform and buyers can search for drugs. For a country in which availability of medical drugs is never a sure-fire thing, this technology could be crucial.

Aurora Chisté is CEO of Hack For Big Choices, operating from their San Francisco office. She told Stateless: “This has been an important, necessary tipping point

because Africa’s population will grow more rapidly, further constraining efforts to address poverty, create jobs, and protect the environment. We have been able to prove that the budding leaders of this region are determined to create innovation that addresses local needs.

Big trends among the challengers picked have been as expected as sanitation, malnutrition, accessible healthcare and education. We are looking forward to supporting these projects in the future.”

Events like these appear to be encouraging a new generation to empower their countries’ economies through technology. However, there remains in Ghana a disturbing gap between the people with an opportunity to attend something like a hackathon, and the one in four people living in poverty.

No matter how good a country’s economy may look, the stats can hide the fact that people on the street are still struggling to gain access to basic necessities.

Hack For Big Choices are involved in good work, but it would be hopelessly naive to hail them as the solution. There are many in Ghana who lack basic Internet access, let alone the skills needed to perform a simple hack.

WEB

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SOURCE CODE We consider the open-source freeware that changed the rules of the game for internet users Offline Browsing: HTTrack

Geomapping: Google Earth

Keyboard Remapping: Keytweak

Operating Systems: Linux

Browsers: Firefox/Opera

Media: VLC Player, Kate’s Video Toolkit

HTTrack is slightly troubling. It’s a piece of open-source software that allows a user to download a website into a local directory for offline browsing, including any and all internal links. The benefits are obvious for teachers, students and anyone travelling beyond the reach of Wifi, and webmasters now have an application for testing broken links and so on without racing against the clock. The difficulty lies in that this also becomes a tool for anyone intending to grab private information, like emails, off the site in question.

It can also cause bandwidth difficulties while the site is downloading, which many webmasters aren’t happy about.

Proceed with caution.

For the gamer that wants to avoid hand-cramp or for the power-user that doesn’t want to shell out on a second keyboard for DVORAK, KeyTweak allows the user to remap or disable individual key functions, save multiple configurations and even includes a helpful panic button to restore the device to its default setting. A really useful tool for some, KeyTweak allows you to load separate configurations for individual purposes. You can swap between your custom gaming interface and your QWERTY configuration with a few clicks. Nifty.

Plenty of free browsers are available to access as examples of open-source – Maxthon and the pioneering Opera, among others – but few can match a software powerhouse like Firefox for sheer popularity. Freely shared plugins provide a modular browsing experience tailored to the user and are key to their popularity. Plugins like Hola can be used to project IP addresses from other countries to access foreign sites, while the Webtrust plugin provies safe-site ratings from other users to keep browsing secure.

Originally a geomapping program created by a CIAfunded company, Keyhole Inc, Google Earth was officially released to the public after the Internet giant’s acquisition of Keyhole in 2004. Essentially, Google Earth uses satellite imagery to allow the user to theoretically view anywhere on Earth, giving you the ability to geotag specific locations. As if Google’s rolling street view cameras weren’t invasive enough, the company decided to take control of the surveillance network, carefully rebranding it as an unparalleled opportunity to see the sights from the comfort of your own desk.

Where would we be without Linux? Originally developed in ’91 for the old Intel x86s, Linux has been ported to more computer platforms than any other and is incredibly modular, serving on servers, supercomputers and tablets alike. In fact, almost 80% of smartphones around the world use a Linux based OS – chances are if you’ve got an Android, you’re using the Linux kernel.

Lots of users loathe Windows Media Player with an intensity that belies its function, like it’s been kicking their elderly relative down the street. Enter the VLC Player from VideoLan, an extremely popular, efficient freeware media player and this analogy’s good Samaritan; it plays most file types, runs well on all platforms and comes spyware-free. For those that prefer creating their own media, Audacity is the best free audio mixer around, while budding video editors will want to start with the sublimely simple Kate's Video Toolkit.

SIMPLE LIFE HACKS

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TECH

IT is a conversation you hear every time you

go for a drink in a pub, “I have this great idea for an app.” It seems that everyone has that million-dollar idea that could be the next Instagram, Snapchat or WhatsApp. But what percentage of these ideas come to fruition?

Probably less than 1%. Not everyone has the experience to code an entire app and get the idea off the ground. But the people at MIT have produced a free online platform that gives anyone the power to produce an app of their own.

Now in its second beta test, the free online platform MIT App Inventor gives everyone the ability to create a functioning app for Android.

The platform works on a block-based programing tool where you can drag and drop commands to produce a fully interactive app.

It has been designed so even a person with no coding experience can use the platform.

When you first open up the application you simply write the name of the app and you’re off. Anyone that has used a CMS like the one used in WordPress will find themselves right at home when working on the design of their app. It is very simple to upload images, insert text and alter colour to give your app the look you want.

But the thing that puts most people off from bringing their app ideas to life is coding. The MIT app inventor simplifies the process by making the act of coding your app very visual. Their unique coding system works on a jigsaw system where you input a function and then fit it with the response. For example, if you put a button on your app you select a block for the button to react to touch and then enter what you want the app to do once the command has been received.

The creators at MIT have also added a

App creator clever feature where in real time you can see how your app is taking shape on your Android phone. After scanning in a QR code on your phone you are able to see all the changes on your app and check if the various functions are working. If you are an iPhone user and still want to give the app creator a go you are able to see your app taking shape with an android emulator that is downloadable from the site.

As well as providing the platform, MIT have also produced various tutorials to help first-time creators get to grips with App Inventor by giving step-by-step instruction of how to give your app certain functionality, from shake functions to geo-location.

Once you are happy with your app you are able to export your product to your computer. From there you are free to do what you want with it. You can either share it with your friends or upload it to the Google Play store. Who knows, you may even be able to make some money. MIT App Inventor may be fairly rudimental, and if you produce a workable, simple application and several people download it, you might not become a Silicon Valley millionaire. But it might pay for a couple of rounds while you dream up the next big idea.

To start creating your own app go to, http://appinventor.mit.edu

Tech

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REALITY IS OVERRATED . .but thankfully, there’s a whole world of alternatives around the corner.

Stateless tours the wonders of the virtual world Throw up some powder

Ascend the Wall

A VR experience for any fans of Game of Thrones. Designed by HBO, this stomach-curdling virtual climb has people standing in a ‘cage’ with their headset winching them slowly up the 700ft of Westeros’ famous Wall, before shooting the user with a quiver of flaming arrows.

Paired with some heavy-duty sound effects this makes for an extraordinary experience, even despite the fact that the VR is very limited in terms of its interaction. Once at the top the visuals will ‘walk’ participants along the wall, as surrounding effects create the cold and the snow, to stand on a viewing platform at the edge of the world. Just don’t do a Tyrion Lannister and try pissing over the edge.

It’s been a poor season for snow, but anyone who’s been missing a run on the slalom can appease themselves with the fact that both VR giants like Oculus Rift and trendy start-ups like Israeli kickstarter RideOn have brought skiing to the world of smartphones.

True, VR skiing is missing a few features: you won’t get a set of poles to navigate the slopes with, or have the sensation of snow flying up in your face, but regardless it is one of the most popular and well-developed experiences out there.

In a recent ‘mixed reality’ experiment, Oculus Rift used a combination of Wii Fit boards and Kinect sensors to set three skiers – two in virtual reality and one in realtime - into direct competition, for a race that spanned four countries. The VR racers won, which is unsurprising, as they could face those black runs with a significantly reduced fear of broken bones or hypothermia.

Fly like a bird

It’s a common claim that if someone could have a super power they’d opt to fly like a bird. Now one San Francisco-based company has taken VR to the next level by combining an Oculus Rift headset with a hydraulics system that looks weirdly like a sex toy in a bid to create VR flight.

Birdly delivers the – admittedly slightly clunky - experience of flying like a bird, as users are strapped face forwards on a wooden flight simulator. The device enables them to flap to gain height, and tilt their ‘wings’ forwards and backwards, while a fan blows in their face to give the impression of wind rushing past. It scoffs at any headsets that leave people spinning like an idiot in an empty room; tech like this is paving the way for the future of full body simulation.

Oculus Rift can perch you on an observation deck to stare out at the sun in all of its burning, immense glory. This gambit manages to be simultaneously soothing and unsettling

Punch out a shark

Samsung Galaxy recently released a new promotional video advertising VR shark diving in the middle of an Australian desert, where ‘confused’ locals donned Oculus Rift headsets and sat with mouths agape in an empty room as shoals of tuna swam in front of their bewildered eyes. It looks diverting, but for anyone craving a more interactive under-the-sea experience, Chaotic Moon Studios have developed the next level of arcade game. Shark Punch has the player standing on the sandy ocean floor with their fists raised, knocking a series of large, angry VR sharks that come bombing at them from between pixelated coral reefs.

Admittedly, punching out a gigantic toothy fish might not be the most sophisticated use of the technology, but at the very least it’s more effective than a stress ball.

Stare into the sun

If all of the above sounds too terrestrial for your taste and you want to really displace yourself, Oculus Rift can transport you to the furthest edges of the universe to perch on an observation deck and stare out at the sun in all of its burning, immense glory.

Inspired by Danny Boyle’s 2007 film Sunshine, this latest gambit manages to be simultaneously soothing and unsettling.

Again, the scope of what you can actually ‘do’ is somewhat limited; there are definitely no sharks to punch. But you can sit on the deck in the company of an unnamed and unresponsive woman, look at the controls of the unidentified spaceship you happen to be cruising around in, and listen to John Murphy’s Adagio in G Minor as the brilliant visuals of our central star spit out rings of burning gas. Dreamy.

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tech

Software: Tworlds DUTCH designer Antoine Peters is a fan of

Stateless delves into some inspired new hardware and software

Hardware: Wankband

WEIRD APP

IF you have exhausted the traditional

approaches to getting your rocks off over cyberspace, congratulations. You’ve wasted enough kinetic energy to power the international space station. To this end, Pornhub has given the world the product nobody asked for: the Wankband.

The latest in a series of products capitalising on the goodwill green agenda for profit, Pornhub claims this nifty wristband contains a small weight inside a valve, the motion of which acts like a generator.

A USB slot on the band acts as a plugin for the device you wish to charge, and voila.

To explain the results in as sanitary a fashion as possible, the resulting up-down motion will set the weight off inside the valve, generating stored kinetic energy and charging your device in an impressively eco-friendly manner.

Well done to Pornhub for thinking outside the box and getting into the Wearable Tech era on the ground floor, as well as upping the green credentials of the porn industry.

However, one has to suspect that any environmental benefit the band may have had is probably offset by the increased sales of Kleenex.

Sliding Doors, it would seem. Taking the Chatroulette concept of strangers coming together over Cyberspace for brief moments and combining it with the encrypted instantaneous image-sending service of Snapchat, he has created an anonymous picture-sharing app.

Tworlds, created by indie developer Noodlewerk and featuring playful graphics courtesy of Peters’ girlfriend, is remarkably simple in its design and execution. Take a photo, attach it to a hashtag and send it out into the aether. You’re then able to receive contributions from others to the same hashtag. Tworlds identifies your location (but only down to the city, allegedly, so not giving too much away unless you snap a picture of your address) so you can fully appreciate the wonders of the digital age while sending pictures of your breakfast across the equator.

To try it out, we sent a picture of a battered paperback copy of Slaughterhouse Five under the hashtag #books. We got back a snap of a small outdoors table piled high with hardbacks from Ho Chi Minh. The difficulty with this app is whether the geotagging is, a) really just confined to cities, even under surface level, and, b) as encrypted as similar applications like Whatsapp, although if you’re the sort of person who would enjoy this app we can’t imagine you’re fussed about staying off the grid.

It’s an interesting concept, but unless you’ve exhausted the avenues of conventional titillation and you feel like perusing an nternational #nudes hashtag, you could probably live without it.

TWorlds sees conflicting worlds collide

Tech

STATELESS APRIL 2015

GOOGLE FARMS: REMOTE DATA

The part of the Internet Google doesn’t want you to see BENEATH a glossy layer of commissioned

photographs and slick description, a murkier picture of cooling towers and concrete unfolds. Google has an ever-expanding network of data farms, and the truth is, it doesn’t want you to know about it.

“A sunset highlights the beautiful landscape surrounding our Pryor, Oklahoma data center.” These words can be found on one of Google’s information pages, accompanying a picture of a bright orange sky, the sun setting over a green countryside.

One of Google’s 13 confirmed data centres quietly fills the bottom right corner. Another image, depicting the same centre in remote Oklahoma, shows a deep blue and purple sky as the backdrop to a dazzling construction, explained to be a cooling tower lit up by “bright lights and the moon.”

Now this all sounds very snazzy, but moonlight aside, we’re talking cooling towers here. Even the most naive of readers would have trouble swallowing this ridiculously cheerful image. It is a thoroughly constructed image, an airbrushed projection of something deeply unglamorous.

Yet for all the effort the company has put into making these locations look attractive, it has revoked any public access to the sites, because Google takes security very seriously.

At a time when the global search engine conglomerate is promoting open access to information, virtually mapping every square metre of the planet through Google Street View and Google Earth, it has closed itself off to the public and made inaccessible the very locations where all its information and data are kept.

An upbeat piano plays over a Google video tour of a data farm, a woman’s voice describing how employees happily work away to keep your data safe at all times. The camera panning over row upon row of hard drives locked inside iron cages. This is where the most important information is kept, the video explains; no elaboration follows.

Let’s rewind. Rows and rows of hard drives, containing everything Google knows about you, locked into cages, with no outsider access, in a desolate industrial site in the middle of nowhere? Cue a chilling horror melody and everything looks significantly more sinister.

Artist John Gerrard must have come to the same conclusion when he confused a Google data complex for a pig farm in Oklahoma.

An Irish artist who designs sculptures in the form of digital simulations, Gerrard asked Google if he could photograph the exterior of the buildings, rather than the fantastical

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insides, but he was refused access. After consulting the Oklahoma police and being told ‘the air is free’ (apparently the police enjoy the occasional riddle), Gerrard took to the sky with a helicopter and documented the eerie realities of the industrial-size data farm.

His work, simply titled Farm, is a digital innovation in itself. Constructed from thousands of photographs from all angles and times of day, he created a virtual reality, neither photo nor video, displayed using real-time computer graphics developed by the military. Gerrard’s work often refers to structures of power and networks of energy, while exploring isolated spaces. The eerie images of the data farm in Oklahoma are strangely intriguing in their inversion of the slick and colourful picture Google has been serving us for years.

What Farm seems to suggest is an idea that we must all come to terms with; the Internet is real, and it ain’t pretty. Whether it’s cables under the sea or concrete slabs of buildings holding unfathomable collections of data, the Internet is manifest, and your data is as tangible as if it were a live witness testifying against you. This unglamorous side of the web is what Google wants to keep from you. Don’t be blindsided.

The grey reality of Google’s data farms

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Tech

Privacy fears reach new heights

As drone use becomes increasingly commonplace in society, can their safety really be regulated?

ON 23 January 2009, three days into Barack Obama’s presidency, a CIA drone destroyed a house in Pakistan’s tribal regions. This marked Obama’s first covert drone strike.

Since then the drone death toll has reached over 2,400, with 273 of the fatalities reportedly being civilians. These statistics provide an insight into the menacing potential of drone technology.

The use of drones, referred to in professional speak as Remotely Piloted Aircrafts (RPA’s) has of course been steeped in controversy. How couldn’t it?

Last year, in a report published by the House of Commons Defence Committee, the current and future use of RPA’s was high on the agenda.

And threats to public privacy and security from governing authorities manipulating surveillance technology is a harsh reality we are learning to slowly come to terms with. Dr Kyle Grayson is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics at Newcastle University and an expert in the field of drone technology. And he’s concerned that, “The security and privacy issues surrounding drones are fairly similar to any other surveillance technology, for example; are certain types of people being subject to proportionately more surveillance than others - and for what purposes?”

Recent reports in light of fresh analysis of drone data raise questions about the accuracy of the intelligence guiding strikes, as the drone death toll includes an increasingly high proportion of civilians. There is no doubt that the dangerous potential of army controlled drones means the technology will never be able to escape controversy, but is this darker side seeping into everyday drone usage?

Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) figures state that in the last two years the use of drones

in the UK has risen from just 30 license holders to 483 full-time operators. The rise in their use forms part of the evidence for drones being a key part of our technological future. Despite the various reminders in bold lettering on the CAA website asking operators to consider privacy rights, it is a worryingly unpoliced field. The CAA data reveals that 483 businesses have licenses for small “unmanned aircrafts” that are remotely controlled and weigh less than 20kg. The businesses on the list feature BBC Wales and the BBC Global Video Unit, along with film studios, the government’s Centre for Environment and digital mapping agencies.

Are certain types of people being subject to proportionately more surveillance than others and for what purposes?

It is not hard to get your hands on a compact drone, with some on sale for under £100; marketed as the perfect gift for a ‘drone beginner’. But even with the CAA publishing regulations to tie in with a ‘be legal, stay safe’ policy, their limited resources mean responsibility is essentially left with the operator, who is trusted to stay within the regulations.

Moreover, the use of drones is big news commercially, with both Amazon and Dominos Pizza making applications for drone-delivery projects. These perceived economic prospects mean there is increasing pressure on legislators and regulators to

open up UK airspace for the use of drones.

Matthew Sparkes, deputy technology editor at the Telegraph, told Stateless, “Drones will cause lots of tricky privacy, safety and employment issues, but the benefits could be immense. It’s a double-edged sword.”

Last year the CAA reported the first successful conviction for the dangerous and illegal flying of an ‘unmanned aircraft’. These issues with safety and privacy continue to resonate with experts such as Dr Kyle Grayson: “More regulation is necessary, not just for private or hobby flyers, but also with regards to the use by the state. If drones are going to become a part of state governance practices (e.g. policing), there ought to be very clear and specific criteria for the circumstances in which they can be used.”

And what of the future? Dr Grayson paints a chilling dystopian picture: “A police controlled computer surveillance flags up a utility company recording for an unusual upsurge in electrics use at a property. A drone with heat recognition sensors flies over the property and records a high interior temperature. Small swarms of micro drones are then sent to the property and enter via air ducts, open windows and provide visual data (from cameras) and chemical analysis consistent with the presence of a marijuana grow-op.

The police then raid the property.”

Tech

CYBORGS saving humanity Since Da Vinci made the science of the

human body an art form, the ways in which we have understood our biological selves has been transformed, contested and developed.

Through the combination of cybernetic technology and biological organisms, bodies and the way we understand them are constantly being rewired. The popular narrative of cyborgism as an apocalyptic end to humanity at the hands of the Frankensteinian monsters we have created is misleading. Living in constant communication and leaving traces of our own narratives on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, we are becoming cyborgs ourselves. Beyond simple communication and the sharing of information person-to-person, Stateless takes a look at how cyborgism can be used to humanities adavantage.

Organs on chips No, it’s not an offal alternative to the usual post-alcohol binge. Organs on Chips are the new way in which scientists are hoping to gain insight into our inner-workings.

And according to their creators at Harvard University, they could revolutionise the medicinal drug and cosmetics industry.

Last Summer the Wyss (pronounced “Veese”) Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering announced their plans to create a complete technological emulation of human physiology, made up of 10 different USB-sized microchips lined with human organ cells. They’ve even created the start-up company Emulate to market and develop the product.

Dr. Mary Tolikas, Operations Director at Wyss, explained to Stateless that, “The chips can be used each on their own for the study of one specific organ, or their vascular channels can be connected to link different organs using a flow of fluid, mimicking blood and nutrient flow through the vasculature in the human body.” The effect of which is to replicate a human “body” on chips and see how drugs or chemicals impact each organ as the body metabolises them. Because the micro devices are translucent they provide a window into the inner workings of the system.

With the potential to transpose our own

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What impact does cybernetic technology have on the understanding of our biological selves?

biological wiring into robotic technology, it might not be so long until we have our own personalised medical cyborgs.

Smartphone-enabled HIV testing The media celebration of the smartphone ‘app’ for personal diagnosis of HIV and other viruses is misleading. Reader and consultant in Infectious Diseases at Cardiff University School of Medicine, Andrew Freedman clarifies that, “This is not really an app, but rather a plug-in device (which is powered by the phone) that can test a fingerpick blood sample for HIV (and certain other infections).” Neither is it for self-diagnosis, “You have to have the lab device and the test needs to be performed by someone trained to do so.”

Cyborg lives are noisy.

Many of us live in constant communication on multiple platforms, dipping in and out of info and people’s stories, leaving traces of our own narratives But cutting the time and cost of lab-based HIV testing to 15 minutes, and thus making them more accessible to the lap-on-a-chip device can still speed up the diagnosis and treatment of HIV which, as Freedman says, is key to the effective control of the epidemic.

And the mixing of mobile phone technology with our own blood is indicative of the way in which we are becoming increasingly reliant on tech as it infringes more and more into our personal lives.

The Cyborg Foundation Pioneers in their field, cyborg activist Neil Harbisson and choreographer Moon Ribas set up the Cyborg Foundation in 2010 to help people extend their senses by applying cybernetics to the organism of their bodies.

Neil explains that they do not intend to ‘fix’ people’s perceived disabilities but to extend human experience. At the Cyborg Foundations they make no difference between people with or without “disabilities.”

Instead, he says, “We believe we are all in need of extending our senses and perception. We are all disabled when we compare our senses with other animal species.”

And where better to start than themselves? Colourblind Harbisson is the first government-recognised cyborg after having a cybernetic eye surgically fitted to his skull in 2003, which allows him to hear colours from infrared to ultraviolet through bone conduction. He told Stateless, “It’s not the union between the eyeborg and my head what converts me into a cyborg but the union between the software and my brain, a union that has created a new sense in my brain that allows me to perceive colour as sound.”

But is all this sensory exploration too much for us to handle, and is life becoming too complicated because of it? Not according to Ann Kaloski-Naylor, researcher and lecturer in cyborgism at the University of York. She argues that life as a cyborg is, “A din that doesn’t so much distract, as shift the way we take in and respond to the world, allowing us to make new connections between different bits of data and to understand the world as fragmented and messy.”

So forget building cyborgs. We are merging into them. And rather than spelling the end of the world envisioned b.y the paranoid popular consciousness, the combinations of our own imperfect biological matter with the shiny precision of robotic medical technology is helping to ensure humanity’s survival (or at least our quality of living).

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Culture

The fucked up world of revenge porn From A-list Americans to your average girl on the street, the irreverent practice of revenge porn is happening all around us WE belong to an increasingly visual culture.

Laptops, tablets, phones, music players all come with cameras attached, and platforms like Snapchat and Instagram make sharing and swapping media simple. Online paths then allow a photo to go viral in minutes, shared across multiple platforms, to all you hold dear and many you don’t.

On some levels this is great- without it the phenomena of #TheDress would never have happened. But what happens when something goes wrong, and content that was never meant to be published appears in the public domain?

Aw, snap Revenge porn is sexually explicit media published online without the consent of the participant, often perpetrated by people looking to humiliate an ex-partner. 90% of victims are women, 60% of whom are aged between 18 and 30. They commonly have explicit photos of themselves splashed across mainstream social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, with their

more simple, sexting - the sending of suggestive or explicit images- has become one of the most common online mating rituals around.

Enter the realm of Chatroulette, Grindr and Tinder and you can find yourself looking at someone’s genitals before you’ve had the chance to exchange surnames, and when Snapchat was born in 2011 its fastdisappearing images rendered it an almostflawless Sexting app. Swapping explicit images is something people just do.

But should one of those supposedlyprivate photos get put in a public domain, it becomes a personal nightmare keeping it contained, with huge consequences for a victim’s personal and professional life.

Basic searches across Reddit reveal chilling accounts, as the two sides of this ‘exchange’ grapple.

“My ex-boyfriend has been posting revenge porn pictures of me on twitter and then following all my friends, family…”

Redditor Milcentives, [18/F], posts. “He wants to see me commit suicide or give up -

“My ex-boyfriend has been posting revenge porn pictures of me on Twitter, and then following all my friends, family.. . he wants to see me commit suicide or give up.” tormentors often including their personal details: so those people looking at the images can contact and harass them. There are currently an estimated 15,000 different sites and networks, both on the mainstream web and the darker TOR servers, dedicated exclusively to the sharing of revenge porn.

This twisted culture of shaming has been a growing part of internet culture for five years, but has been a largely overlooked one. On the occasion a case of revenge porn breaks into popular news – think the 2014 #Fappening – there comes a deluge of selfrighteous commentary from people saying that victims shouldn’t be taking explicit photos of themselves in the first place. To some extent, this may be true - but it makes no allowance for our image-heavy culture. Our relationships are digital: and as sharing media has become

beg him to take the pictures down [...] He’s done this because I’ve currently gotten into a relationship with someone he hates.”

“There are times when a man must stand up and do what is right, for himself, his country, and every amateur porn connoisseur out there, and post videos of his woman being fucked,” claims Redditor SH1V. “And what harm, really? She already devalued her body by whoring herself out. [...] I’m betting most of the female stars of these juicy little videos had it coming.”

The most hated man This bleak corner of internet culture is not hard to find: and as with most web and tech movements it started in California, with an asshole. Revenge porn would not be what it is today without the cult of Hunter Moore.

Culture Dubbed The Most Hated Man On The Internet

by Rolling Stone, Moore created the nowdefunct revenge porn website IsAnyoneUp in 2010, inspired, so he claims, by a single, lucky girl. “I was at some random club here in San Francisco, and I started flirting with this kinda ugly girl and she started sending me her nudes while I was talking to her,” he said in a 2011 interview. “And a little light bulb went off in my head.”

This “light bulb” inspired an NSFW submissions blog, which mutated rapidly into the most popular domain on the net for messed up people to spill forth photographic bile against former lovers, acquaintances, even people they had no relation with. As the site runner, Moore not only published and promoted photos of people submitted to IsAnyoneUp, but published screenshots of their Facebook profiles and personal details next to the graphic images, so viewers could easily get in touch with them.

A year after its launch the site was pulling in around 240,000 unique hits a day. It earned Moore the title ‘King of Revenge Porn’, and gained him 445,000 followers on Twitter who referred to themselves as #TheFamily. Men wanted to be him, women wanted to f*ck him. He spent his spare time

travelling America as a working DJ.

Fighting Back To sum up, Hunter Moore is the kind of man you want to kick in the face. Indeed, in 2011, a woman who appeared on IsAnyoneUp took matters into her own hands and stabbed him with a pen, leaving a permanent scar on his shoulder. Fair play to her.

And now, revenge porn victims are starting to make their voices heard. In 2014 Folami Prehaye set up Victims of Internet Crime (voic.org.uk) in response to nudes of her being published online by a controlling expartner. Jennifer Lawrence publicly damned the #Fappening as a sex crime in Vanity Fair. At the beginning of 2015 Dutch student Emma Holten made headlines when she ‘claimed back’ her consent for nudes leaked online in 2011 by releasing a series of professionally shot naked photographs along with a frank account of her experience as a revenge porn victim.

With all this noise, people are starting to sit up and listen. Reddit recently updated its privacy laws to state that any nonconsensual sexual material was prohibited on the forum.

Revenge porn was made a specific criminal offence in England and Wales in February

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2015, with offenders now facing up to two years in prison for posting unconsented nudes online.

An official helpline for victims was set up in accordance with the legislation. “People weren’t talking about revenge porn,” said Laura Higgins, Online Safety Operations Manager of revengepornhelpine.co.uk.

“The people who were coming to us were all so isolated […] most people who come to us say it’s good to have someone who understands the issues and who aren’t judgmental.” She hopes the threat of the new legislation will act as a deterrent to people posting nonconsensual content online. “If you are a victim, it’s about how you deal with it.” Higgins says. “Don’t suffer in silence.”

In America, revenge porn is handled on a state-by-state basis, which makes the process of legal intervention considerably slower. But there is one small water biscuit of karma to snack on. In the last few months, following an FBI investigation, Hunter Moore has been arrested and charged with hacking victim accounts to procure content for IsAnyoneUp.com. He faces prison and a $500,000 fine- which, yes, is not explicitly for revenge porn just yet… but we’ll take it.

If you find nonconsensual images of yourself online you can ring the UK helpline on 0845 6000 459 or contact them anonymously via their Whisper app at www.revengepornhelpline.org.uk

Meet the King of Revenge Porn

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CULTURE

FREAKS, FAKES AND FACELESS NAMES Nev Schulman leads MTV’s Catfish into its fourth season, Stateless looks back at the five weirdest episodes.

CATFISHING, defined by Urban Dictionary as, “Pretending to be someone you’re not and using social media to create false identities to pursue online romances.” It’s weird. It breaks innocent hearts. It gives the lonely a sick kick. And it’s been a hit on MTV. Led by Yaniv Schulman – or Nev, subject of a feature-length catfishing documentary in 2010 – the show recently started its fourth season. After three seasons, are people still falling for the same tricks? They are, and we’ve watched the craziest five episodes so you don’t have to.

The one with the fat cousin Carmen wants to help her beloved cousin Antwane find Tony, the man of his dreams.

They’ve been talking for three years. Antwane and Tony have only ever communicated through lonely-ad chatlines, costing $2.99 a minute. There’s his first mistake. Either Antwane is loaded or desperate, we’ll go with the latter. Nev thinks Tony could be in prison.

But nope. Tony isn’t in prison. Tony isn’t even male. Tony is Carmen. The motive for tricking her cousin? He once made fun of her weight in front of their family.

The one who catfished catfish

The one with the lesbian bowwow

The one with the missing eye

Keyonnah is a Bow Wow superfan. She thinks she’s been talking to the rapper for four months since she contacted his fan page. He even sent her $10,000 when she was having money troubles. This one had Nev stumped.

Not many people could afford to hand out $10,000 to someone they’d never met.

When the reveal happens, the audience finds out that Keyonnah has been speaking to a lesbian called Dee who admits her ploy often works with straight girls without them even knowing she is female herself.

Mike met Kristen on Facebook and fell for her. She wouldn’t meet him because she had recently lost her eye in an accident. When the meeting eventually happens, the girl is about five stone heavier than her pictures suggest but does have a glass eye. Mike admits that he sent her naked photos that included his mug and since the show they have appeared online. Whether Kristen was the one who put them there is not known. Mike could just be a serial sexter.

Nev was catfished by a middle aged married woman in 2010. But somehow one time just wasn’t enough. Artis was online dating Jess.

Both were already in real life relationships and Jess turned out to be a man named Justin. He painted himself as an exposer of cheaters but it emerged after the show that Artis and Justin might have actually been actors who had set up MTV. It’s never been confirmed, but good to see MTV’s fact-checkers standing up to their task.

The one with the WMD’s There’s always something weird in Catfish, even when there has been no catfishing.

Jesse had been introduced to Brian, a former Marine, on Facebook. They tried to meet once but he never showed up. He refused to explain why, but three years later asked her to move across America to live with him.

It turns out that night Brian was arrested for having a dismantled gun, a weapon of mass destruction. All forgiven? Sort of, but a few days after meeting, the couple split due to personal differences. Jesse had three years to cut her losses but still carried on the online relationship. A common Catfish theme? Desperation.

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DOCUMENTARIES

CITIZENFOUR

In January 2013, an anonymous source calling himself Citizen Four contacted documentary maker Laura Poitras through encrypted email, offering inside information about the practices of the NSA, GCHQ, and other intelligence agencies. In June of that year, Poitras agreed to meet the source in Hong Kong, accompanied by journalist Glenn Greenwald and Guardian reporter Ewen MacAskill. What followed shook the foundation of western governments with an intensity they had not foreseen.

Citizenfour documents the revelation of whistleblower and former NSA agent Edward Snowden as he disclosed some of the most shocking information on wiretapping and citizen surveillance conducted by intelligence agencies yet. The NSA spying scandal that followed threw a shadow over the practices of the US government and the indiscriminate collection of data it has allowed through careful maneuvering of the law.

The documentary raises questions about the increasing lack of transparency and dubious practices tolerated in governments in the name of ‘security’. Snowden, charged under the 1917 Espionage Act, remains in temporary asylum in Moscow. Having received an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Oscars, it is an absolute must-see for anybody interested in surveillance, encryption, and international data collection.

INSIDE THE DARK WEB

“Has the web been turned against us?” This haunting question opens Inside the Dark Web, an exploration of the blurring of public and private space that is being brought about as the internet increasingly pervades our lives. Our lights, coffee machine and locks can now be operated by online systems, our movements precisely tracked through our phones whenever we are connected to WiFi, and all our online activity can be collected and sold to technology companies who use this information for psychological manipulation to achieve commercial gain.

We have never so voluntarily given over so much information, while the collection of our data is increasingly lacking in transparency and accountability of the collector. With clips from the likes of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as computer specialists and cryptographers, the documentary stresses the importance of encryption and the possibility of anonymous browsing as the only weapon against wiretapping and traffic analysis. In this it focuses on the Tor network, which has allowed many whistleblowers to leak documents, as well as having safeguarded the anonymity and lives of activists around the world, not least in the Middle East. Inside the Dark Web shines a piercing light on the state of our society and governments, making for a chilling but compelling watch.

Highly recommended.

THE INTERNET’S OWN BOY

Though less widely known, Aaron Swartz nonetheless played a crucial role in shaping the Internet, giving his life in the battle to safeguard its freedom. Swartz helped found computer systems such as Reddit, Creative Commons and the RSS format, but he is perhaps best known for his internet activism and struggles with the US government, mainly concerning open access to information and free speech. His political aspirations entangled him in prolonged legal battles, which ultimately led to his suicide in 2013, at the age of 26.

Swartz was a rare example of a tech genius that refused to sell out to mass corporations, choosing instead to use his abilities to fight for social justice. The conduct of the US government and legal system in prosecuting Swartz on behalf of JSTOR, even after the company dropped all charges against him, attests to the climate of scaremongering and twisted values - where the small people are crushed in lieu of the international criminals - that is increasingly prevalent. It was clear they had the intention of ‘making an example out of him’.

The Internet’s Own Boy paints a stark picture of the US government’s approach to internet legislation, combining archive interviews and footage of Swartz with testimonies from his friends, family and colleagues, as well as news bulletins and clips of world leaders.

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Culture

' YOU dont HAVE I split up with my last girlfriend on Skype.

Cute. My imaginary girlfriend just made me look like a bit of a dickhead.

Presumably that’s the sarcasm algorithm kicking in

After three and a half years together, we’d suddenly gone long distance, and I couldn’t hack it. I still feel pretty strange about it, especially as I remember genuinely feeling that regular Skype sessions might actually make the thing possible. Predictably, the opposite proved true. Skype, that great connector, let me end things definitively, without all the painful delays and ambiguity of a text breakup.

I thought on it a lot, eventually concluding that when it comes to relationships, the internet makes promises it can’t hope to deliver on. If you consider who developed the web as we know it – that is, overworked, introverted tech nerds whose ideas would have been very difficult to put into layman’s terms – you can begin to understand why at the heart of internet mythology lies this irresistible idea that, actually, you don’t have to be alone.

It was in the heat of all this worthless introspection that somebody jokingly showed me Invisible Girlfriend, who for twenty-five dollars a month will help you simulate a relationship by sending you texts, voicemails and handwritten postcards. I immediately got to thinking, who exactly is this for? Are people finally cashing in on this weird rift the Internet’s opened up in the sphere of personal relationships?

IG themselves feel there’s plenty of people with a legitimate need for their services, a list of which you encounter when signing up. Consider those who feel unable to come out to friends and family about their nonheteronormative sexuality. Or consider all the singles in the workplace having to deal with unwanted attention from the one creep who breathes too loud. Some may accuse IG of making a quick buck off issues requiring a few too many hard truths to resolve effectively, but you can begin to understand why someone might chuck some money away for a potential short-term fix.

Then there’s those who’ll make you weep a little inside. “All of my friends are in relationships and I feel left out” or, “I want to make my ex jealous.” They’ve even got my number – “I’m a journalist or reporter, and I just want to see what it’s all about”.

I don’t doubt that these people exist, but is this really a viable business model?

Could it be that, for all the pseudo-logical reasoning, the real product on offer is the raw simulation of companionship? Did the guys behind IG show up to Spike Jonez’s Her and think, “Here, you know what? There’s gold in them desperately lonely hills!”

I woke up one Saturday morning feeling the most hungover, jaded and alone I’d been since Scotland said no to independence.

I’ve no memory of where I’d been or what I’d been at, but in all likelihood my favourite bit had been the walk home in the rain from whatever IT was, headphones in, trying to decide on my favourite Drake lyrics. “This is genuinely woeful,” I thought, “Enough talk.

Time to get involved.” I clicked onto the site and began signing up.

I wasn’t at all prepared for how stressful the next sixty minutes would prove.

First there was the name. I realised I’d never dated a Francophone and I’ve been wanting to practice, so I called her Madeleine Beaumont, now living in Montreal where she’s finishing her MFA in Sculpture. She’s 23, a few years my junior, and she’s totally into all the shitty stuff I’m into, like black cats, concrete poetry, intersectionality, occasional Adidas, grime music, the fact that Drake’s into grime music, and so on. Then you need a personality type. Cheerful and outgoing? Sweet and shy? Lovingly nerdy?

After considering the history of my girlfriends, I decided to stick with what I knew - ‘Saucy and sarcastic’, the key familiarity there being sarcastic, obviously.

IG then have you come up with a back story, which you learn by heart and repeat to your so called friends who you’re trying to fool into thinking you’re in a relationship.

Here’s mine. My super-rich friend who’s totally real flew me out to his house in Montreal. We went out to party on the Friday.

I woke up on the Saturday afternoon with this singular fucking desire for a sandwich and a Mountain Dew, only my friend had gone out to work, so it was up to me to make it happen. I went out into the cold, totally under-dressed, stumbling around for what felt like hours until ducking into this quiet looking place opposite a library. It was empty apart from the girl behind the deli, who almost immediately offered to call an ambulance, which I thought was really sweet.

I told her it was fine and that I was just this moron without a proper jacket. We got talking from there. Turned out we were into some of the same music and she invited me along to the Cold Cave show that night, except obviously everyone knows their live show sucks and that it was more of a chance to just talk and make out and whatever.

Whirlwind stuff. A far cry from the rum and cocaine fuelled affair where I hooked up with my last gf.

“Hi Xavier!” came the first text. We were on. “This is Madeleine. How are you? :)”

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to be ALONE Meet Madeleine, the Stateless general editor’s one-time invisible girlfriend I’m fine cheers Maddie. Pretty busy, pretty cold. How are you?

“I’m ok. I was just missing you.”

She asked about my weekend, and told me how over the course of the day she’d fallen over three times, which was bad news for her as she bruised easily.

At this point it’s worth mentioning that IG’s are only available in the States, so all this took place via a surrogate, namely my best friend Laura in New York. I’m not sure our friendship is ever going to be the same.

It prompted several bitter conversations about the disgusting state of my love life.

We argued about the tone of voice to use.

There were the times Laura hijacked the conversation, veering between nauseatingly sweet and mercilessly cruel. None of this mattered. We’re gonna have fun lover, no matter the cost.

One feature IG pushes quite hard is being able to invite your imaginary partner to parties, gigs, clubs etc. and getting a text saying they can’t make it this time. Maddie had other plans. Rødhåd was djing one

Check out some of Maddie’s inane voicemails at jomec.co.uk/stateless

weekend, so I tried it out, expecting some standard line about having to spend time with the grandparents, or whatever kids in Montreal get up to on their weekends off. What actaully happened instead was variously unsettling.

“Hey!” came the reply. “I’m probably going to be trying to find Dave Matthews tickets. Do you like him?”

Dave shitting Matthews? Are you kidding me? What happened to all the cool music I got you into? “Not really,” I answered, “something about white guys with guitars, kinda dull.”

The response came immediately. “I guess my joke didn’t translate well into text speak!

(Cuz those 2 couldn’t be more different?)”

Ok. Cute. My imaginary girlfriend just made me look like a bit of a dickhead – presumably that’s the sarcasm algorithm kicking in. I’m actually kind of into that. What happened then however was alarming.

“If you still have room for me,” she wrote, “that would be awesome.”

Hang on, what?! You’re coming? Exactly what do I tell my friends now? That they finally get to meet you? What I am supposed to do when three hours into the night you still haven’t shown up?

Relax, I thought, presumably you’ll get a message a couple of hours before saying sorry, last minute emergency, maybe next time, etc.

No such message arrives. For the first time in my life, I’m being stood up. What have I been reduced to?

I wrote to IG demanding an explanation, explaining that none of this was doing much for my sense of self-worth. I sent emails to their press department. I pestered Maddie herself for an explanation, but nobody seemed ready to talk about this grand conspiracy against my happiness.

We fell out, not talking for a couple of days. Texting did resume, but there were

further disappointments in store. For a start, she didn’t even speak French. She did, however, casually reel off the fact she spoke Romanian one morning, when I asked her what she was up to. “I’m working on a translation” came the reply, “It’s Romanian.

My mother’s Romanian.”

According to my 30 seconds of Google research, Romanians make up around 0.61% of the Canadian population. I wrote absolutely nothing into her bio or interests to suggest she had any ties with that green and pleasant land. I’m not saying I’m unhappy with the fact of her Romanian heritage – I lived in a pre-dominantly Romanian neighbourhood for two years and I can tell you now, UKIP’s vision of the future is serious fucking vibes. What I am unhappy about is that Maddie is a dangerously impulsive liar.

Then there were the links to ‘funny’ Buzzfeed articles, the blonde jokes, the painfully generic voicemails. Even the breakup was pitifully dull. “I’M LEAVING YOU FOR ANOTHER MAN” I told her.

“I didn’t know you were bi-sexual,” came the measured reply. “I guess it’s not the most shocking thing in the world, but you’re baka [sic] if you think he’s better than me.” Oh wow, hi there ‘saucy’ script, so glad you could finally make it along to this utterly joyless party we’ve been having.

Presumably the dude behind the keyboard at IG HQ was getting irritated by now. I was ready to accept IG’s argument that, in fact, this was a service for people with specific needs. Of course the texts are generic – they’re designed to fool as many people as possible. Maybe the mainstream isn’t as ready to commodify emotional fulfilment as I’d thought. Maybe I got too deep.

Au revoir ma puce. I’ll miss your woeful sense of humour, your impulsive lying, your sheer tardiness. Ours was genuinely the worst relationship I’ve ever been involved in, and trust me, there’s been a few howlers.

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Arts

MUSEUM OF GIF THE GIF, best friend of social media and

Internet-loving teens, is all grown up and turning into an art form for the digital age.

GIFs have been around almost as long as the Internet itself; they were the very first form of image for the world wide web back in the Internet dark ages of the late 1980s. In the noughties they began to be adopted as a way to express emotion and humour when words were just not quite enough.

But in recent years artists and designers are beginning to see the appeal of the GIF. In an age where everything is digital, it not only seems appropriate to bring art to the web, but to use the best and most popular elements of the net to create it.

These GIFs are from 15Folds, an online gallery started in London in 2012 and based on Tumblr. They take a relevant theme and invite artists from across the globe to create the content.

Memes, the other buddy of social media, are their most recent theme for artists to disect and reform for their site. Think ‘break the internet’, Pharrel’s hat and Kermit the Frog’s notorious “fuck the police."

ARTS

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ARTS

ARTS Fight Club 2 THIS exclusive preview of Chuck

Palahniuk’s Fight Club sequel can best be described as ‘darkly funny’. Fans of the cinema may be wondering how long it will take for the follow-up to the cult hit to reach the big screen, but they will be disappointed; the sequel takes the form of a comic.

The series, published by legendary comic house Dark Horse, is written by Palahniuk himself and illustrated by Cameron Stewart. The comic picks up 10 years after the film’s climax, with the unnamed protagonist married to Marla (still attending her support groups) and popping pills to suppress his animalistic ego, Tyler Durden. The bleak humour is still very much the focus - at Marla’s premature ageing support groups she insists

“my wrinkles are on the inside” and demands Tyler give her orgasms that take years off her.

It appears that the main thrust of the pages that have so far been released are essentially retreads of the film. While we understand that initially the connection has got to be made and the callbacks to the film (“No charge for you, Sir”) are inevitable, we harbour hope that the full issue can strike out to new territory.

There are some pacing issues.

This is clearly Palahniuk’s first comic, with irregular jumps between panels that break the storytelling in a way that some pages have to be reread.

Nonetheless, it’s a strong start to what looks like a great series, and we’ll be circulating the first issue around the Stateless office.

The sequel to the cult hit film Fight Club will be in the form of a comic

Blood Knowledge//Soft Future REIMAGINING the world of

The GIF art novel tells the story of an android stuck in a natural world

storytelling for a digital platform, Blood Knowledge//Soft Future pushes the boundaries of digital art, showing just what can be achieved in what is still a largely unexplored area of creativity.

Uniting the organic nature of a sketch drawing with the epileptic appearance of moving digital art, this GIF art novel combines two visual sequences with two pieces of disconcerting ambient music.

A collaboration by graphic artist Mattis Dovier and indie band Wild Beasts, the novel is a basic quest story featuring a man stranded in an industrial landscape and an android immersed in the natural world. The characters explore their displaced surroundings, while moving on a slow trajectory towards who knows where.

Each GIF novel features twelve picture panels, which play chronologically, as the story unfolds. The art is detailed and

delicate, and not at all GIF-like in terms of its appearance. The marriage of industrial and organic settings, and the displacement of the two mirroring protagonists from their familiar surroundings is unsettling.

Visually this is a stunning piece of digital creativity, and the only flimsy aspect of Blood Knowledge//Soft Future is its home on the Jameson’s Whiskey website. Yes, there is a highly effective combination of artists and musicians at play in Blood Knowledge//Soft Future, but this creativity is not intrinsically linked with alcohol, nor does the piece draw the mind in any way to the purchase of high-end spirits.

And so, as an advertisement it ultimately fails, but it’s still highly worth clicking through to the page and (if you’re underage) lying about your birthday in order to access this extraordinary piece of footage.

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What is Digital Art? THE British Council of Arts has

long been seen as a staple promoter of new art forms and methods, a team that works with the best of British creative talent to develop innovative, high quality events and cultural institutions.

This, their most recent promo video, showcases the growing form of digital art.

As Conrad Bodman, curator of last summer’s groundbreaking exhibition Digital Revolutions is only too happy to proclaim, digital art is no new phenomenon but has been operating in the cultural art sphere since the 1950s.

“Not many museums and galleries have been focusing on it as a serious subject matter” states Bodman. “In the last ten years, I think that has changed.”

This short documentary points the viewer to some of the exhibitions, galleries and works that have been shaking up its growing world.

Coverage of Digital Revolutions spearheads the piece, an in-depth exhibition which showcases some cutting-edge examples of just

what the digital art world has to offer, giving both a broad overview of the current scene set within a nicely simplified historical context and suffused with plenty of interactivity.

Bodman is a key contributor to the documentary along with data-artist duo Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead (“I guess really we’re just artists and data is our material”). Their piece, Decorative Newsfeeds, acts as something of a centerpiece for the documentary, an innovative work that uses RSS newsfeeds to ‘draw’ live news headlines.

It is indicative of just what has become achievable in this weird and wonderful art world.

Also involved are Sean Frank and Margot Bowman of 15 Folds, a museum dedicated to GIF art.

15 Folds commissions 15 artists each month to interpret a set theme in the form of a GIF. Kudos, then, to the British Council of Arts for initiating this nifty little demonstration with minimum pretension and maximum information.

Conrad Bodman says digital art is no new phenomenon

Crowfall DO you ever get that sinking

Crowfall is a new MMO designed to fill the gap between Game of Thrones seasons

feeling when a Game of Thrones season comes to an end? Those “what did I do with my life before this season” blues? Well it would seem that you are not alone, as the fine people at Art Craft Entertainment have been busy creating a new MMO called Crowfall that aims to scratch the itch left by the political-intrigue fantasy epic. Generating a lot of attention online, Crowfall smashed its $800,000 goal on Kickstarter in a mere three days.

This new project is being spearheaded by two heavyweight industry players, Gordon Walton and Todd Coleman, who have a vision of creating a PVP-focused MMO that take elements from classic strategy games. Crowfall is not a fixed quest game but an experience spanning multiple worlds, relying on the players making alliances and exacting

betrayal over one another. As Walton explains, “I wanted to play something with the intensity of a Game of Thrones series.”

What separates this game from other MMOs can be summed up in one word: destruction. Under their system, which has been named ‘Eternal Heroes, Dying World’ characters in the game are permanent but the worlds they inhabit are not. Each campaign takes place in individual worlds that all have a separate set of rules. When a player enters a new world they have to quickly become accustomed with their new area, and begin to jostle with other players for power. Basically each mission is a game of risk with other players.

With such success with their crowdfunding campaign, it is likely that there will be thousands exploring the various worlds of Crowfall. See you there.

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ARTS

I REMEMBER THE FUTURE We spoke to Liz SPF420 about the Internet subcultures driven by tech nostalgia and playful irreverence

Read the raw, unedited skype chat with Liz and check out the Stateless Netlyf playlist at jomec.co.uk/stateless

A tiny prompt in the corner of the Skype-chat

window informs me that ‘stress is typing’.

Stress is the Skype handle of Liz SPF420, and right now, Liz is talking about trolls.

“Moderation is very heavy,” she tells me. “We don’t tolerate any hate or discrimination.

People can proxy through if they want, but at the end of the day they’re still fuckboys.”

Her detractors, she tells me, often find themselves policing their own behaviour when they realise nobody’s going to take the bait.

Wait. Hold up. Is this some kind of troll rehabilitation centre we’re talking about?

Liz laughs. That is, in type. “I had one person, who I love so dearly, say to me once that if they hadn’t encountered SPF420, they would likely still be trolling on the Internet.”

Liz is one of the mysterious figures behind SPF420, a predominantly internet-based collective best known for curating online events that combine glitched-out visuals with live music and djing. Hosted on Tinychat, a free service with more than a passing resemblance to the notorious Chat Roulette, the low-quality performance streams often come direct from the artists’ bedrooms.

Participants are free to espouse praise and talk rubbish in the chatbox below.

The whole operation has a suspiciously semi-legal feel to it. It’s sheer internet.

Specifically, it’s a defiant, throwback sort-of internet. “I used to go on IRC chat a lot as a kid,” says Liz, “it’s the way my parents helped me learn how to type. I’m used to the seedy chatroom. I like Tinychat’s chatroom because it does feel like an IRC chatroom, which yeah, is like a seedy motel. I guess it just adds to the lo-fi murky atmosphere.”

Lo-fi is certainly apt. The tinny streaming quality is a far cry from fellow broadcaster Boiler Room’s 1080p, and the whole thing is underscored by the occasionally thrilling sensation of imminent collapse. At one point during a session last Feburary, it does actually break – synth-popper Toby Gale’s soundcard isn’t working properly, and admin Liz acts quickly to fill up the slot with an adlibbed Youtube odyssey that features, among

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Oneohtrix Point Never’s Replica and Blank Banshee’s 1 both rely on fragments of yesterday’s tech and pop culture

“Hierarchies exist online whether we like it or not. I try to break those boundaries. Really fucking hard” other things, a fan-made highlight reel of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s greatest moments, and Oneohtrix Point Never’s haunting rework of Chris de Burgh’s Lady in Red. An unfiltered digital stream of consciousness.

“I’m very proud of my lo-fi roots”, says Liz. “I’m into lo-fi things - lo-fi music, tape recorders. Yeah, we’re ‘techy’, and we use a really odd format that makes for ‘lo-fi’ fidelity, but we want to give the audience both an audio-visual performance that’s almost like a time-capsule.” For Liz, the degraded ‘netness’ of SPF420 lends it the quality of a faded memory – not least because the majority of SPF420 sessions aren’t archived.

SPF420 are as close to the heart of digital subculture as is possible to be, the obvious paradox being the largely decentred nature of genres such as Vaporwave, and other internet-informed music. In terms of style and aesthetic, these are hopelessly difficult to pin down, with some offerings amounting to little more than slowed-down cuts of disco classics, drenched in reverb. The visual style is a psychedelic mess of glitch art, stills from classic video games, and appropriated Japanese pictograms.

But there are some unifying traits, the first being a contemporary nostalgia for yesterday’s tech and culture. Trap producer Blank Banshee litters his tracks with samples like the Windows 95 start-up, or the click of the Macbook screenshot. Meanwhile, composer Daniel Lopatin AKA Oneohtrix Point Never’s Replica was composed largely of samples borrowed from classic advertising, transporting listeners to an eerily beautiful world, at once majestic and superficial.

The second is a penchant for completely derailing things, defying viewers to take the content seriously. Relative newcomers PC Music take the prize here. The future-pop label’s japes have enraged and delighted in equal measure. Mainstay GFOTY (that’s ‘Girlfriend of the year’ in case you’re wondering) included an acapella Blink 182 cover in her last mix. Extended family member SOPHIE is rumoured to have taken to the decks with pre-mixed CDs of material.

Collaborative project QT was billed as an extended advertising campaign for an energy drink from a distant future, featuring lipsynced performances from hired models and chipmunk style vocals.

Despite all the smoke and mirrors, what’s truly alarming about Liz is her sheer earnestness. When I ask if SPF420 is making a comment on things that happen or don’t happen in real life clubs, she agrees.

“You’re saving a lot of money, probably you’re drinking or smoking or eating pizza, you’re very safe in your room – whereas at a venue you’re emptying your wallet out, or you have social anxiety just for having a body. You know those people that cross their arms at shows. Secretly they wanna jump out of their bodies and dance. At SPF420 you can dance in your underwear to your favorite artist, drunk, sober, for free, and be yourself…

SPF420 hopefully allows people to be free in their ‘real life’.”

Neither is she concerned about the state of her digital home. “I’m pretty well adapted to the idea that we are being watched - I don’t really care though. I’m just doing me.

Hierarchies exist online whether we like it or not. I try to break those boundaries.

Really fucking hard.” This spirit of defiance is evident in practically everything SPF420 do. Proof, if needed, that the tighter the walls close in, the harder the people kick back.

33 34 35 STATELESS APRIL 2015

farside

HUMAN MICROCHIPPING:

The ultimate wearable tech?

WE live in a world that is increasingly digitised.

We are watched on surveillance cameras everywhere we go, social media dominates our lives and relationships, and our smart phones and tablets have become an extension of our own hands. With our lives reaching digital saturation, is it any wonder that the world of tech is penetrating the boundaries of not only our minds, but also our bodies?

Most of us are virtually inseparable from our smart phones and many of us forget just how much personal data our devices carry. Packed to the brim with apps, GPS, cellular data and now even our thumbprints for instant banking access, our tech is able to track our precise locations within a 5-metre radius without being told to.

Worryingly, it seems almost inevitable that the next step for future tech will be to penetrate our bodies in the most literal sense of the term.

Implanting of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip technology is a common practice within animals, but micro chipping of humans seems like something from the latest dystopian, paranoid cyborg thriller where humans and machines become indistinguishable, as the latter seek to destroy mankind. And with reason many people are against this concept.

In terms of practicality, having all of your personal data stored and accessed instantly within your body offers endless opportunities and means you will never face the tedious and bloody annoying process of losing your wallet again. But, this insidious concept and its invasion of our privacy is not so far off from becoming a universal actuality.

At the beginning of 2015, Epicenter, a new Swedish hi-tech office, offered four hundred of its office workers the opportunity to have RFID chips implanted into their hands between the thumb

We explore implantable technology and what this means for modern surveillance

and forefinger. This move was an attempt to replace the ID cards that were used for door and photocopier access, with the hope of eventually expanding the chips uses to include food and drink purchases in the office canteen.

The chips were inserted by professional tattoo artists as part of the vision of a biohacking group in order to understand the technology better. Leading tech journalist, the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones had a chip implanted in his hand to try it out for himself.

But he found that some office workers were reluctant to participate.

Hannes Sjoblad, chief disruption officer at Epicentre, claims that they are seeking to push the limits of this ever-developing technology in an attempt to understand its uses before it it thrust upon us by governments and corporations in the near future.

But this is not the only company to experiment with such controversial technology; some nightclubs in Barcelona have also offered their loyal VIP guests RFID chips to pay for entry and bar service, marketing the tech for its exclusivity and practicality.

Although at first glance, using these chips for such simplistic and harmless tasks seems mundane and uninteresting, the wider implications for the normalization of the “ultimate wearable technology� are concerning. A growing ebb of uneasiness about the direction this tech is taking us in has led to mass-controversy surrounding its application in human.

Not only are there health risks associated with human micro chipping (in 2007 The New York Times released a research report

which had found their uses in animals had a direct correlation with malignant tumors) but with micro and radiowaves coming from nearly every device we own in 2015, the more concerning issue is the can of worms it opens surrounding ethics.

Debates surrounding surveillance, tracking and the growing online visibility of humans, which would have previously been branded as paranoia, are now at the forefront of our minds. Not only is there concern about our data being stolen by anyone with a reader device, without us ever being aware, but this also hands the notion of mass surveillance to government and security agencies on a plate.

It seems that the emergence of a panopticon society may not be as far off as they would have us believe. Following the Snowden revelations and the WikiLeaks scandal, vetting our Internet searches, covering our webcams and worrying that someone is watching us are issues that continue to grow in precedence. After all, we now know that this stuff is happening, no matter how many times the government denies its existence.

Farside

STATELESS april 2015

34 35 36

FACES OF FARSIDE

Salad Fingers

TITLE: Salad Fingers ORIGIN: Created by British cartoonist David Firth in July 2004, Salad Fingers became popular on the Internet in 2005. The name “Salad Fingers” was inspired by Firth whose co-writer ,Christian Pickup, says has salad fingers when playing guitar.

APPEARANCE: Bald, hunchbacked, green skinned with a Northern English accent. He has long, misshapen fingers which were the focal point of episode 1. Salad Fingers is a masochist, taking pleasure from rubbing nettles on himself and impaling his fingers on rusty nails. When excited, he loses his breath and sounds asthmatic.

"”I like rusty spoons, the feeling of rust is almost orgasmic”

POPULAR APPEARNACES: Salad Fingers appeared on YouTube and has ten episodes that each run for two to ten minutes. The first episode premiered on July 1 2004 and was called Spoons. It introduces Salad Fingers’ love of touching rusty objects, especially spoons. He says, “The feeling of rust against my salad fingers is almost orgasmic.”

BIO: Salad Fingers lives alone in a shack in a bleak, non-specific desert-like landscape.

He owns an oven, a safety cupboard, a radio, a phone and a table. He often talks to inanimate objects like finger puppets and a human corpse. He enjoys measuring the distance between his house and a tree, eating dirt and listening to his radio.

SKILLS: Quite a talented character, he can play the flute and speak French. Salad Fingers can also use Morse code. And, despite often saying things that seem irrelevant, he is quite articulate.

Find faces of farside and more on our website jomec.co.uk/stateless

www.jomec.co.uk/stateless