Date: February 7th 2009

This is the artistic statement for the upcoming Telekommunisten intervention at
the Souseveillance conference in Aarhus, announcing the launch of deadSwap,
the clandestine offline file sharing system.

Please forward and repost, comments welcome!

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deadSwap: The Internet is dead, long live the sneakernet.

Dmytri Kleiner


A major impact of the commercialization of the Internet has been the undermining
of its peer to peer architecture. As Capital must always control the circulation
of value in order to appropriate surplus, its champions view peer networks as
a threat. The Web, although it sits on top of the Internet, is not a peer to peer
technology, but rather a client-server system where the interactions of the users
are controlled and mediated by that site's operators.

With such centralization and control the operators are in the position of capturing
the value created by the user's of these sites by way of selling this audience of
users as a commodity to publishers of marketing and propaganda.

More importantly, the Capitalist financed operators of such sites, can sell the
data of the users, which often includes significant personal and demographic
details, raw data for biometrics and detailed relationship graphs, to those that want to
use this data to study, manipulate or control these users. These private, centralized
services can also silence and lock out any user from participating or act
to prevent any type of usage that is contrary to their own interests.

The new "Social Web" has fundamentally replaced the peer to peer Internet, and
remaining peer communications technology has become marginal or even contraband as
participants on peer networks face ever increasing legal attack and active sabotage
from groups representing the interests of Capital.

The Internet is dead. In order to evade the flying monkeys of capitalist control,
peer communication can only abandon the Internet for the dark alleys of
covert operations. Peer to peer is now driven offline and can only survive in
clandestine cells.

deadSwap is an offline file sharing system, where participants covertly pass a USB
stick from one to another. The route of the USB memory stick and the identity of the
other participants is not known by the users, but controlled by local
independently operated SMS gateways that are kept as a carefully shared secret by
their users.

The system was developed for Sousveillance and the first version of the system will
be launched during the event (Sunday February 8, 12.30-17.00), creating the world's
first deadSwap network in Aarhus. The deadSwap workshop by Dmytri Kleiner
starts at 12.30, lunch room Wiener building, Information and Media Studies
Department, Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus

Information regarding setting up and participating in deadSwap networks can be found on
deadSwap.net

~# DARC - Digital Aesthetics Research Center // deadSwap in Aarhus:
~# http://darc.imv.au.dk/?p=81

deadSwap is a miscommunication technology by telekommunisten