[iDC] Mining the Military-Academic-Industrial Complex in a Poetic-Serious Fashion

[Brian Holmes]

[Hi Anna!]

Anna Munster wrote:
>  the 'hard' data possessed by the military on its projects and
> research never really enters the public arena of the 'web' and  
> therefore isn't open to such forms of aggregation. We all know that  
> information/data sits on military servers that never see the light of  
> day.

This last is definitely true for lots of strategic information, but in 
my investigations of the Research Triangle universities I was dismayed 
to learn how widespread the "dual use"  strategy has become, whereby the 
military funds research with a legitimizing civilian application and a 
military one that is also publicly admitted, but accepted 'cause it's 
all supposedly for the greater good. The Bush administration 
additionally saw an increase of direct and open development of weaponry 
in university labs. All this is part of neoliberal strategies to exploit 
the productivity and indeed creativity of open, widely interactive 
communication between scholars and scientists. So finding ways to bring 
greater awareness of what's going on in the broad light of day is also 
necessary in the USA, and perhaps in other countries....

best, Brian