Espenschied, Dragan; Freude, Alvar
«insert_coin: Hidden mechanisms and hierarchies in the most free medium of them all»

«Two people had content control over 250 people. Through manipulating web traffic without the knowledge of any user, we wanted to test how competent people are with this everyday medium and how crucial their attitude towards the internet is. We changed search engines into denouncing services, changed the daily news on magazine and newspaper sites, even changed words in private email messages accessed through a web interface like hotmail. Nobody took notice we could easily fake authenticity as we had full control over the URL, the only prove that makes data unique in the web. When we revealed the experiment to the students and the staff of the academy, providing very easy instructions how individual students could turn off the filtering, there was little to no reaction. Until today, most of the computers in the academy acess the web through the filter. (...) Our experiment has proven that manipulation (not simple blocking!) of internet content is easy and efficient. The Internet is by no means uncontrollable, without hierarchy or immune to power. Users have no idea about how a medium works that becomes more important every day in fields of politics, economy and privacy.»
Espenschied/Freude in: www.medienkunstpreis.de (2001)

Espenschied, Dragan; Freude, Alvar