“9/11 rememberance week” is almost over, and it’s impossible to remain unaffected by the national mood, no matter how artificial or manufactured. Over the past two weeks, I’ve written about how technology and online social criticism have changed during the Age of Terror.

One of the biggest transformations in everyday technologies has been what I call the weaponization of data mining techniques. The government has tried, in a number of ways, to use cutting-edge (or, in some cases, science fictional) methods to cull intelligence information from piles of digital data accumulated by phone companies, airlines, search engines, and credit card companies. Some of these data-mining efforts, such as the NSA capturing AT&T data, have been exposed. Others are no doubt ongoing. Although it would seem that our personal privacy has been sacrificed on the altar of stopping terrorism, hope is not lost.

I would argue that as the intelligence community has eroded the Fourth Amendment in the name of “national security,” the citizenry has pushed back. Investigative reporters, bloggers, and info-crunchers in social networks have done their own data-mining to expose misrepresentations in the media and to call attention to the government’s secret spying programs. Data mining may have been weaponized, but the people are armed, too.

Another hopeful sign in these surveillance-happy times is the rise of pointed political satire. The Democrats and Greens may not have their shit together when it comes to criticizing the right wing, but progressive satirists have jump-started a renaissance of smart humor. In the mainstream media, there’s The Daily Show. Then there are activist pranksters like The Yes Men. And for those of us who like to troll underground websites, there are things like last year’s fake execution media satire. I embrace it all, from Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert to Ogrish and JibJab’s cartoons. Let’s defeat the conservatives by mocking them out of office.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 15th, 2006 at 1:17 pm.
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