…. Anonymous.

What and Who is Anonymous? And WHAT are we Capable of? Take a fucking LOOK! from Helmut on Vimeo.

The language is a little hyperbolic, the music is a little obvious, and the abuse of proper capitalization and puncuation is a tad much, but still, not a bad video and it is a subject in which I am quite interested.

First, a little clarification, as the media, for all its efforts, does not quite seem able to grasp exactly what Anonymous is.

There is a hugely important website called 4chan.org, and originally it was just a place where people post pictures and links and such to the Internet, like dozens of others. Smut, funny videos, weird links from the past, the usual grist for the Internet mill.

On it, there is a section where anyone can post anything with complete anonymity. There’s no usernames, no signup, no tracking of any kind. It is the “anonymous” section, and it is from this the “group” Anonymous takes its name.

This section, over the last decade or so, became a unique environment, fast-paced, wild, anarchic, and freethinking. The complete anonymity meant that people were only represented by what they said and did, prompting people to wild and creative action. It became a place to express yourself and win the applause and praise of others, or their mocking scorn, all without personal risk. You did not even risk a reputation, because you have none. No identity means complete freedom.

It rapidly became a hotbed of Internet culture, generating popular memes, serving as a raucous mob forum for unfettered communication and hence becoming a powerful reactor core for the slowly forming world consciousness.

As such, it’s often quite ugly. Consciousness in the raw is not a pretty sight, and a lot of nasty behaviour, deliberate foulness, and goonish behaviour can be found there. But the fascinating thing is that as this molten consciousness cooled a little and began to find its voice and its power, it began becoming a place for action.

Participants would call attention to something they thought was wrong, and suddenly, there would be thousands of people attacking the target over the Internet. The one I remember hearing about is the Internet hell unleashed on someone who posted a video of them abusing a kitten to the Internet. This person had their personal information stolen and posted all over the Net, had their email flooded, had their credit cards hacked, and so on.

And all with no central authority, and no personal gain. People do this simply for the pleasure of purposeful action, and the approval of their peers.

You know, basic human motivation, no cash required.

More recently, as you can see by the video, this group has developed a social consciousness and an agenda of sorts. With the attack on Wikileaks, and obviously with heavy influence from Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, they have become freedom fighters determined to strike back at the great wrongness of the world of today.

Being anonymous, they are accountable to nobody but each other and their own consciences. This is quite obviously scary. There’s a reason we rarely have torch wielding mobs play the hero in our popular movies. Individuals in a free society fear the mob mentality.

But I (cautiously) applaud them. They are the only sort of force that can overcome all the corrupt gatekeepers and senile dementors running the world right now. They are the youth, strength, passion, and idealism required to forge a new world.

They might be an unruly mob, but they represent enough power and idealism that they can actually threaten the powers that be. And that is something desperately needed in today’s rotten old world.

This is the Millennials searching for a way to strike back at the ills of the world and finding it. The hippies had sit-ins, rallies, and protests. The hipsters have the Internet, and that is a lot more powerful in a much shorter period of time.

I am intrigued by their threat to take on international banking. That would be the ultimate hack. The money Internet that is international banking is amazingly secure. It’s also the conduit of a lot of evil, of billionaires playing shell games with numbered corporations, ill gotten gains, and money laundering.

If they could crack that, and actually steal some of these bastards’ money and redirect it to, say, pro-democracy organizations or famine relief, then it would really get these fucker’s attention. Then they would have to listen.

Because nothing can stop Anonymous except shutting down the Internet.

And when they do that, you shut down your government.

As usual, the amazing science stories are raining down on my brain and my browser like artillery shells, and all I can do is fire back and pray!

For example, scope this : bottlenosed dolphins in Australia are teaching one another a new way to fish called “conching”.

It’s a simple game : grab a conch shell, swim through a school of small wish with it in your beak, surface, shake the water out, and dump a whole whack of little fish directly into your smiling mouth for a tasty maritime treat.

Repeat until full.

And the very cool thing is that not only are some dolphins in Australia’s Shark Bay (home of Shark Week, no doubt) doing this neat new trick, but that the trick is spreading amongst the dolphins like wildfire. Soon, that whole population will be doing it!

And you know what that means? Dolphins got culture!

Think about it. If two teams of alien scientists checked out the bottlenosed dolphins in question at two different times, one before this innovation and one after, the ones before would have no idea the dolphins were capable of this trick, and the ones afterwards might well conclude that it was both “natural” and “instinctive” to the dolphins, and point out how well evolved they are to do it!

No, you alien ninnies, it’s culture and innovation!

And hey, check out the latest bionic hand!

Pretty kickass, right? Hell of a price tag, but did you see her picking up those little blocks? That’s downright amazing.

But to me, the most important thing is that not only does it work well, but it looks cool. It’s not some Uncanny Valley fake-real thing that just creeps people out, or some horrible thing with hooks on the end that look like they will rip your eyeballs out.

It’s a very sleek and cyborg-like prosthetic and, in not even trying to make it look human, they have actually made it much better for a fifteen year old girl at school.

Everyone will want to look at it and watch her use it, and some of them will honestly be kind of jealous of her awesome robot arm. Then the novelty will wear off, and people will get used to it, and it’ll just be another normal part of life. Perfect.

And this piece is now (gloriously) dated, but I still love it :

Remember Junkyard Wars? This is the real fucking thing, people. Libyan rebels taking whatever they can get their hands on and turning it into weapons against oppression.

That’s the sort of thing that does my rabble rousing rebel heart good. Anything that makes sure the few have a harder time oppressing the many is fine by me. You can take your stupid “citizen militias” full of survivalist gun nuts any day. They are few and far between and not much good when the shit really goes down.

But you give me a population willing and able to turn anything and everything into a weapon, and you have a population that can and will resist tyranny.

And they will do it with SCIENCE!

Let’s see…. oh, there’s the blooming controversy surrounding the new generation of so-called “memory erasing drugs”.

As usual, the bullshit is way ahead of the facts here. So let’s be clear : nobody has invented some Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (great flick, BTW) type wonder drug yet.

We are just talking about drugs that might be able to keep the brain from making those excessively strong and deep memories that impair the entire functional of the brain afterwards and lead to the whole range of post-traumatic mental illnesses.

So honestly, what’s the controversy? Sounds fine to me. Who needs that kind of memory? Sure, it might change the person’s personality, but that is equally true of absolutely every form of recovery from mental illness. Oddly enough, going from “mentally ill” to “sane” tends to change people’s personality. Since when is that a bad thing?

Oh, and one last nugget o’ science fun : researchers have spotted a supernova mere hours after it started, and now all eyes are on it, making it the most studied supernova in the history of astronomy.

Now, let’s be clear : they spotted it within hours of it happening from our point of view. The thing is 21 million light years away, so presumably, this supernova actually took place 21 million years ago.

Still, to us, it’s brand new, and now scientists are rushing to point every single telescope on Earth and in space towards it so we can capture the richest data set ever about a supernova. In other words :

We are going to study the fuck out of that thing.

Damn, I love science.

See you next week, folks!