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"The Ontario Hydro Harvest"
The Anarchives Volume 2 Issue 7
The Anarchives Published By
The Anarchives The Anarchy Organization
The Anarchives tao@lglobal.com
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/\______/\ by Jesse Hirsh
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b33n busy lately. web site is almost up. ftp site is in experimental
phase. mass mailer is starting to work right. shit's coming together...
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this piece examines an article from THIS magazine
<this_magazine@intacc.web.net>, a pseudo-radical mag
out of toronto, that tries to put the 'net into political context. it was
written by a guy <cthomp@interlog.com> who's on the anarchives list. so
clive feel free to respond to this piece to tao@lglobal.com and it will
go back out to the list.
the transcript from the mCluHan talk last wednesday will shortly follow
this one.
sorry for the confusion of last with the list. ;)
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>From THIS Magazine August 1995 "Cyber Screamers" by Clive Thompson
<this_magazine@intacc.web.net> <cthomp@interlog.com>
Flying through words and ideas,
playing with the language of the collective conscious and unconscious.
Putting together a picture of the world that is consistent with both the
shared realities of collective media and the material reality within
continual technological change.
Issues of mind and media; the dominating role of the corporate mind
within the collective unconscious; the manufacturing of consent and
synthetic conscious.
All in the aim to be:
"way more wired"
as stated in the subhead of Clive Thompson's article "In Cyberspace
Everyone Can Hear You Scream".
I'm still not sure what to make of this article. It is supposed to be a
compartive analysis of the left and right presence on the Internet. But
it consistently fails to dig into substance and rather like most
mainstream media skates on shallow cliches.
Clive's analysis of left and right is limited to cliches such as:
"Republicans vs. Democrats"
And comparisons of:
"But the political skew struck me most clearly when I noticed that all
the conservative e-mail newsletters I'd subscribed to were flourishing,
while the liberal ones were in advanced stages of dry rot."
And this from a guy from Toronto, the 'market' no less! What's this about
Republicans vs. Democrats, like there's a difference. Or even worse
liberals and conservatives, where does THIS see themselves in this
comparative context. Clive then proposes:
"Cyberspace, it seems, has tilted quite heavily to the right."
By using the "has tilted" Clive is insinuating that it was once tilted to
the left, which considering how right the military is i don't see that as
possible. This begins the first of many instances within the article that
the language is loose, almost striving to be among the double-speak of
mainstream media outlets. Watch as the language of the article reveals a
duplicity weaving among the subject matter.
"In a McLuhanesque way, it makes perfect sense. The net is a classic case
of the medium being loaded with a message - it's custom-built for a
fiercely free-market outlook. Multinational, anarchically free, and
laughably beyond the grasp of any government, cyberspace is an elegant
metaphor for the new right's way of doing business."
It's tragic to read a piece and immediately see that the author's sources
are so clearly out of whack. Firstly the message of the medium inherently
goes beyond political structures, it's primary effect is psychological,
any political arangement stems from the psychological transformations.
Drop the net=anarchy dance, it gets tiring. There are authorities in
cyberspace, and these authorities are only getting stronger. By
definition this eliminates the possibility of anarchy which refers to a
system with no authorities.
Finally it is not beyond the reach of any government, partly because the
Internet itself is part of the emerging governance. The term
government is not limited to the aging institutions we call Parliament
and Congress. Corporate governance has been rising for decades (if not
centuries), and yet few acknowledge the dominant role corporate
governance actually plays. Who am i kidding, corporations own Parliament
and Congress. They're dismantling the older institutions as a means of
shedding the "dead wood" better know as the welfare class, while
jockeying for spots among the emerging global hegemony.
The information hegemony.
"I think these weird cyberspatial emotions spring from our subconscious
grasp of the Net's politcs, which are rooted in its global nature. With
the Net, we have access to the first piece of technology that is beyond
the power of any state. It is fundamentally anti-government."
The net is beyond the power of the nation-state, not the corporate-state.
It is fundamentally pro-corporate-government. It's the Amerikkkan dream
run rampant; remembering of course that the dream includes an immense
cast of extras who are killed, raped, whipped, dominated, and exploited
just to make the dream that much more possible.
"The Net smells like conservative spirit: it's pure free-market, making
everyone seem equal, as if there were no black or white, no rich or poor."
Virtual reality can be an effective shield against real reality. Cut a
large portion of society out of the picture and you may be able to get
increased efficiency from all the "bleeding-heart" liberals who would have
cared if they would have known.
The real issue of the "Information Highway" or the "Politics of
Cyberspace" is not a petty debate between right and left, but rather a
saga of power. In cyberspace we are witnessing the rise of a new
global power, often referred to it as a global entity.
At times it seems as if Clive touches on this subject, but still retains
his pattern of skate on the surface journalism.
"Without power, their tremendous lack of style is vaguely insurgent
against the social order"
Clive presents the Internet as geekland; a place where the underdog is at
welcome and at home. Furthermore Clive draws upon the potential of the
geek as subversive. Notice however the use of the word power, it begins
to emerge from the background and in this case becomes the focus.
"But give a geek any sort of social power, and you've got a
self-obsessed, screw-you conservative of the first degree."
The transformative effects of power... perhaps self-explanatory, but
where does the empowering effects of the Internet come to play in this
pradigm. The new media bring new power, both are transformative.
"In cyberspace, we've seen the exact thing happen to hackers... they
seemed entirely counter-cultural... Then came the sellout. As computer
culture became big business, the hackers crashed in on their skills and
went fully maninstream."
The term would be co-optation, similar to the metaphor of "Amerikkka
eating its young". Power is the ultimate force of consumption, it either
consumes and/or destroys. But to condone Hackers as sell-outs is to be
just as stereotypical as any other mainstream media outlet. As with
anyone else, hackers are individuals and prone to do what they want.
As to the role of power, well, it's interests are usually quite obvious.
"But it still hasn't lost that hip image of being the last bastion of
freedom, a bold new frontier."
Of course no mention of the economic origins of this last statement. When
I first typed this quote in I misspelled freedom as "greedom" which is
perhaps more apt at describing the present situation. Take for example
the mast head of information greed and consumption:
"Wired magazine has built its cultural status by combining the same mix
of cyberculture chic, free-market worship and contempt for government."
Succumbing to the new global power, the race to join the new global power
class, or for "Mosca" the new political class to support the new political
regime.
So tell us Clive, what of the supposed left in all this power playing:
"Part of the reason for progressives' Net-dread is that, unlike
conservatives, they haven't been aggressively looking for a new medium.
They've been content with their dominance in city weeklies and small
magazines like THIS."
We are offered descriptions of the left's domination of media, almost as
an imitation of the opposing powers. I'm not going to touch this one, only
ask:
Why is the left "dominating" media, why is the left even dominating at all?
Clive goes on discussing the left:
"What it tells us is that the left is scared of freedom. It's scared of
the challenge that the Net poses, where you can't shut somebody up if you
don't like what they say and where you can't dismiss them by pointing to
their identity - because you don't even know their identity."
What are you talking about? Identities can be placed to words on the net.
That's the whole idea; desensitizing information so as to make it globally
accessible allows much easier intelligence gathering, and similar
identification of who's who. The left should be scared to go on-line 'cause
it's as if they were holding clandestine meetings on the pentagon's own
irc channel.
"Particularly, you have to get used to the unrestarained freedom of the
Net. And that freedom has produced considerable uneasiness, especially
when it comes to hate and porn."
Is the "left" scared of dialogue and the real world?
They're certainly being presented as such, although I would like to hope
otherwise.
When I first received a copy of Clive's article I was immediately drawn
to writing a critique. It seemed as if there was so much that he had left
out, and so much that seemed to qualify as necessary illusions.
The images Clive used were drawn directly from what I and I try to describe
as the corporate consciousness, or the collective consciousness that is
dominated by corporate imagery and symbolism.
So from the get-go the article could not have accomplished anything besides
perpetuation of the corporate joke, the mirage of approaching liberation
and freedom.
Clive quotes the founder of the Toronto FreeNet referring to the Internet:
"It's partially transformative. People will soften on their positions. It
almost requires you to listen and reflect."
What is this guy talking about? The net is entirely transformative and
demands that you listen and reflect. Furthermore it is a process of
change driven by incredible forces of power.
This is of course the story we are not seeing in the mainstream press,
except of course in the Report On Business or other journals of pure
double-speak where the stories of mergers and markets dictates a
reality in sharp contrast of the capitalist utopia painted by WIRED.
It's tough to breathe when you're swamped with a constant flow of
rubbish and misinformation intended to keep you from seeing the truth
and seeing the reality of what is actually transpiring.
Take some time to think about it,
then take some time to do something about it.
TAO begins to get that second wind ;)