[See you there.]

The three social media or Web 2.0 sites that I’ve deactivated since March 10th are AFH Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. I also stopped directing email to my Blackberry. This Tumblr is currently serving as the main site for Art for Humans.

I started using Myspace in earnest in late 2005, on the hunch that a Lead Artist might utilize its burgeoning popular appeal and features to assemble a collective of qualified artists for collective projects. AFH formed the AFH Friend Collective to this end, and we launched several exhibits in 2006 and -7 that drew from the AFHFC pool of artists: “Stop Fucking Praying for the Apocalypse,” and “HUM 10 +1” were the two most successful. The latter formed the basis for AFH Gallery Chinatown.

Myspace was a difficult system to use. MS never seemed to resolve whether its operations were command-control or open source. The code hacks turned out to be the open source. The MS management, strangely assigned the “Tom” persona of artificial singular user, proved to be weird and arbitrary in applying force and restraint. To be sure, preventing spam and other abuses on and by such a big pool of users is no mean task. Still, there were head-scratcher moments.

One artist friend and ultimately collaborator Christian Moeller, developed a massive following of 30,000 MS friends. He devoted thousands of hours to his MS project. One day, MS shut down his site, without explanation, and Christian was forced to rebuild his site from scratch, a task that he could no longer instill with his initial enthusiasm for the wired community of MS. Such interventions were hardly uncommon.

Facebook came along at a lucky time for Facebook. Dependency is not something netters, especially young ones, long tolerate. The clumsiness of the MS platform and its limitations, as well as the lowest-common-denominator culture it encouraged by its structure, made some users crave a more elegant and exclusive - meaningful - solution. The cryptic drive-by commenter and friend harvester on MS contributed a lot to FB’s cause for existence, as a negation. Twitter, I guess, proved to be the second negation in this respect.

It should be recalled that Google in the meantime was crushing search engine competitors - harmlessly (?) - throughout the compressed timeline. The portable mobile devices of the telecoms were expanding their apps and utility simultaneously. The dimensional phenomena in the domain proved a perfect storm for MS. When Murdoch bought the company, it was over. I think he acquired MS to kill it, Gannett-style. The organizing promise these popular platforms presented for bottom-top democracy were apparent to any analyst worth his salt.

Which leads to a topic: the channeling effect of MGT society. A good metaphor is the food industry’s mechanism for pushing cattle to slaughter, then distributing the parts to retail outlets, and ultimately to the stomachs of consumers. Social media, for all the boosterism, has been co-opted to serve as a processing tool for online social exchange by the usual corporate syndicates.

While it’s very true that individual participants are still finding excellent uses for the systems, and that beautiful community organizing movements can work on Web 2.0 platforms, the macro is slaughtering the micro into media bits for consumption, and the promise of broadband and universal web access is failing to deliver democracy. What mostly occurs in today’s social media is an extension of media syndication, for commercial purposes.

This analysis doesn’t reach the real problem, however. The power-value of MS, FB and Twitter isn’t primarily in their advertiser apps. The juice fueling these platforms is their value as data pools, as case study environments, and back-door surveillance networks. An average user, enjoying FB for its capacity for reconnecting people separated by time and distance, isn’t usually aware of or concerned that an anonymous administrator or analyst or Homeland Security agent can acquire and apply data contained in a FB profile, 4Dimensionally integrating that information into massive databases to whatever end.

When the financial sector giants, the ones who caused the financial catastrophes of 2007 through the present and for the foreseeable future, began to divvy up the major social media sites among themselves, using blood-money from their US racket to do so, I’d had enough. If my high school friends want to let me know what they’re up to, they can email me at art at artforhumans dot com. I’ll be dumping all Google apps soon. “Do no harm,” my ass.

Animation Still, “The Marriage of Art and Science,” for the DDDD installation “Sirens + Conflagrations” (1999)

Click “change message” to “Art for Humans” to see the F/X.

login.trans.onsite.statansy432.343.02990021.defrag

can’t see her through the blue smoke. it’s dark in here. the one-eye at the table next to me is staring at his half-snorted bylvern medusa. moaning softly what sounds like one of their bloody dirges through his oozing nostrils. shabby stinker to my right fidgeting, probably carrying. cold outside. probably a hundred below, tongue freezing cold. simple pleasure is all i want. ever since i got hit by the sky zapper, i get itchy whenever Bronan hits the button on the skrak cooker. fusion modules behind the bar really fuk me up. every time the digital resets at 0 the humming starts and i can feel my blud thin and adrenals pump and knuckles peak out and my skins turn plastic, like a vulreanne cruiser lighting up for quick-lift in my skull. shivering rancid, man. she don’t even remember me from yester, i’ll wager. what am i doing here? simple pleasure. i got the tingle when she stepped out of the lock. the little dainty covering her mamms and pubes barely. gold curls all tied up with endinn diamonds and slindik cutcheon. the wraparounds hid her violet eyes from the infra, lips parted just so, and i know what that means. so did the fat ass councilman in his irbino robe, the bio-freak, cause he lisping approaches her in his bulbous manner, waving his black-nailed, three-digit graspers, all stone heavy and sleek, and whisks my luscious to his table. which he’s sharing with a nasty virus, a skank, and a savage shredder whose tusks are rank with humoid flesh. leering at her, they were. i sensed it. but i also sensed their fear, which gave me no little satisfaction. it didn’t take qudrant, his right fair and just non-aggressive arbiter of inter-species disputes, more than eight ticks to enjoin my luscious to share a ruban ball of haze in the cushy dock. the entourage slithered after them, but did not join them, rather taking stations at a table a respectful distance away. the last glimpse of her i got, she had ingested the haze ball and smoke had begun to billow from those lips, as well as her nose. then her head tilted back, and i lost sight of her. this is stupid.

—goorak!

shit the fukin one-eye didn’t see him come over. i’m really slaggin lately

-get off yawookar yawookarye! ahm no holden!

—goorak! godllennaaa. neeoows. pllleeeazzzzshhh…

-nahnahnah. doncha shtairt yer bluddy greetin, ye oozin moond eh pus. fer jayzus sek.

i did feel for the oozin bastard. the last of his species. trapped here on this godless rock. no wonder he’s given to the snort. the one-eyes, elggainns, were a powerful warrior race, according to legend. their fleets dominated the vaygar sectan for half a million years. a little bug picked up on some desolate planet scragged em and in five generations the whole lot were gone. eighteen billion of them. their mating habits did them in. every seven hundred elggainn years, the entire species would gather on elggane and, if the old tales could be trusted, the wildest orgy in the galaxy would commence, and in another seven years, some six billion of the little one-eyed oozers would slosh forth into the universe, where their primary occupation til the next orgy was to consume every civilization they discovered, by whatever means necessary. monoptical butchers they were called. well, all of that’s history now, as they say. a great warrior race reduced to this sore-covered oozer beggin snorts on a terran outstation. in the auld days, i’d ‘ve blasted his arse just for the sense of closure it would have left me with. you don’t get much of that in the interstellar.

-go on ye buggmeech. the gyreen’ll put one on mah plastic fer ye. but ef ye esk us fer anuther so help me ah’ll blast yer oozin hole. ken?

—meeerrccshhhaay.

-the bluddy terran’s improven by the by, ye orange-skinned bastard.

here’s the long and short of it. i’ve been downloaded to tansy station 432 to do a job. it’s my 343rd mission in the past 100 years. i’m to scan the mark and delete her luscious bod, and deliver her date to the home office. no deadline, no methodology limits. and i get an open expense allocation. posh job, relatively. and my mark, my luscious, she’s a lock. with ho’s assist, i found her in the first search, a paltry 480 and boom, i’ve landed, ascertained her nesting and motion patterns, and manufactured a suitable shell for the job. i can afford to be patient.

i’m a pro, a muter, and hold the best record for scan-dels in the ranks. some of my jobs have been filed and applied in basics courses in ho academies all over the galaxy. ho has had to process and reassign my ident-package and content exhange routing dozens of times to keep the networks from accessing my info/map readings and logs. in other words, i’m an invisible, a celeb without a medium, name, or face.

my favorite job so far involved scan-deling a shosama marekai on the rinso emperor’s planet. i got to assume the ident-package of the mark’s childhood lover/instructor/programmer. i had often heard that shosama marekai’s sensory apps were some of the finest known, legendary, even. a zap grunt i met on a mission once told me about a month he’d spent with one on a rec-world in the s-4 region of ranfi. he’d said it cost him ten years’ pay, and he never once regretted it. anyhoo, after three days with my marekai-mark, “becoming reacquainted” and “installing updates”, i was almost relieved to wrap up the job. I thought she was going to crash me. it took a major overhaul to restore my settings at ho/tech. i even asked the bio-adjutant to erase my memory the trystings, out of fear that my performance would deteriorate. the marekai, some said, were capable of inducing spontaneous ejaculation in their former partners at will, from a distance of up to eight rendon klicks. even though mine was shut down, i wasn’t going to take any chances. it’s a strange universe, if you know what i mean. debugging after interstellar work takes many forms, in my line of work.

my telep chip’s pinging.

.access504

..granted.begin

.datcom indicates mark notified by telep.

..content?

.unknown

..origin?

.unknown

.mission status?

.go

..statprobsuc?

.97%, before telep contact w/mark

..after?

.unavailable

..notify when available. terminate

.acknowledge. terminate

fukin ho. typical.

one-eye coming back from dispenser, raises his vial, and winks at me, and explodes into orange spray at the same time the sonic shock hits my ears, deafing me. felt like a double blast as i dive for the floor, roll behind a grrengain footstool, my blaster in my hand. simple pleasure. i’ve got the oozer all over me. i can hear qudrant howling, his henchmen calling back. two more blasts, and no more henchmen calling back. from the sound of it, “fsstrt” and “bloot”, she got the virus and skank. Brodan must have hit the drop button, and tubed through the floor, cause nobody’s at the counter. probably gor qudrant with the first blast. was she a mimic? or worse, a muter? where’s the bloody shredder got to? blek, this could be very bad. the enviro-ampule, and old 9xsm00, had shattered with the first blast, and the toxics had already amplified to red zone. had she hit it on purpose? i increase internal filtration and detox, and switch visuals to opaque-9/10. aud/vis enhance to lvl9. adren/endorph accel. engaged.

i hear the shredder. the monster’s crouched in the far corner under an old cruiser cowl Brodan had brought in when he decorated this dump. chrighty! it looks like he’s got a moosh grenade in his claws. the suicidal fuk! if he activates it we’ll be frikken dust! i raise my blaster and depress the trig and whhoom, no more shredder. the moosh falls to the floor and spins three or four times, before coming to rest.

-hey-don’t shoot! i got the shredder! are you alright?

a hydraulic hose, ripped out of a console to my left, is spraying qudrant’s shrinking corpse with something acidic, and his finery and exo are melting. that reeks, it does. the wolderian opera track that’s been rolling along since i showed up at Brodan’s Dispensery yester somehow is still reeling, filtered through assorted alarums, beeps, whistles, and groans coming from damaged hardware. aud.bed for this scene. simple pleasure.

telep.

.access 504

..granted

—hey

i turn my head just in time to see the blue flash and feel the searing shock of a hand zapper against the back of my neck. and i dream of my luscious’s beauteous goggled face, and her enigmatic smile, all highlighted in blue and static.

.requested statprobsuc: .000010024%

.repeat?

.repeat? acknowledge, please.

login.trans.onsite.unver.343.02990022.defrag

—haloooo. mystery homme. halooo. zoom in. pinpoint refract at 410-43-alphsigdel-9b. haloo, pretty boy.

-ummh

—that’s good. zoom in.

nothanksithinkiwilldreamsomemore

login.trans.onsite.unver.343.02990023.defrag

—…bipedal, no distinguishing marks, scan produced level 2 mem.filtration, level 43 enhancement programming, type N telep connection, grade9 body armor, sensory apps superior, and hung like a scultt…indicates ho operative type s-d. can’t access files without crashing the scumbeg. haven’t decided whether to or not…

-ahhhh

—not yet, darling. go back to sleep.

login.trans.onsite.unver.343.02990024.defrag.supp

i’m on some kind of transport. traveling at at least 3000klicks/prsc. restraints. bodyarmor deactivated. system enhancements scrambled. aud/vis moderated, but functioning. backup activate now. my fukken arm’s aching, level 7 pain. my luscious has surgically removed my telep and locator chip. how’d she do that? it’s interleaved. i should be crashed. this is definitely problematic. my jonson’s raw. i’ve been molested! i guess my luscious couldn’t wait for me to come to. i hear a sensor beeping. a vacuum lock opens.

—greetings, psyops 48990a, otherwise known as KYfunc! how are you feeling?

-violated.

—oh, that. sorry. it’s been a while for me. i’m sure you’ve been there before. given your rep, and plans for me, i shouldn’t think it would bother you all that much.

-i prefer to be conscious when coupling.

—never fear. if i decide to re-port your opticals, i’ll let you digi-view it. if you’re really nice, i’ll hook you up to the virtual, and it’ll be almost as good as the real thing.

-this whole thing has left me feeling dirty deep down inside.

—my, my. are you really that fragile?

-i suppose so. give me break. i’ve never been tagged before.

—welcome to the mortals. you’ll get over it.

-hmmph!

—oh, come on. it’s not that bad.

-how would you know?

—sometime i’ll tell you about my first time.

-coupling?

—maybe that too, but i meant the first time i got tagged.

-i don’t get it.

—psyops900789, a/k/a MakUdrool. welcome to my world.

with that she ports my opticals and the brightness of the medbay blinds me and i nearly pass out.

-ouch.

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it’s simply a pesser when you’re forced to operate in realtime, after you’ve gotten used to tachypsychia deluxe. as a psyops, you’re installed with the most advanced bio-sys enhancements available. your analyzer’s optimized, and integrated with a nuero-sys that’s also been hotwired, not to mention the modified immunological bundle, or the ready-access infordinance, or the computalog, the 18 billion gpk telep, or the ultimate plastic your direct link to any means necessary. the psyops corps is the home office’s answer to all its interstellar active diplomacy needs. there are only a few million active psyops operating in the known universe, and i’d never even heard of two psyops meeting in the interstellar. ho zoning has contended for hundreds of years that such contact outside of ho facilities is impossible. once again i’m making history.

-do you have any idea why ho wanted me to scan-del you?

—i’ve been thinking quite a bit about that since i got you on the table.

-you won’t drop that, will you. by the way, when are you going to unbind me? i’m not very comfortable, here, like this, you know.

—when i’m convinced you’re not a threat to me or this ship, i’ll let you up.

pandemonium! the impact throws her against the bio-med console. sparks and a spout of blue flame briefly erupt from the control panel. Makudrool’s smoking body hurtles out of my line of sight, though i hear her hit the floor, and shortly thereafter, begin to moan.    i’ve been through quite a few boardings in my time, and, if you’re not expecting it, you can find yourself impaled on a suit rack(i saw that happen, once.). all the sudden, i’m very grateful that i was strapped down.

-