Nerds of Jihad and the Virtual Worlds Evolution

Tim Stevens of Ubiwar had a very intriguing post social media “ripple effect” diagram by David Armano  – including all forms of media would greatly increase the complexity by orders of magnitude but the logic of the effect would remain the same ( the memetic velocity of each form of media differs but they all interact nonetheless). The message of Islamist terrorism like any other meme in a highly competitive, complex adaptive media system must follow the rules of an attention economy or languish to little effect. There must be psychological “hooks” in the message and content, delivery and the multiplicity of audiences must be considered strategically.

Reams of newsprint, untold hours of televisual hyperbole and a thousand academic articles have been expended on this subject, but it remains of critical importance. How do we adjust our Western liberal mores to account for the fact that every violent sub- or non-state actor knows the internet is a tool and, like ‘us’, knows how to use it? The time has long passed when we should be surprised by this, although articles crop up regularly in provincial newspapers and magazines, and occasionally in national dailies, somehow expressing surprise that terrorists use the internet for their own ends, and that something-must-be-done. We wrestle with the First Amendment, the spectre of censorship looms, militaries worry about operational security, and politicians tack with the prevailing wind, dispensing legislation and initiatives like sticking plasters in a bucket of razor blades.

But what is the fuss all about? Do commentators on the subject actually know what happens on the internet? The videos of IEDs in Iraq, or of Juba the Baghdad Sniper, or viral 9/11 videos, might just be the thin end of the wedge. Terrorists and insurgents leverage the tools of new media to broadcast violent propaganda, but why? What lies beneath?

The substrate below the spectacular image factory is a world that most readers of this blog well recognise. Websites, blogs, chatrooms, social networking sites, discussion fora, mailing lists, internet relay chat, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, virtual worlds, email, instant messaging, video sharing, file sharing, torrenting, and a host of other spaces where people – fundamentally – interact.

At this point here it would be profitable for non-geeks and enjoyable for the geeks to detour to Metaverse Roadmap Overview to get a better look at the part of the iceberg of the future that will be beneath the surface of the water. The cognitive power of games should not be underestimated as a learning modality or community-building tool. Virtuality tools drastically lower the transaction costs and risk for experimenting with challenging the social contract and these tools are in the hands of far more more socially alienated people than ever before, not merely unemployed, hiphop listening, Islamist wannabes in Marseilles unhappy with French public housing. The next generation of Ted Kacyznskis might be a superempowered scale free network like “Anonymous“.

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