<subject>Utopian Promises-Net Realities / Critical Art Ensembl</subject>
<from>Pit Schultz</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Sun, 19 Nov 1995 17:01:30 +0100 (MET)</date>
<content>Address to Interface 3:
Utopian Promises-Net Realities
Critical Art Ensemble
The need for net criticism certainly is a matter of overwhelming urgency. While a number of critics have approached the new world of computerized communications with a healthy amount of skepticism, their message has been lost in the noise and spectacle of corporate hype-the unstoppable tidal wave of seduction has enveloped so many in its dynamic utopian beauty that little time for careful reflection is left. Indeed, a glimpse of a possibility for a better future may be contained in the new techno-apparatus, and perhaps it is best to acknowledge these possibilities here in the beginning, since Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) has no desire to take the position of the neoluddites who believe that the techno-apparatus should be rejected outright, if not destroyed. To be sure, computerized communications offer the possibility for the enhanced storage, retrieval, and exchange of information for those who have access to the necessary hardware, software, and technical skills. In turn, this increases the possibility for greater access to vital information, faster exchange of information, enhanced distribution of information, and cross cultural artistic and critical collaborations. The potential humanitarian benefits of electronic systems are undeniable; however, CAE questions whether the electronic apparatus is being used for these purposes inthe representative case, much as we question the political policies which guide the net's development and accessibility.
This is not the first time that the promise of electronic utopia has been offered. One need only look back at Brecht's critique of radio to find reason for concern when such promises are resurrected. While Brecht recognizedradio's potential for distributing information for humanitarian and cultural purposes, he was not surprised to see radio being used for the very opposite. Nor should we be surprised that his calls for a more democratic interactive medium went unheeded.
During the early 1970s, there was a brief euphoric moment during the video revolution when some believed that Brecht's call for an interactive and democratic electronic medium was about to be answered. The development of homevideo equipment led to a belief that soon everyone who desired to would be able to manufacture their own television. This seemed to be a real possibility. As the cost of video equipment began to drop dramatically, and cable set-ups offered possibilities for distribution, electronic utopia seemedimmanent, and yet, the home video studio never came to be. Walls and boundaries confounding this utopian dream seemed to appear out of nowhere. Forinstance, in the US, standards for broadcast quality required postproduction equipment that no one could access or afford except capital-saturated media companies. Most cable channels remained in the control of corporate media, andthe few public access channels fell into the hands of censors who cited "community standards" as their reason for an orderly broadcast system. While production equipment did get distributed as promised, the hopes of the video utopianists were crushed at the distribution level. Corporate goals for establishing a new market for electronic hardware were met, but the means for democratic cultural production never appeared.
Now that giddy euphoria is back again, arising in the wake of the personal computer revolution of the early 80s, and with the completion of a "world-wide" multi-directional distribution network. As to be expected, utopian promises from the corporate spectacle machine drown the everyday livesof bureaucrats and technocrats around the first world, and once again there seems to be a general belief-at least within technically adept populations-that this time the situation will be different. And to a degree, this situation is different. There is an electronic free zone, but from CAE's perspective, it is only a modest development at best. By far the most significant use of the electronic apparatus is to keep order, to replicate dominant pancapitalist ideology, and to develop new markets.
At the risk of redundantly stating the obvious, CAE would like to recall the origins of the internet. The internet is war-tech that was designedas an analog to the US highway system (Yet another product which stemmed from the mind of the military, and which was primarily intended as a decentralized aid to mobilization). The US military wanted an apparatus that would preserve command structure in the case of nuclear attack. The answer was an electronic web capable of immediately rerouting itself if one or more links were destroyed, thus allowing surviving authorities to remain in communication witheach other and to act accordingly. With such an apparatus in place, military authority could be maintained, even through the worst of catastrophes. With such planning at the root of the internet, suspicion about its alleged anti-authoritarian characteristics must occur to anyone who takes the time to reflect on the apparatus. It should also be noted that the decentralized characteristics for which so many praise the net did not arise out of anarchist intention, but out of nomadic military strategy.
Research scientists were the next group to go on-line after the military. While it would be nice to believe that their efforts on the net werebenign, one must question why they were given access to the apparatus in the first place. Science has always claimed legitimacy by announcing its "value-free" intentions to search for the truth of the material world; however, this search costs money, and hence a political economy with a direct and powerful impact on science's lofty goals of value-free research enters theequation. Do investors in scientific research offer money with no restrictionsattached? This seems quite unlikely. Some type of return on the investment is implicit in any demand from funding institutions. In the US, the typical demand is either theory or technology with military applications or applications that will strengthen economic development. The greater the results promised by science in terms of these two categories, the more generous the funding. In the US, not even scientists get something for nothing.
The need for greater efficiency in research and development opened the new communication systems to academics, and with that development, a necessary degree of disorder was introduced into the apparatus. Elements of free zone information exchange began to appear. But as this system developed, other investors, most notably the corporations, demanded their slice of the electronic pie. All kinds of financial business were conducted on the net with relatively secure efficiency. As the free zone began to grow, the corporations realized that a new market mechanism was growing with it, and eventually the marketeers were released onto the net. At this point, a peculiar paradox came into being: Free market capitalism came into conflict with the conservative desire for order. It became apparent that for this new market possibility to reach its full potential, authorities would have to tolerate a degree of chaos. This was necessary to seduce the wealthier classes into using the net as site of consumption and entertainment, and second, to offer the net as an alibi for the illusion of social freedom. Although totalizing control of communications was lost, the overall cost of this development to governments and corporations was minimal, and in actuality, the cost was nothing compared to what was gained. Thus was born the most successful repressive apparatus of all time; and yet it was (and still is) successfully represented under the sign of liberation. What is even more frightening is that the corporation's best allies in maintaining the gleaming utopian surface of cyberspace are some of the very populations who should know better. Techno-utopianists have accepted the corporate hype, and are now disseminating it as the reality of the net. This regrettable alliance between the elite virtual class and new age cybernauts is structured around five key virtual promises. These are the promised social changes that seem as if they will occur at any moment, but never actually come into being.
Promise One: The New Body
Those of us familiar with discourse on cyberspace and virtual reality have heard this promise over and over again, and in fact there is a kernel of truth associated with it. The virtual body is a body of great potential. On this body we can reinscribe ourselves using whatever coding system we desire. We can try on new body configurations. We can experiment with immortality by going places and doing things that would be impossible in the physical world. For the virtual body, nothing is fixed and everything is possible. Indeed, this is the reason why hackers wish to become disembodied consciousnesses flowing freely through cyberspace, willing the idea of their own bodies and environments. As virtual reality improves with new generations of computer technology, perhaps this promise will come to pass in the realm of the multi-sensual; however, it is currently limited to gender reassignment on chatlines, or game boy flight simulators.
What did this allegedly liberated body cost? Payment was taken in the form of a loss of individual sovereignty, not just from those who use the net, but from all people in technologically saturated societies. With the virtual body came its fascist sibling, the data body-a much more highly developed virtual form, and one that exists in complete service to the corporate and police state. The data body is the total collection of files connected to an individual. The data body has always existed in an immature form since the dawn of civilization. Authority has always kept records on its underlings. Indeed, some of the earliest records that Egyptologists have found are tax records. What brought the data body to maturity is the technological apparatus. With its immense storage capacity and its mechanisms for quickly ordering and retrieving information, no detail of social life is too insignificant to record and to scrutinize. From the moment we are born and our birth certificate goes on-line, until the day we die and our death certificate goes on-line, the trajectory of our individual lives is recorded in scrupulous detail. Education files, insurance files, tax files, communication files, consumption files, medical files, travel files, criminal files, investment files, files into infinity....
The data body has two primary functions. The first purpose serves the repressive apparatus; the second serves the marketing apparatus. The desire of authoritarian power to make the lives of its subordinates perfectly transparent achieves satisfaction through the data body. Everyone is under permanent surveillance by virtue of their necessary interaction with the marketplace. Just how detailed data body information actually may be is a matter of speculation, but we can be certain that it is more detailed than we would like it to be, or care to think.
The second function of the data body is to give marketeers more accurate demographic information to design and create target populations. Since pancapitalism has long left the problem of production behind, moving from an economy of need to an economy of desire, marketeers have developed better methods to artificially create desires for products that are not needed. The data body gives them insights into consumption patterns, spending power, and "lifestyle choices" of those with surplus income. The data body helps marketeers to find you, and provide for your lifestyle. The postmodern slogan, "You don't pick the commodity; the commodity picks you" has more meaning than ever.
But the most frightening thing about the data body is that it is the center of an individual's social being. It tells the members of officialdom what our cultural identities and roles are. We are powerless to contradict the data body. Its word is the law. One's organic being is no longer a determining factor, from the point of view of corporate and government bureaucracies. Data has become the center of social culture, and our organic flesh is nothing more than a counterfeit representation of original data.
Promise 2: Convenience
Earlier this century, the great sociologist Max Weber explained why bureaucracies work so well as a means of rationalized social organization in complex society. In comparing bureaucratic practice to his ideal-type, only one flaw appears: Humans provide the labor for these institutions. Unfortunately humans have nonrational characteristics, the most notorious of which is the expression of desire. Rather than working at optimum efficiency, organic units are likely to seek out that which gives them pleasure in ways that are contrary to the instrumental aims of the bureaucracy. All varieties of creative slacking are employed by organic units These range from work slowdowns to unnecessary chit-chat with one's fellow employees. Throughout this century policy makers and managerial classes have concerned themselves with developing a way to stop such activities in order to maximize and
intensify labor output.
The model for labor intensification came with the invention of the robot. So long as the robot is functional, it never strays from its task. Completely replacing humans with robots is not possible, since so far, they are only capable of simple, albeit precise, mechanical tasks. They are data driven, as opposed to the human capacity for concept recognition. The question then becomes how to make humans more like robots, or to update the discourse, more like cyborgs. At present, much of the technology necessary to accomplish this goal is available, and more is in development. However, having the technology, such as telephone headsets or wearable computers, is not enough. People must be seduced into wanting to wear them, at least until the technology evolves that can be permanently fixed to their bodies.
The means of seduction? Convenience. Life will be so much easier if we only connect to the machine. As usual there is a grain of truth to this idea. I can honestly admit that my life has been made easier since I began using a computer, but only in a certain sense. As a writer, it is easier for me to finish a paper now than it was when I used pen and paper or a typewriter. The problem: Now I am able to (and therefore, must) write two papers in the time it used to take to produce one. The implied promise that I will have more free time because I use a computer is false.
Labor intensification through time management is only the beginning, as there is another problem in regard to total utility. People can still separate themselves from their work stations-the true home of the modern day cyborg. The seduction continues, persuading us that we should desire to carry our electronic extensions with us all the time. The latest commercials from AT&T are the perfect representation of consumer seduction. They promise: Have you ever sent a fax....from the beach? You will." or "Have you ever received a phone call....on your wrist? You will." This commercial is most amusing. There is an image of a young man who has just finished climbing a mountain and is watching a sunset. At that moment his wife calls on his wrist phone, and he describes the magnificence of the sunset to her. Now who is kidding who. Is your wife going to call you while you are mountain climbing? Are you going to need to send a fax while lounging on the beach? The corporate intention for deploying this technology (in addition to profit) is so transparent, it's painful. The only possible rejoinder is: "Have you ever been at a work station....24 hours a day, 365 days a year? You will." Now the sweat shop can go any where you do!
Another telling element in this representation is that the men in these commercials are always alone. (This is a gendered element which CAE is sure has not failed to catch the attention of feminists, although CAE is unsure as to whether it will be interpreted as sexism or a stroke of luck). In this sense, the problem is doubled: Not only is the work station always with you, but social interaction will always be fully mediated by technology. This is the perfect solution to abolish that nuisance, the subversive environment of public space.
Promise 3: Community
Currently in the US, there is no more popular buzz word than "community." This word is so empty of meaning that it can be used to describe almost any social manifestation. For the most part, it is used to connote sympathy with or identification with a particular social aggregate. In this sense, one hears of the gay community or the African-American community. There are even oxymorons, such as the international community. Corporate marketeers from IBM to Microsoft have been quick to capitalize on this empty sign as a means to build their commercial campaigns. Recognizing the extreme alienation that afflicts so many under the reign of pancapitalism, they offer net technology as a cure for a feeling of loss that has no referent. Through chat lines, news groups, and other digital environments, nostalgia for a golden age of sociability that never existed is replaced by a new modern day sense of community.
This promise is nothing but aggravating. There is not even a grain of truth in it. If there is any reason for optimism, it is only to the extent mentioned in the beginning of this lecture; that is, the net makes possible a broader spectrum of information exchange. However, anyone with even a basic knowledge of sociology understands that information exchange in no way constitutes a community. Community is a collective of kinship networks which share a common geographic territory, a common history, and a shared value system, one usually rooted in a common religion. Typically, communities are rather homogenous, and tend to exist in the historical context of a simple division of labor. Most importantly, communities embrace nonrational components of life and of consciousness. Social action is not carried out by means of contract, but by understandings, and life is certainly not fully mediated by technology. In this sense, the connection between community and net life is unfathomable. (CAE does not want to romanticize this social form, since communities can be as repressive and/or as pathological as any society).
Use of the net beyond its one necessary use (i.e., information gathering), is, from CAE's perspective, a highly developed anti-social form of interacting. That someone would want to stay in his or her home or office and reject human contact in favor of a textually mediated communication experience can only be a symptom of rising alienation, not a cure for it. Why the repressive apparatus would want this isolation to develop is very clear: If someone is on-line, he or she is off the street and out of the gene pool. In other words, they are well within the limits of control. Why the marketing apparatus would desire such a situation is equally clear: The lonelier people get, the more they will have no choice but to turn to work and to consumption as a means of seeking pleasure.
In a time when public space is diminishing and being replaced by fortified institutions such as malls, theme parks, and other manifestations of forced consumption that pass themselves off as locations for social interaction, shouldn't we be looking for a sense of the social, (that is, to the extent still possible), direct and unmediated, rather than seeing these anti-public spaces replicated in an even more lonely electronic form?
Promise 4: Democracy
Another promise eternally repeated in discourse on cyberspace is the idea that the electronic apparatus will be the zenith of utopian democracy. Certainly, the internet does have some democratic characteristics. It provides all its cyber-citizens with the means to contact all other cyber-citizens. On the net,everyone is equal. The shining emblem of this new democracy is the World Wide Web. People can construct their own home pages, and even more people can access these sites as points of investigation. This is all well and good, but we must ask ourselves if these democratic characteristics actually constitute democracy. A platform for individual voices is not enough (especially in the Web where so many voices are lost in the clutter of data debris). Democracy isdependent on the individual's ability to act on the information received. Unfortunately, even with the net, autonomous action is still as difficult as ever.
The difficulty here is threefold: First, there is the problem of locality and geographic separation. In the case of information gathering, the information is only as useful as the situation and the location of the physical body allows. For example, a gay man who lives in a place where homophobia reigns, or even worse, where homosexual practice is an illegal activity, will still be unable to openly act on his desires, regardless of the information he may gather on the net. He is still just as closeted in his everyday life practice, and is reduced to passive spectatorship in regard to the object of his desire, so long as he remains in a repressive locality.
The second problem is one of institutional oppression. For example, no one can deny that the net can function as a wonderful pedagogical tool and can act as a great means for self education. Unfortunately, the net has very little legitimacy in and of itself as an educational institution. The net must be used in a physical world context under appropriate supervision for it to be awarded legitimacy. In the case of education, in order for the knowledge-value gained from the net to be socially recognized and accepted, it must be used as a tool within the context of a university or a school. These educational contexts are fortified in a manner to maintain a status-quo distribution of education. Consequently, one can acquire a great deal of knowledge from the net, but still have no education capital to be exchanged in the marketplace. In both of these cases, there must be a liberated physical environment if the net is to function as a supplement to democratic activity.
The final problem is that the net functions as a disciplinary apparatus through the use of transparency. If people feel that they are under surveillance, they are less likely to act in manner that is beyond normalized activity; that is, they are less likely to express themselves freely, and to otherwise act in manner that could produce political and social changes within their environments. In this sense, the net serves the purpose of negating activity rather than encouraging it. It channels people toward orderly homogeneous activity, rather than reinforcing the acceptance of difference that democratic societies need.
To be sure, there are times when transparency can be turned against itself. For example, one of the reasons that the PRI party's counteroffensive against the Zapatistas did not end in total slaughter, was the resisting party's use of the net to keep attention focused upon its members and its cause. By disallowing the secret of massacre, many lives were saved, and the resistant movement could continue. Much the same can be said about the stay of execution won for Mumia Abu Jamal. The final point here is that it must be remembered that the internet does not exist in a vacuum. It is intimately related to all kinds of social structures and historical dynamics, and hence its democratic structure cannot be realistically analyzed as if it were a closed system.
Taking a step back from the insider's point of view, achieving democracy through the net seems even less likely considering the demographics of the situation. There are five and a half billion people in the world. Over a billion barely keep themselves alive from day to day. Most people don't evenhave a telephone, and hence it seems very unlikely that they will get a computer, let alone go on-line. This situation raises the question, is the net a means to democracy, or simply another way to divide the world into haves and have-nots? We also must ask ourselves, how many people consider the net really relevant in their everyday lives? While CAE believes that it is safe to assume that the number of net users will grow, it seems unlikely that it will grow to include more than those who have the necessary educational background, and/or those who are employed by bureaucratic and technocratic agencies.
CAE suggests that this elite stronghold will remain so, and that most of the first world population that will become a part of the computer revolution will do so primarily as passive consumers, rather than as active participants. They will be playing computer games, watching interactive TV, and shopping in virtual malls. The stratified distribution of education will act as the guardian of the virtual border between the passive and the active user, and prevent those populations participating in multidirectional interactivity from increasing in any significant numbers.
Promise 5: New Consciousness
Of all the net hype, this promise is perhaps the most insidious, since it seems to have no corporate sponsor (although Microsoft has tapped the trend to some extent). The notion of the new consciousness has emerged out of new age thinking. There is a belief promoted by cyber-gurus (Timothy Leary, Jason Lanier, Roy Ascott, Richard Kriesche, Mark Pesci) that the net is the apparatus of a benign collective consciousness. It is the brain of the planet which transcends into mind through the activities of its users. It can function as a third eye or sixth sense for those who commune with this global coming together. This way of thinking is the paramount form of ethnocentrism and myopic class perception. As discussed in the last section, the third world and most of the first world citizenry are thoroughly marginalized in this divine plan. If anything, this theory replicates the imperialism of early capitalism, and recalls notions such as manifest destiny. If new consciousness is indicative of anything, it is the new age of imperialism that will be realized through information control (as opposed to the early capital model of military domination).
Of the former four promises examined here, each has proven on closer inspection to be a replication of authoritarian ideology to justify and put into action greater repression and oppression. New consciousness is no exception. Even if we accept the good intentions and optimistic hopes of the new age cybernauts, how could anyone conclude that an apparatus emerging out military aggression and corporate predation could possibly function as a new form of terrestrial spiritual development?
Conclusion
As saddened as CAE is to say it, the greater part of the net is capitalism as usual. It is a site for repressive order, for the financial business of capital, and for excessive consumption. While a small part of the net may be used for humanistic purposes and to resist authoritarian structure, its overall function is anything but humanistic. In the same way that we would not consider an unregulated bohemian neighborhood to be representative of a city, we must also not assume that our own small free zone domains are representative of the digital empire. Nor can we trust our futures to the empty promises of a seducer that has no love in its heart.
----
anti-copyright 1995 CAE
distributet by nettime
not for commercial use</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>0.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: Utopian Promises-Net Realities / Critical Art Ensembl</subject>
<from>John Perry Barlow</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Sun, 19 Nov 1995 22:16:20 -0700</date>
<content>At 5:01 PM 11/19/95, Pit Schultz wrote:
>The need for net criticism certainly is a matter of overwhelming urgency.
Pit,
Really? What do you propose we do with your criticisms and indictments?
Even if we find the Net to be brimming with toxins to the future
commonweal, by what means shall we prevent them?
"Direct action" to control the Net toward the improvement of Humankind is
no less perilous in the service of your good intentions than it would be in
the service of Senator Exon's. And stopping it is not an option. It is as
inevitable as evolution, running, as it does, on the same engine.
A decentralized medium offers but few choices - and they are very personal
ones: jack in, jack out, or jack off.
In the end, as Gandhi proposed, "You must be the change you wish to see in
At the end of the twentieth century, the long predicted convergence of
the media, computing and telecommunications into hypermedia is finally
happening. 2 Once again, capitalism's relentless drive to diversify and
intensify the creative powers of human labour is on the verge of
qualitatively transforming the way in which we work, play and live
together. By integrating different technologies around common protocols,
something is being created which is more than the sum of its parts. When
the ability to produce and receive unlimited amounts of information in
any form is combined with the reach of the global telephone networks,
existing forms of work and leisure can be fundamentally transformed. New
industries will be born and current stock market favourites will swept
away. At such moments of profound social change, anyone who can offer a
simple explanation of what is happening will be listened to with great
interest. At this crucial juncture, a loose alliance of writers,
hackers, capitalists and artists from the West Coast of the USA have
succeeded in defining a heterogeneous orthodoxy for the coming
information age: the Californian Ideology.
This new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural
bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of Silicon
Valley. Promoted in magazines, books, tv programmes, Web sites,
newsgroups and Net conferences, the Californian Ideology promiscuously
combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial
zeal of the yuppies. This amalgamation of opposites has been achieved
through a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new
information technologies. In the digital utopia, everybody will be both
hip and rich. Not surprisingly, this optimistic vision of the future has
been enthusiastically embraced by computer nerds, slacker students,
innovative capitalists, social activists, trendy academics, futurist
bureaucrats and opportunistic politicians across the USA. As usual,
Europeans have not been slow in copying the latest fad from America.
While a recent EU Commission report recommends following the Californian
'free market' model for building the 'information superhighway',
cutting-edge artists and academics eagerly imitate the 'post-human'
philosophers of the West Coast's Extropian cult. 3 With no obvious
rivals, the triumph of the Californian Ideology appears to be complete.
The widespread appeal of these West Coast ideologues isn't simply the
result of their infectious optimism. Above all, they are passionate
advocates of what appears to be an impeccably libertarian form of
politics - they want information technologies to be used to create a new
'Jeffersonian democracy' where all individuals will be able to express
themselves freely within cyberspace. 4 However, by championing this
seemingly admirable ideal, these techno-boosters are at the same time
reproducing some of the most atavistic features of American society,
especially those derived from the bitter legacy of slavery. Their
utopian vision of California depends upon a wilful blindness towards the
other - much less positive - features of life on the West Coast: racism,
poverty and environmental degradation. 5 Ironically, in the not too
distant past, the intellectuals and artists of the Bay Area were
passionately concerned about these issues.
Ronald Reagan v. the hippies
On 15 May 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan ordered armed police to carry out
a dawn raid against hippie protesters who had occupied People's Park
near the Berkeley campus of the University of California. During the
subsequent battle, one man was shot dead and 128 other people needed
hospital treatment. 6 On that day, the 'straight' world and the
counter-culture appeared to be implacably opposed. On one side of the
barricades, Governor Reagan and his followers advocated unfettered
private enterprise and supported the invasion of Vietnam. On the other
side, the hippies championed a social revolution at home and opposed
imperial expansion abroad. In the year of the raid on People's Park, it
seemed that the historical choice between these two opposing visions of
America's future could only be settled through violent conflict. As
Jerry Rubin, one of the Yippie leaders, said at the time: 'Our search
for adventure and heroism takes us outside America, to a life of
self-creation and rebellion. In response, America is ready to destroy
us...' 7
During in the '60s, radicals from the Bay Area pioneered the political
outlook and cultural style of New Left movements across the world.
Breaking with the narrow politics of the post-war era, they launched
campaigns against militarism, racism, sexual discrimination, homophobia,
mindless consumerism and pollution. In place of the traditional left's
rigid hierarchies, they created collective and democratic structures
which supposedly prefigured the libertarian society of the future. Above
all, the Californian New Left combined political struggle with cultural
rebellion. Unlike their parents, the hippies refused to conform to the
rigid social conventions imposed on organisation men by the military,
the universities, the corporations and even left-wing political parties.
Instead they openly declared their rejection of the straight world
through their casual dress, sexual promiscuity, loud music and
recreational drugs. 8 The radical hippies were liberals in the social
sense of the word. They championed universalist, rational and
progressive ideals, such as democracy, tolerance, self-fulfillment and
social justice. Emboldened by over twenty years of economic growth, they
believed that history was on their side. In sci-fi novels, they dreamt
of 'ecotopia': a future California where cars had disappeared,
industrial production was ecologically viable, sexual relationships were
egalitarian and daily life was lived in community groups. 9 For some
hippies, this vision could only be realised by rejecting scientific
progress as a false God and returning to nature. Others, in contrast,
believed that technological progress would inevitably turn their
libertarian principles into social fact. Crucially, influenced by the
theories of Marshall McLuhan, these technophiliacs thought that the
convergence of media, computing and telecommunications would inevitably
create the electronic agora - a virtual place where everyone would be
able to express their opinions without fear of censorship. Despite being
a middle-aged English professor, McLuhan preached the radical message
that the power of big business and big government would be imminently
overthrown by the intrinsically empowering effects of new technology on
individuals.
'Electronic media...abolish the spatial dimension... By electricity, we
everywhere resume person-to-person relations as if on the smallest
village scale. It is a relation in depth, and without delegation of
functions or powers... Dialogue supersedes the lecture.' 10
Encouraged by McLuhan's predictions, West Coast radicals became involved
in developing new information technologies for the alternative press,
community radio stations, home-brew computer clubs and video
collectives. These community media activists believed that they were in
the forefront of the fight to build a new America. The creation of the
electronic agora was the first step towards the implementation of direct
democracy within all social institutions. 11 The struggle might be hard,
but 'ecotopia' was almost at hand.
The Rise of the 'Virtual Class'
Who would have predicted that, in less than 30 years after the battle
for People's Park, squares and hippies would together create the
Californian Ideology? Who would have thought that such a contradictory
mix of technological determinism and libertarian individualism would
becoming the hybrid orthodoxy of the information age? And who would have
suspected that as technology and freedom were worshipped more and more,
it would become less and less possible to say anything sensible about
the society in which they were applied?
The Californian Ideology derives its popularity from the very ambiguity
of its precepts. Over the last few decades, the pioneering work of the
community media activists has been largely recuperated by the hi-tech
and media industries. Although companies in these sectors can mechanise
and sub-contract much of their labour needs, they remain dependent on
key people who can research and create original products, from software
programs and computer chips to books and tv programmes. Along with some
hi-tech entrepreneurs, these skilled workers form the so-called 'virtual
class': '...the techno-intelligentsia of cognitive scientists,
engineers, computer scientists, video-game developers, and all the other
communications specialists...' Unable to subject them to the discipline
of the assembly-line or replace them by machines, managers have
organised such intellectual workers through fixed-term contracts. Like
the 'labour aristocracy' of the last century, core personnel in the
media, computing and telecoms industries experience the rewards and
insecurities of the marketplace. On the one hand, these hi-tech artisans
not only tend to be well-paid, but also have considerable autonomy over
their pace of work and place of employment. As a result, the cultural
divide between the hippie and the organisation man has now become rather
fuzzy. Yet, on the other hand, these workers are tied by the terms of
their contracts and have no guarantee of continued employment. Lacking
the free time of the hippies, work itself has become the main route to
self-fulfillment for much of the 'virtual class'. 13
The Californian Ideology offers a way of understanding the lived reality
of these hi-tech artisans. On the one hand, these core workers are a
privileged part of the labour force. On the other hand, they are the
heirs of the radical ideas of the community media activists. The
Californian Ideology, therefore, simultaneously reflects the disciplines
of market economics and the freedoms of hippie artisanship. This bizarre
hybrid is only made possible through a nearly universal belief in
technological determinism. Ever since the '60s, liberals - in the social
sense of the word - have hoped that the new information technologies
would realise their ideals. Responding to the challenge of the New Left,
the New Right has resurrected an older form of liberalism: economic
liberalism. In place of the collective freedom sought by the hippie
radicals, they have championed the liberty of individuals within the
marketplace. Yet even these conservatives couldn't resist the romance of
the new information technologies. Back in the '60s, McLuhan's
predictions were reinterpreted as an advertisement for new forms of
media, computers and telecommunications being developed by the private
sector. From the '70s onwards, Toffler, de Sola Pool and other gurus
attempted to prove that the advent of hypermedia would paradoxically
involve a return to the economic liberalism of the past. 14 This
retro-utopia echoed the predictions of Asimov, Heinlein and other macho
sci-fi novelists whose future worlds were always filled with space
traders, superslick salesmen, genius scientists, pirate captains and
other rugged individualists. 15 The path of technological progress
didn't always lead to 'ecotopia' - it could instead lead back to the
America of the Founding Fathers.
Electronic Agora or Electronic Marketplace?
The ambiguity of the Californian Ideology is most pronounced in its
contradictory visions of the digital future. The development of
hypermedia is a key component of the next stage of capitalism. As Zuboff
points out, the introduction of media, computing and telecommunications
technologies directly into the factory and the office is the culmination
of a long process of separation of the workforce from direct involvement
in production. 16 If only for competitive reasons, all major industrial
economies will eventually be forced to wire up their populations to
obtain the productivity gains of digital working. What is unknown is the
social and cultural impact of allowing people to produce and exchange
almost unlimited quantities of information on a global scale. Above all,
will the advent of hypermedia will realise the utopias of either the New
Left or the New Right? As a hybrid faith, the Californian Ideology
happily answers this conundrum by believing in both visions at the same
time - and by not criticising either of them.
On the one hand, the anti-corporate purity of the New Left has been
preserved by the advocates of the 'virtual community'. According to
their guru, Howard Rheingold, the values of the counterDculture baby
boomers are shaping the development of new information technologies. As
a consequence, community activists will be able to use hypermedia to
replace corporate capitalism and big government with a hi-tech 'gift
economy'. Already bulletin board systems, Net real-time conferences and
chat facilities rely on the voluntary exchange of information and
knowledge between their participants. In Rheingold's view, the members
of the 'virtual class' are still in the forefront of the struggle for
social liberation. Despite the frenzied commercial and political
involvement in building the 'information superhighway', the electronic
agora will inevitably triumph over its corporate and bureaucratic
enemies. 17
On the other hand, other West Coast ideologues have embraced the laissez
faire ideology of their erstwhile conservative enemy. For example, Wired
- the monthly bible of the 'virtual class' - has uncritically reproduced
the views of Newt Gingrich, the extreme-right Republican leader of the
House of Representatives, and the Tofflers, who are his close advisors.
18 Ignoring their policies for welfare cutbacks, the magazine is instead
mesmerised by their enthusiasm for the libertarian possibilities offered
by new information technologies. However, although they borrow McLuhan's
technological determinism, Gingrich and the Tofflers aren't advocates of
the electronic agora. On the contrary, they claim that the convergence
of the media, computing and telecommunications will produce an
electronic marketplace: 'In cyberspace..., market after market is being
transformed by technological progress from a "natural monopoly" to one
in which competition is the rule.' 19
In this version of the Californian Ideology, each member of the 'virtual
class' is promised the opportunity to become a successful hi-tech
entrepreneur. Information technologies, so the argument goes, empower
the individual, enhance personal freedom, and radically reduce the power
of the nation-state. Existing social, political and legal power
structures will wither away to be replaced by unfettered interactions
between autonomous individuals and their software. These restyled
McLuhanites vigorously argue that big government should stay off the
backs of resourceful entrepreneurs who are the only people cool and
courageous enough to take risks. In place of counter-productive
regulations, visionary engineers are inventing the tools needed to
create a 'free market' within cyberspace, such as encryption, digital
money and verification procedures. Indeed, attempts to interfere with
the emergent properties of these technological and economic forces,
particularly by the government, merely rebound on those who are foolish
enough to defy the primary laws of nature. According to the executive
editor of Wired, the 'invisible hand' of the marketplace and the blind
forces of Darwinian evolution are actually one and the same thing. 20 As
in Heinlein's and Asimov's sci-fi novels, the path forwards to the
future seems to lead back to the past. The twenty-first century
information age will be the realisation of the eighteenth century
liberal ideals of Thomas Jefferson: '...the...creation of a new
civilisation, founded in the eternal truths of the American Idea.' 21
The Myth of the 'Free Market'
Following the victory of Gingrich's party in the 1994 legislative
elections, this right-wing version of the Californian Ideology is now in
the ascendant. Yet, the sacred tenets of economic liberalism are
contradicted by the actual history of hypermedia. For instance, the
iconic technologies of the computer and the Net could only have been
invented with the aid of massive state subsidies and the enthusiastic
involvement of amateurs. Private enterprise has played an important
role, but only as one part of a mixed economy.
For example, the first computer - the Difference Engine - was designed
and built by private companies, but its development was only made
possible through a British Government grant of 17,470, which was a
small fortune in 1834. 22 From Colossus to EDVAC, from flight simulators
to virtual reality, the development of computing has depended at key
moments on public research handouts or fat contracts with public
agencies. The IBM corporation only built the first programmable digital
computer after it was requested to do so by the US Defense Department
during the Korean War. 23 Ever since, the development of successive
generations of computers has been directly or indirectly subsidised by
the American defence budget. As well as state aid, the evolution of
computing has also depended upon the involvement of d.i.y. culture. For
instance, the personal computer was invented by amateur techies who
wanted to construct their own cheap machines. The existence of a 'gift
economy' amongst hobbyists was a necessary precondition for the
subsequent success of products made by Apple and Microsoft. Even now,
shareware programs still play a vital role in advancing software design.
The history of the Internet also contradicts the tenets of the 'free
market' ideologues. For the first twenty years of its existence, the
Net's development was almost completely dependent on the much reviled
American federal government. Whether via the US military or through the
universities, large amounts of tax payers' dollars went into building
the Net infrastructure and subsidising the cost of using its services.
At the same time, many of the key Net programs and applications were
invented either by hobbyists or by professionals working in their
spare-time. For instance, the MUD program which allows real-time Net
conferencing was invented by a group of students who wanted to play
fantasy games over a computer network. 24
One of the weirdest things about the rightwards drift of the Californian
Ideology is that the West Coast itself is a creation of the mixed
economy. Government dollars were used to build the irrigation systems,
highways, schools, universities and other infrastructural projects which
makes the good life possible in California. On top of these public
subsidies, the West Coast hi-tech industrial complex has been feasting
off the fattest pork barrel in history for decades. The US government
has poured billions of tax dollars into buying planes, missiles,
electronics and nuclear bombs from Californian companies. For those not
blinded by 'free market' dogmas, it was obvious that the Americans have</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>1.1</nbr>
<subject>No</subject>
<from>Drazen Pantic</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Wed, 20 Sep 1995 23:36:19 +0100</date>
<content>Hi everybody!
As I am a new face here, let me introduce opennet.org and myself.
I am a professor at the Department of Mathematics of Belgrade University,
teaching probability theory. I do not need to mention that I am desperately
addicted to that that vital-virtual thing, Net.
opennet.org is a first domain from Belgrade fully and permanently connected
to the Inet. Adrienne von Heteren from Amsterdam (now living in Belgrade)
and me have literally created Inet cite. The dream about being connected
started about year ego, and after a series of incredible difficulties and
obstacles finally we have solved our ontological problem. Solving all kinds
of problems one can face making impossible dreams come true, we were often
forced to think over the essence of the being connected.
opennet.org is tied to Belgrade independent radio station B92 and connected
to incredible supportive xs4all in Amsterdam. In fact we are at the
beginning now, but I hope that the progress will be very fast, as there are
lot of open minded young people here who need to interact to similar people
over the net.
See you all in Amsterdam, January 18-21.
Regards to All
Drazen
drazen {AT} openent.org</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>1.2</nbr>
<subject>No</subject>
<from>Anonymous</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Fri Apr 20 23:17:56 2001</date>
<content>P: Many 'media-works' supposed to be artistic are following the very old Aristotelian principle of mimesis: the work is just imitating nature with a new technology. Here you deal with the nature without any 'naturalistic' reproduction. We experience a complex of processes that are going on and define a new dimension of communication. Could we define it as a model of digital environment?
C: Yes, we are on environments where the senses of the body are connected via interfaces to dynamic architectures. Sometimes these knowbots also have the 'mimetic' potential for dynamic processes, they are representing real 'data fluids' which you can contact and transform. Mimetic not in the meaning of traditional art: mimetic potential means the agent incorporating the process.
We can't use anymore the term representation because you are included now as an observer of reconstructed representations. I would like more to consider the word phenomena.
P.:In your installations one feels a massive use of technology. Formally the only material one can see are computers and communication hi-tech equipment.
As artists using this technology which is your critical position regarding the economical-political process which is running together with the information world?
C: We are inside the technological system whose direction and speed are defined by the industry and science. Politics. and arts have to follow and it is nearly impossible to do anything without being inside. It is a confrontation which can't work if you play with the traditional ways of art.
You have to be inside so that you can really see the consistency of the new technology, not only to say: "OK this is their world". This is our world and becomes bigger and bigger. We all depend on computers.
I try to keep my vision free to understand what is outside and deal with both of these worlds. There are still many parts of our life which the technological system can't incorporate.
Therefore I define myself an artist who can fight inside this self regulative order. Though I know everything I do could be good for the system because everything is connected but I fight and give up the respect for the big machines I am working with.
P:The industrial revolution has delivered one of the biggest concern of our time: the pollution of the environment. The South Pole is an environment almost untouched by the man, where it is possible to make important observation about the environmental problem. Many scientists are able to visualize the effects of pollution, but it seems they have much more difficulties to reveal the origins. For an artist should be more important to fight the causes and not to the effects of the industrial pollution.
Y: Yes, a real solution is not fighting against the effects or against the people who destroy the ecosystems. It's necessary to struggle against the thinking of the people who make these strategies, against the scientists and politicians who think they can predict reality by computing nature. It's an old artist's strategy to make politics and scientists aware about the consequences of their concepts of reality.
P. What's your feeling about the time you need to produce this kind of work?
C.: It always takes too long to realize a project when you work with technologies. It is a kind of paradox, not only for the technical complexity, also for the economical support.
The production's process of art takes longer than you want. You can't produce ten pieces a year. This is maybe not understandable in the traditional way of art.
P.:As we can speak of cyberspace, virtual space, we could think of a different notion of time. Past, future and present are existing together in your installation: the past is the work of the scientist, the present is the interaction in your installation and the future are the potential information going to be updated by the knowbots. How would you define the implicit time of this work?
Y: We are familiar with the notion of cyberspace, how can we modify space, compress space, extend space. I think you can do the same with time and the way you experience it. We make a concept for the practice of vision. The time we try to realize it is the present.
C: Maybe if the work succeeds when somebody gets into our installation he realizes that there is a complex of different new aesthetical and cognitive structures to deal with. We can't offer results in our work, everybody could experiment in his own way, we offer a model which is still in discussion, which offer different layers of nature concepts simultaneously: a traditional physical model with light and temperature zones, a scientific simulation with the illusion
of linear references and a networked info-aesthetical model generated by knowbots.
********** I N S T A T ? H O C U T I T U R **********
Paolo Atzori
Academy of Media Arts Peter-Welter-Platz 2 D-50676 Koeln
