Slavoj Žižek + Paul Holdengräber "Surveillance and whistleblowers" - International Authors' Stage
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters call it an entertaining, complementary philosophical take on surveillance, with a funny story about jamming secret police.
What it is
Slavoj Zizek and Paul Holdengraber discuss surveillance and whistleblowers at the International Authors' Stage, ranging over Snowden, Assange, Pussy Riot and humor.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2014 to 2016.
What Hacker News said
Recommends rdtsc · 2014-07 · on “Jamming XKeyScore”
Even if you don't like Slavoj Žižek, he has a funny story related to this: [this video] He talks about how he and his associates were dissidents and had meetings and they agreed on a protocol to talk gibberish at the end. Fake, military sounding code words and stuff. It was a fun thing to do. Years later they discovered the amount of head-aches and resource drain they caused on the secret police who tried in vain to discover the meaning in this nonsense, thinking that perhaps there was some serious stuff going on. That is why I hope one good thing comes out of it, and that is people might start taking cryptography slightly more seriously and they'll also start actively fighting back. This is one
Recommends TheSpiceIsLife · 2014-10 · on “Stop Australia's Data Retention Bill”
At this stage it has become apparent that opposing surveillance doesn't appear to be helping. It's pretty clear where this is headed, and it seems to me the only way out of it is through it and out the other side, whatever that might look like. My position on surveillance is now, and has been for a few months, what Slavoj Žižek said: "Yeah but I don't care if we are watched. Here I preach arrogance. So what, let the big 'other' watch me maybe he will learn something and be less stupid, you know, this is not my problem." If you haven't seen it this video[1] of Slavoj Žižek and Paul Holdengräber on "Surveillance and whistleblowers" at the International Authors' Stage, published earlier this ye
Recommends TheSpiceIsLife · 2015-03 · on “Reasons not to use Facebook”
As a complimentary perspective: For those who haven't seen it, I think Slavoj Žižek and Paul Holdengräber on "Surveillance and whistleblowers" is worth a watch. The part about surveillance starts at 21:14 so this link will take you there [this video] Žižek: "The most dangerous unfreedom is the unfreedom you don't even experience, as such. If some of you are feminists ... every good feminist will tell you the first step of feminism is just to realise your situation of oppression... We need something similar here. That's the first point. The second point ... I'm a little bit sceptic about this paranoia 'ooh we are totally controlled' and so on and so on, I think we shouldn't take this too seriously
Recommends RodericDay · 2016-09 · on “Google’s become an obsessive stalker”
Slavoj Zizek had a great talk with a talk show host from the Netherlands precisely about this matter. [this video] Fun watch imo. There's also another session between them two.
Cites TheSpiceIsLife · 2016-08 · on “Uber's Failure in Japan”
To follow up on this, here is the full quote from Slavoj Žižek in conversation with Paul Holdengräber: Zizek: Here I’m a little bit of anti-democratic pessimist in the sense that if you really ask people, cut the bullshit, what do you really want from government, I don’t think people really want that government should not torture people and so on, the point is do it but do it discretely I don’t want to know it. 1. [this video]