June 1997 net worth by Leslie Harpold |
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Conspiracy Theory
I'm not a paranoid person. I have always figured that conspiracies of the most foul kind will happen whether or not I am hip to the inner workings of the CIA. It took me meeting one of the guys who works on Disinformation to give it a serious look.
And, for you hard core anti-Razorfish people, a word: Disinformation got it's start on it's own before it became part of the Razorfish subnetwork system, under circumstances that are cloudy in detail. I know, I know, and I don't like diary of a girl age 24 and a half either, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. The original Disinfo people, from what I can tell are still running the show, and Razorfish gave it a much needed design overhaul, for which I might add, they did a fantastic job. There's a lot more interesting things to point out besides how much I think those little icons are cute though, so I'll have at it.
What Disinformation is, in essence, is a
search engine. A refined search engine, which
selects and reviews URLs containing
information then makes a huge database of
the keywords, so when you want to know about
something specific, you just plunk in the words
you need - and the queries can be pretty
simplistic, and it will point you to the best sites
on the web (at least the best ones they know
about so far) and return the URLs with a brief
synopsis of the material at the suggested web
sites.
Disinfo has positioned itself as the subculture
search engine. If they continue to maintain the
kind of quality in reporting that I have seen so
far, and you have any interest in things even
slightly outside the mainstream, this will
become even more vital. Lots of kooks are on
the net these days, and you can bet every one
of them has a web page. Using a more
simplistic search site like AltaVista or
Lycos (which garner their information through
the use of bots looking for keywords on a
page) it's hard to tell an informative complex
site about say, DMT from one that just
endlessly prattles "man, that U2 show was like
a DMT trip" over and over again, which would
get the second page a higher rating than say,
a Terrence McKenna piece about his
research. It weeds out the fans and the catch
phrase droppers to give you a selection of
articles that are informative and enlightening.
On the more popular topics, and bigger
phenomenons, like Crop Circles, Cults, Aliens
and government resistance groups like the
Zapatistas and the Shining Path, Disinfo will
provide, as part of your search results a
"dossier" on the subject. The dossiers are put
together by people who are passionate and
knowledgeable about a subject, without
imparting a radical their radical position on
that subject into the 500 or so word
introduction to the topic.
I'm not saying the dossier introductions don't
have a slant but they serve as decent openers
to the subject, where, if you already have an
opinion about the topic you seek information
on, isn't strong enough to be off-putting should
you disagree. That sounds lame on paper
(virtual or otherwise) but the second part of the
dossier is a selection of links that contain
some of each of the sides of the story, so you
can do your own reading and make up your
own mind. It's like someone already went
through the paper for you and cut out all the
articles that matter to you, and you don't have
to read through all of it to find what you're
looking for. The sites are ranked on a scale of
one to four, with four being the highest
relevancy. So you can decide how deep you
want to dig, and where the best place to start
is.
It's not just politics and aliens either. It's broken
down into 5 categories: propaganda,
revolutionaries, censorship, counterculture,
counterintelligence, and newspeak. The
content reflects the modicum that knowledge
is power and their position is that the staff of
Disinformation seek
to empower their site visitors be giving them
access to all sides of a story, but I'm going to
come out and say they've found out a way to
be paranoid for a living, to our direct benefit.
And they're right, they believe that what you
don't know can hurt you.
They sum up themselves better than I can though:
DisInformation was designed to be the search service of
choice for
individuals looking for information on current affairs,
politics, new
science and the 'hidden information,' that seldom seems to slip
through the cracks of the corporate owned media conglomerates.
The goal is to get users to the information they seek, in the
fastest,
most efficient way possible. To that end, we're linking to a
smaller,
higher quality pool of websites, so someone looking for
up-to-date
'alternative' news on the situation in Bosnia, for example,
won't
have to sift through endless webpages which say something like
'Hi, I'm Dave. I think it's terrible what's going on in
Bosnia. Here's a
picture of my dog.'
If you want to know about scientologists,
Whitewater, Shining Path, Bovine Growth
Hormones or interdimensional travel, this is
the place to start. Even if you think the people
who believe in aliens are a little loco in the
coco, it's always good to see what the world is
up to where you're not looking. Get a little dose
of empowerment and take a look at
Disinformation. It's not as fun as SMUG, and of
course, no digital love, but they know what's
good for you, and sometimes medicine can
taste pretty good.
back to the junk drawer
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