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the dusk, the future is not that dim


an optimism dictated by the necessary consequence of a duality hypothesis

denis sener, draft 11 march 2012




NGS - a virtual, unchartered non-governmental system
the leaker (prosecution), the lurker (jurisdiction), and the public flashpower (execution/enforcement)
constitute a virtual, unchartered non-governmental system (NGS); after all, unsolicited players would
create an unchartered system, what else? a sign-up mechanism is self-defeating (hacking is another kind
of dissident counterbalancing mechanism, however, there, the prosecution/jurisdiction/execution tasks are
delivered, in the dark, by a single entity, which is obviously more controversial)... it must be noted that an
NGS is not anti-governmental in the sense of eliminative or deflationary approaches to government
mechanism; it is simply society's another venue of organization (as is the state/government itself) in the
overall power sharing and wielding game...

not quite an NGO
under the increasingly centralized governmental/state powers of the 20th century, NGO's worked hard to
counterbalance them, even if to a limited extent; however, in the light of, rather, the contemporary
supercentralization, as enabled by the state-of-the-art and radically enhanced control, surveillance and
manipulation technologies that are available to the national states and other international power
mechanisms, a different kind of decentralization efforts is needed... indeed, the mission statement remains
the same as in the case of an NGO: watchdogging and counterbalancing the government!... but the NGS,
by its very nature, is amoebic and anonymous; therefore it evolves (it is a self-emerging, spontaneous
formation rather being a deliberately "founded" initiative) into an unchartered system; the fact that some
parts of this formation may become "publicly visible" as a "closed organization" (e.g., Anonymous, or
"Wikileaks proper" -as opposed to the "Wikileaks ecosystem") does not defy its essential feature being an
unchartered virtuality operating in the dusk...

"the powers in dusk"
now, can the powers that be challenged by the powers in dusk? as the power that be get darker it is
inevitable that the epicenter of the (democracy) game gets drawn into the penumbra! consider, for
example, the stunning escalation of drone deployment as a riskless kind of destructive war technology;

here, the point is that, as the ground control station (GCS) is not located at the battlefield on enemy's soil,
there is no need to secure the legislative branch's approval to go to war; indeed, such operations are
maintained by "civil" authorities rather than by military... therefore, in this shadow politics, the powers in
dusk is the destined dual of the darker power that be; interestingly, they also feed from the same matrix as
their dual antagonist and thus constitute a cohabitating, mutually interacting "system", as in the case of the
master/slave relation exposed by Hegel ...

a duality hypothesis
more elaborate features are at work in this dual system; the duality hypothesis simply asserts that in any
cohabitated "system" of mutually interacting constituents, the focus of power/force will be challenged by
a reactive counter element that operates "at the same order of magnitude" and also feeds from the "same
matrix of resources"... these two criteria are a necessary condition for the existence/survival of the original
power/force as their absence would otherwise lead to an impossible positive feedback mechanism, readily
exhausting the available resources of the matrix (in more practical terms and in familiar contexts, this
phenomenon is called the escalation game)... in the case of contemporary supercentralization and its
reactive dual NGS's, they exploit the same information and communications technologies and media, the
same visibility/invisibility conditions (covert operations, encryption, anonymous initiatives, etc.) and the
same appeal to the legitimacy permitted and enfranchised by the society's ever dynamic contract...

from peer review to mass review
such an emergence of the powers in dusk can be seen as the participatory involvement of the masses in the
grand process of exposing the truth (the right to know), and consequently the right to judge and act as
facilitated by this newly created/discovered mass review mechanism; indeed, it is comparable to the well
known "peer-review" mechanism of a rigorously defined domain: the scientific discourse... the production
of scientific knowledge of and information about the reality, and/or facts, is usually entrusted to the
science establishment which has created, in time, the provisional "peer-review" and the subsequent
"academic community scrutinization" mechanisms to ensure a (relatively) impartial objective evaluation;
this is much acceptable than the endorsement and/or enunciation by a single authority; this was not the
case, until recently, in the political sphere: because information is predominantly gathered, filtered,
classified and disseminated under strict government supervision! (although effective to a certain extent,
the Fourth Estate's recognition and influence is quite questionable); however, thanks to the bidirectional
opportunities offered by the contemporary "technology", the rules of the game now seems to have at least
the potential to change...

can you floodlight the dusk?
anonymity is a fundamental right; more than that, it is also a basic need for the survival of humanity...
therefore, the cybe park where people can gather, discuss, share and interact anonymously without the fear
of being hunted down, must be preserved and protected in the name of collective wisdom and public

interest, as the several faces of the cybe park, be it some instrument of open politics, citizen journalism,
participatory democracy, etc., are legitimate developments du jour! this dynamics cannot be challenged by
the "center"... both the emergence and persistence of "the dusk" are, as a consequence of the duality
hypothesis, a necessary outcome of internal conditions (tensions) that will almost always follow any new
positioning of the power that be at some escalated level of the game... no, it cannot be floodlighted!

the next thing
the indispensable jump of the escalation game to the cyberspace can be interpreted as a natural
consequence of humankind's insatiable appetite for extending its territory and it seems it has never been
short of opportunities in this the next thing game it has been exploring and conquering the planet
since the 15th century; in the second half of 20th century the near space and the cyberspace were new
targets of interest, (probably, the interplanetary space is next in line for the next and subsequent
centuries); however, the cyberspace has a special status as it is also, concomitantly, the realm of the
extension of the species Homo sapiens itself; thus, it has far reaching existential implications for its
individual and social essence, and day-to-day practical organization of social life
by the way, as goes the appetite, in accordance with the duality hypothesis, the extension or expansion of
the theater does not matter, at all the game and the rules remain almost the same, it is only the bar that
gets raised...

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