← Back to context

Comment by ivansavz

14 years ago

This.

The pyramid structure that seems to permeate all things //system// has the following salient feature. Say a system pawn is a node at level $L$ and his/her boss is at level $L+1$ and the boss' boss is at level $L+2$. Depending on social skills and intelligence, the pawn might have information about "what is going on" at level $L+1$ by talking to the boss, but for sure he/she has //no// information about what is going on at $L+2$. In a way secrecy (i.e. information non-awareness) is the //essence// of the pyramid.

Assange has this paper [1], which talks about information being the perfect way to choke the system.

[1] cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf [ abstract: Consider the Gonspiracy G = (V,E) where V is the set of conspirators and E is the set of inside information links. The conspiracy G is embedded in a larger graph, society, S. Let |G| be the power of the Gonspiracy. The 'good guys'[2] want |G| to be small, the bag guys want |G| to be large. Assange defines the total conspiratory power as

   |G| = sum information flows in e for all e in E

So to fight G, one must either cut edges e, or generally reduce the flow of information flowing on edges, by scaring the nodes {v \in V} that they might be found out. ]

[2] http://markpasc.org/blog/gems/athena.html