Monday 27 April 2009


"Will you walk into my parlour?"
Said the spider to the fly;
"'Tis the prettiest little parlour
That ever you did spy.
The way into my parlour
Is up a winding stair;
And I have many curious things
To show you when you're there."
"Oh, no, no," said the little fly;
"To ask me is in vain;
For who goes up your winding stair
Can ne'er come down again."


For all the talk about the direct democracy, or even socialism, that is supposed to be, somehow, inherent to the structure of the internet and its so-called freeconomics (even as the  suggestion comes in that the recent Moldovan 'Twitter revolution' was perhaps little more than just a pseudo-event in the other, i.e., non-Badiouian, sense). Isn't there actually something of a new feudalism in the way Google and such like lord it over the rest of the world, beaming benignly all the while, as the city of Lenoir, N.C. recently discovered? Is Google malicious? asks Miller, "What is sure is that it is stupid... Meaning escapes Google, which encodes but doesn't decode." It is the stupidity of the toff, who sees the whole online world as its dominion, its birth right, but hasn't the faintest idea about governance, beyond the inane platitude of, "Don't be evil." Surely only someone with good reason to be suspected would insist so vocally on its own benevolence. . .