The second literature review is concerned with the literature of the Internet as a community. The key questions in reviewing such literature is whether or not the Internet can be described as a discrete community, to elaborate on the symbolic structures and practises of the community and finally, to examine the external influences on these symbolic structures and practises. With regards to the first question, the theoretical perspective of Clifford Geertz, who describes cultures in terms of their symbolic values, will be utilized. For the second question, elaboration will occur by using the structural anthropological method of Claude Levi-Strauss and in the third and final instance, the cultural sociology of Pierre Bordieu is applied. For the purposes of this review, the terms culture as an adjective of the noun community. In analyzing the Internet as a culture and community, both the universal sense is used as well as well as particular examples (sub-cultures and subcommunities).
The same template for reviewing the literature is used here as previously described in section 2.2.
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Steven Levy
[Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Steven Levy. 455 pp. Delta, 1994 (FP: 1984)]
Levy's first book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution was published in 1984 and is regarded as a definitive history of the origins of computer culture from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. Apart from also being author of Artificial Life: The Quest far a New Creation, Levy is currently also a contributor to MacWorld and the New York Times.
Levy begins with a quixotic claim of hacker origins: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) in 1958, who through the "Signals and Power" committee began (unauthorised) modelling on the computer systems. With the aid of friendly academics (Jack Dennis, Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy) the original hackers (Steve Russell, Peter Samson, Peter Deutsch and Alan Kotok) begin to not only develop programs and hardware changes, but also combined aesthetics and technology (such as computer generated, video games - the first being 'Spacewar', and square-wave renditions of Bach fugues).
The aforementioned 'hacker ethic' was also developed by this model railway club, and for purposes of model railways, not computers as such. Poetic renditions of what it was it means to be a 'hacker' are provided. The primary concern of this ethic was to "yield to the hands on imperative", with the specific ethics being applications of this primary motivation.
The book then elaborates on the development of instrumental rationality and forward planning through Richard Greenblatt's chess program, artificial intelligence and the LISP language through Bill Gosper, and Steve Nelson's exploration of the telephone system. Levy makes particular note that this embryonic community freely circulated technical information.
The second section of the book accounts for the incorporation of some components of the 1960s radicalism with the introduction of computer technology. This is elaborated through Lee Felsenstein's 'Community Memory Project', the publication of the Altair 8800 by Les Solomon, Bob Albrecht's People's Computer Company and the Home-Brew Computer Club. The common theme among this account was the desire for computers to be genuinely personal machines, an objective whose success was reached with the formation of Apple Computers through Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.
Following this the book elaborates on the rapid rise of software companies, with particular reference to Sierra On-Line and Broderbund. Levy sees this period, which in many ways represented the success of the personal computer objective as a critical moment whereby the Hacker Ethic is challenged by corporate imperatives. The conclusion is pessimistic, describing the actions of the "last true hacker", Richard Stallman, to preserve the ethic at MIT.
Discerning evidence of symbolic values from the early hackers from difficult from the material provided in Levy's text as much of the cultural mores appear to be more based around the symbolic value of actions, in particular “the hacker ethic”, with its disrespect for authority on the basis of position and the preference for practise over theory. There is also, of course, an idealized notion (and partially realized) of the future of computers but this was probably in part due to an early understanding of their technological trajectory (cf., Moore's Law) rather than a belief-system in its own right. Nevertheless, some evidence does exist that suggests that the shared valued practices were also complemented by shared symbolic values evident in early editions of the Jargon File online, which self-referentialy acknowledges the existence of hacker culture as follows:
“The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define themselves partly by rejection of `normal' values and working habits, it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional culture less than 50 years old.”
[The Jargon File v4.4.3, http://jargon.watson-net.com/, FP (online) early 1970s?,
also published as Eric Raymond (1996), The New Hackers Dictionary (3rd Edition), ( M.I.T. (first edition published 1991) ]
Using the timespan of Levy – which is coincidentially almost exactly according to that used in this study to represent the first Internet historical phase – this lexicon had already developed quite significantly by the early 1980s and some terms (e.g., the Middle English derived “win”, for “succeed”) had even managed to find their way into common speech. During this period some several hundred terms entered the lexicon and grammatical structures such as verb doubling, emoticolons, transparent sound slang , the use of a questiontive suffix, affirmative and negative responses derived programming languages, grammatically playful overgeneralizations, written inarticulations, anthropomorphization, and comparative ranges (especially for equipment failure), deliberate misspellings and grammatical alterations for the sake of emphasis and clarity, the use of angle brackets for emotives, sounds and random elements (now thoroughly incorporated in HTML code), the use of “^H” to represent ironic slashouts, and the use of programming language boolean operator abbreviations (e.g., ! for “not”) and nested parantheses.
[re: anthropomorphization: In hacker culture doesn't represent reification of inanimate objects but a mechanistic expression of human behaviour]
Initially it seems that the hacker lexicon is not sufficient to be a language in itself, with large derivations from American and Commonwealth English (although Yiddish and German derived terms are also common in the American jargon). This would seem to suggest that hackers do not constitute a discrete culture in their own right, although this position is tempered by the fact that the hacker-specific tems are in many cases carried out in hacker-specific environments. At best it seems safest to refer to the hackers of the 1960s and 1970s as a mainly Anglophone subculture of the nascent post-industrial nation-states that uses bricolage to emphasize its expressions and autonomy. One unique and particular facet that can be noted however with the hacker subculture is because they were so deeply ingrained into the telos of technologically advanced nations and symbolically so removed a cultural gamble was – and indeed still is - taking place. Either the hacker culture will end up become deeply embedded (and convert) mainstream culture or linguistic and cultural speciation will occur. At this stage, the latter seems improbable without a decomputerization of society.
[Dick Hebdige, (1979) Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Methuen]
It is not necessary here to apply a complete elaboration of Levi-Strauss' method to the documented and urban legends associated with hacker culture. Rather it is possible to note the synchronic and diachronic developments among the most significant themes including a 'creation mythology' in the term and practise of 'the hack' . Among the hacker community, the term 'hack' referred to a job that was usually quick and produced what was required, but wasn't necessarily according to accepted standards – a synomyn for “jury rigging” - and derived from the common usage “to carve roughly”. This application of the word is still found in literature, journalism and politics. Over time however, the term developed to mean a creative and imaginative solution to a problem, despite the difficulty and attention to detail required – likewise a raising of the common usage of “hack work” which implies simple if necessary tasks. Further, the terms has been elaborated to include one who engages in such a methodology (a dimunitive of “hacker”). The term was also expanded beyond the noun meaning to verbs indicating tasks, projects, pranks, emotional states (“I can't hack this!”) and exploration of large institutional buildings, especially the 'hidden' sections of piping, wiring and so forth.
Interpreted diachronically, the word, whether expressed as a verb or a noun, initially has negative connotations – it represents something that is barely functional and certainly without beauty and driven by necessity. However the term evolves to mean behaviour, results and persons who are both deep and creative that can produce exacting, elegant applications. The only way that this transformation actually makes any sense at all it to interpret the term synchronically, that is, to refer the term as a metaphor for the evolution of technology as a historical whole. All technology is initially driven by necessity, it is crude and imperfect in it's original application, is ardorous to perform and requires the time-consuming taks of analyzing and testing the constituient components and finding improvements. It is through such a process that crude, imperfect technologies end up providing functional and precise applications. It is, in many ways, a celebration of the powers of instrumental reasoning, of an interest in science for it's own sake. Using the term 'hack' and 'hacker' was an simply honest evaluation of the situation and circumstances that the early computer technicians found themselves in and that all users of any technology find themselves in the initial stages of development.
Social surverys of hackers with the sort of rigorous empirical methodology demanded by sociology is unfortunately lacking, partially of course because membership is based on self-identification rather than any sort of objective qualifier (although being able to post to alt.hackers, a usenet group that is moderated without any moderators is considered a minor test). Nevertheless, The Jargon File has published the results of a survey of some 100 hackers from USENET, from which some hint of Bordieu's methodology can be applied. We can note an antipathy towards business dress, well-read (especially in science and science fiction), an interest in intellectual games (including roleplaying games, cf preceeding section), an avoidance of competitive team sports and preference to martial arts, nearly all university educated or equivalent, an intense dislike of Microsoft, trivialities and bureaucratic procedures, a preference for “ethnic” food, liberal and anti-authoritarian in their political views. Hackers tend to be male, although the percentage of women involved tends to be higher than most technical professions. Ethnically, it is primarily Anglophone and European with notable East Asian and Yiddish involvement. “Racial and ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met with freezing contempt.”
[The number of female hacker has been a subject of some debate: Paul Stone, British sociologist and author of Hackers: Crime in the Digital Sublime claims: “I found it very difficult to find any female hackers whatsoever”. (Quoted in: Female of the Species: Hacker Women Are Few But Strong
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/hackerwomen000602.html)
It would help if he knew what a hacker was – perhaps he could have started with Carol Mienel's 10,000 member “Happy Hacker” mailing list.
see also,
Cornelia Sollfrank, Women Hackers, Presentation to the Cyberfeminism Conference,
http://www.obn.org/nCI/report2.htm
The major religious convictions among hackers tend to be atheist, agnostic, Jewish, pagan or a combination thereof. There is a notable hostility to religious bigotry and support for parody religions such as The Discordians and The Church of the SubGenius. A Gnostic influence is also noted: “Hacker folklore that pays homage to `wizards' and speaks of incantations and demons has too much psychological truthfulness about it to be entirely a joke.” As with all cultures, there are preferred drugs, with the use non-addictive psychedlics considered acceptable. Hackers tend to congregate in large cities, particularly those with a high level of higher education institutions and are tolerant of alternative sexualities and are more likely to be in polyamorous relationships. The most likely personality characteristics, using the Meyer-Briggs psychometric system is INTJ and INTP (introvereted, intuitive thinkers) with a notable ENTJ[P] (extrovert intuitive thinkers) in contrast to the the more typical Extrovert and Sensate personality types of mainstream culture.
All these features have been discussed and confirmed by numerous accounts by cultural anthropologists. However, it is important at this stage to understand these characteristics sociologically. Andrew Ross correctly notes that hackers are "a priviledged social milieu, futher magnetized by its members, understanding that they are the apprentice architects of a future dominated by knowledge, expertise, and "smartness," whether human or digital. . . . the hacker cyberculture is not a dropout culture; its disaffiliation from a domestic parent culture is often manifest in activities that answer, directly or indirectly, to the legitmate needs of industrial R & D." Understanding this characteristic is important – hackers are a an antiauthorian ethical movement of priviledged social backgrounds who seek to universalise their technology and their ethic. Although the orientation protects the hacker subculture from particular prejudices within technologically advanced societies, the greatest problem is that hackers do not have sufficient experience and knowledge of more impoverished societies where the technological capacity simply doesn't exist and as such, their perceptions on these matters is where the greatest level of distortion lies.
[Andrew Ross 1991, Strange Weather. New York: Verso, 1991, p90.]
The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Computer Frontier, Bruce Sterling
[Bruce Sterling., The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier., Penguin, London, 1994, FP 1992]
Bruce Sterling's :"The Hacker Crackdown" is the definitive study of Operation Sundevil's crackdown on the computer underground from 1988 to 1991. Prior to this publication, Sterling was a cyberpunk science fiction author, writing novels such as 'Schismatirx' (reviewed in Chapter 2.3), 'The Artificial Kid' and 'The Difference Engine' (co-authored with William Gibson). With Operation Sundevil his orientation changed to political advocacy of the new electronic terrain, contributing to Newsday, the Omni, the Whole Earth Review, Mondo 2000, Wired and other magazines. Sterling has presented papers to the Library Information Technology Association (US) and the National Academy of Sciences Convocation on Technology and Education.
Sterling's study is initially concerned with placing the new technology in the historical context of the telecommunications industry. Some of this has already been cited in this inquiry. The Internet's historical precursor, the telephone system, also has cultural analogies particularly with the desire to test technical limits, and the formation of online communities. Particular attention is drawn to the model of "industrial socialism" which operated in the U.S. telecommunications system for most of this century, especially AT&T's corporate slogan of "One Policy, One Service, Universal Access". Sterling follows this corporate history through to the enforced break-up of Bell in the early 1980s and the AT&T telecommunications crash of 1990. An implicit tie is made between the systematic breaking of the industrial socialist model and the technical system failure.
Following this an elaboration of the computer underground is undertaken. Its origins are deemed to be with the Youth International Party of Rubin and Hoffman, especially through the publication of the Technical Assistance Program, which provided the means for free 'phone calls and connections, electricity etc. Contemporary phreaking of cellular 'phones and diverting of PBX systems are noted as contemporary practices. As for computer hackers, Sterling appears to be sympathetic to their desires not only to critically asses technical stability, but also the implicit political idea of freedom of information. Emphasis is given to "Emmanuel Goldstein" editor of the magazine "2600: The Hacker Quarterly", described as "the best-known public representative of the hacker underground today" (p65). Due to U.S. press laws, Goldstein's publication is legally protected.
Computer bulletin boards, however, were not and these become the feature of the hacker crackdown. Sterling provides an initial description noting group and individual pseudonyms, the publication of manuals for computer hacking or the production of explosives, and the 1980s computer underground community and behaviour. This concludes with activities of hacker group the Legion of Doom, the formation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force, and the publication of the text "Bell South Standard Practice 660-225-104SV Control Office Administration of Enhanced 911 Services for Special Services and Major Account Centers" (the E-911 document) in the electronic journal, Phrack. Sterling then details the activities of Operation Sundevil, and the anti-hacker raids carried out by the Chicago and New York State police also in 1990. Whilst the operation was allegedly aimed at credit card fraud and telephone code abuse, only four arrests were made, although over 40 computers and 23,000 disks were confiscated. The action drew significant media attention and "delighted security officers of the electronic business community" (p163).
The historical reasons for the inclusion of the U.S. Secret Service (normally reserved for protecting the President and the White House) are elaborated, as are the perspectives of senior law enforcement figures such as Gail Thackery, former Assistant Attorney General to the State of Arizona., who seems to share hacker technophilia but rejects any level of criminality, even as victimless crimes as an agent of social change. Finally, Sterling describes in some detail the activities of the Federal Computer Crimes Investigation Committee (FCIC), an sub-branch of the Secret Service, and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC).
The activities of Operaration Sundevil was disconcerting to a number of civil libertarians. With formal structures such Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and the American Civil Liberties Union already in existence, Sterling note that the formation of the Electronic Freedom Frontier was relatively easy. The distribution of a manifesto to protect constitutional rights in cyberspace ("Crime and Punishment" by Barlow) and financing from Steve Wozniak (founder of Apple Computers) and Mitch Kapor (inventor of Lotus 1-2-3) assured the organisation's establishment. Their success in defending Craig Neidorf (aka Knight Lightning) over fraud and theft charges has already been elaborated.
Other cases, such as those against "the Atlanta Three" (members of the Legion of Doom) are also described, as is the support given to the movement by Democrat Senator Leahy from Vermont through sponsoring the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Such was the response to Operation Sundevil that Sterling remarks "1990 had belonged to the crackdown, but by 1991 its agents were in severe disarray and the libertarians were on a roll. People were flocking to the cause." (p284) Sterling's optimistic conclusion proposes a unity of interests between legal authorities and the computer underground in assuring that rights of U.S. citizens are protected both online and offline.
Sterling's text outlines some notable differences in the computer-using subcultures compared to that of Levy's that is parallel to the technical and organizational changes of computerized society, which includes the mass introduction of personal computers in technically advanced societies, decentralized bulletin board services and the disassociation of the military from APRANET. There were also significant external influences as well, as the cold-war ideological battleground and prankster approach of the hacker generation transformed into the more politically savvy, anarchistic (and criminal) worldview of corporate globalization.
Applying Geertz's method, these technical, administrative and external changes occur parallel with symbolic changes within computer using cultures. Notably the term 'hacking', partially through misuse in the popular press, became conflated with 'cracking' (breaking computer system protections), 'phreaking' (the use of telephone signals to obtain free calls) and even 'carding' (the unauthorized use of credit cards, or card numbers). Whilst hacker purists, particularly the “white hat wizards” of yesteryear decry what they see as an abuse of these term, they also fit within William Gibson's definition of “the street will find it's own use for things”. As Sterling correctly notes: “Most importantly, 'hacker' is what computer-intruders choose to call THEMSELVES”.
In addition to “hacker” however, the computer literate alternative community that concurs period that Sterling's book concentrates on also referred to themselves as “cyberpunks” in reference to the science fiction subgenre who are defined by Sterling (who is one himself) as: “First, its writers had a compelling interest in information technology, an interest closely akin to science fiction's earlier fascination with space travel. And second, these writers were "punks," with all the distinguishing features that that implies: Bohemian artiness, youth run wild, an air of deliberate rebellion, funny clothes and hair, odd politics, a fondness for abrasive rock and roll; in a word, trouble.” This is very similar to the hacker computer culture. But as Sterling notes, there were changes in the social relations and the forces of production from that period. In the 1960s and for most of the 1970s, computer intrusion methods were rife among the computer using community. But at that stage computers were not an indispensible part of the system, they did not hold allegedly secret corporate databases. Concepts of privacy and property had not been extended to cyberspace.
Along with symbolically at least being associated as criminals instead of merely mischevous pranksters, the cyberpunks vision of the future was global dystopia, their clothing invariably black. The 1960s counter-culturalism was treated with disdain, as Sterling somewhat blithely comments “The counterculture of the 1960s was rural, romanticized, anti-science, anti-tech”, but so was the “big science” approach as well. “For the cyberpunks, by stark contrast, technology is visceral. It is not the bottled genie of remote Big Science boffins; it is pervasive, utterly intimate. Not outside us, but next to us. Under our skin; often, inside our minds. .. Technology itself has changed. Not for us the giant steam- snorting wonders of the past: the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the nuclear power plant. Eighties tech sticks to the skin, responds to the touch: the personal computer, the Sony Walkman, the portable telephone, the soft contact lens.”
[Bruce Sterling (1986), in Preface to Mirrorshades: A Cyberpunk Anthology, Arbor House]
Hence a range of new symbolic terms and meanings arise in the period described in Sterling's book. “Cyberspace” or the “the Matrix” became a place (and to lose one's connection from the place is to “flatline”), “cyberpunk” became a subcultural identity, the “cyborg” became a desired physical state, a norm of the future as well as a political strategy in the feminism of Donna Haraway – and as an elaboration to “hardware” and “software”, “wetware” to refer to biological entities. “Cracker” was introduced, according to The Jargon File, circa 1985 as means to differentiate hackers, and “blank” became a person with a person with no governmental or corporate computer records (an enviable state). These terms are all indicative of qualitative political and social transformation on a mass scale, which can be significantly differentiated from the playful technical orientation of the hacker subculture. These new terms indicate the evolution of a subculture within the computer using community.
[Donna Haraway, (1985). A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminismthe 1980s., Socialist Review (50).]
One point however must be made. Although the cyberpunks deried the symbolic expressions of the hackers of the 1960s and 1970s they also respected their technical competence. Cyberpunk was a broader subculture than the hackers and it's interest in political affairs as serious business and perhaps an overseriousness with matters of fashion were indicative of the wider-ranging interests. As Sterling noted, the only one of the original cyberpunk authors that had the technical skills with the humblest hacker would have been Rudy Rucker, a professor of mathematics and computer science in Silicon Valley. For all their disdain of aesthetics and anti-political rebelliousness, there is evidence that the technological orientation of cyberpunk means that many aspire also to be hackers.
Synchronic and diachronic analysis of the addition of new symbolic structures indicates that the original suggestions remain accurate, although with the necessity of elaborating the deep meaning of the new signifiers. The first element is to recognize the continuing and assumed primacy of technological relations – diachronically, cyberpunks are an elaboration of hackers, not the other way around. Synchronically the change represents the universal feature that changes in the technical forces of production cause critical tensions in social relations, which generates its own opposition to the existing social relations, in this case evident in bifurcation of the general computer using culture.
Applying Bordeiu's concerns of the external influences, a reflection can be noted within the culture – the cyberpunk community is invariably less technically adapt and, as mentioned, more politically and fashion consciousness compared to the older hacker community. The difference arises from the differences in habitus – the environment of the cyberpunks is significantly different to that of the hackers – and as such there are different social spaces and different aesthetic standards of distinction. These differences however, exist in amongst an enormous array of similarities, in terms of economic class, national-ethic background, sex and so forth – but with one critical diachronic difference: age. The mass introduction of the personal computer was seized with enthusiasm by the teenagers of the 1980s, when previously it was usually only available to those who had least started university-level education. Further, as mentioned, the political circumstances of the 1980s were also significantly different to the cold-war politics of the 1960s and early 1970s. Finally, the aesthetic and subcultural influences has also changed. As a whole, whilst the character of the computer-using culture had changed, the promises of the universal technology and universal ethic had taken one step forward and one step back. The step forward was the introduction of the relevance of computers to young adults. The step backwards is that the growing relevance of computers to the need of the social system conflicted with the hacker ethic.
The Mondo 2000 User's Guide to the New Edge
[Queen Mu, Rudy Rucker, R.U. Sirius, R.U., (1992), The Mondo 2000 User's Guide to the New Edge., HarperCollins]
The Mondo 2000 User's Guide to the New Edge is a detailed summary of key components of an apparent new cultural paradigm. Derived from the magazine of the same name, and itself an evolution of the earlier magazines "High Frontiers" and "Reality Hackers", it was able in the late 1980s and early 1990s to claim the cyberpunk cultural zeitgeist. The editors, Rudy Rucker, R.U. Sirius (aka Ken Goffman), and Queen Mu (aka Alison Kennedy) were able to present themselves as key figures due to the critical success of this publication.
Rucker is also a prolific writer of science fiction, teaches mathematics at San Jose State University, and is a descendant of G.W.F. Hegel. R.U. Sirius a member of the (not so serious) performance musical group "Mondo Vanilli", a regular contrinbutor to magazines such as Japan Esquire, Wave, and Wired, and author of "How to Mutate and Take Over the World".
The Guide is an A-Z of features of 'new edge' issues, behavior, and products, a "best of" the first eight issues. There is even a "shopping mall" of where to purchase items listed in the text. With roughly 100 featured summations, it is difficult to derive specific topics, as the reviews of Sterling and Rushkoff have done. However the secondary heading of the publication ("Cyberpunk, Virtual Reality, Wetware, Designer Aphrodisiacs, Artificial Life, Techno-Erotic Paganism, and more") certainly indicates the dominant themes, or as review examples.
"Cyberpunk"; the Mondo summary defines the common themes postmodernity indicated in Jameson et al. Multi- and trans-national corporatisation, cultural fragmentation computerisation. But is also indicates an antithetical computer culture with an emanicpatory interest. The characterisation is individualistic, the setting "street tech" (FN: Hebdige's "bricolage"). Michael Synergy - an identified cyberpunk - advocates "surrender" to the information revolution. John Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" is given credit for being the first to advocate anti-authoritarian "computer crime". Bruce Sterling defends the introduction to Mirroshades: A Cyberpunk Anthology (also reviewed in this chapter). William Gibson concludes the definition with comments on Neuromancer, the influence of William S. Burroughs, the conclusion of the Neuromancer series, Count Zero, and Sterling's Schismatix (also reviewed).
The style of the product is certainly one indication of the paradigm. Unlike other texts reviewed in this section, Mondo 2000 is replete with slick graphics of significant artistic merit (normally within a surrealistic paradigm). Further, there are numerous sidebar references and definitions to the main body of the text in a manner that mimics hypertextuality. The writer's guidelines demands FN: 1993) speed and density - it avoids passive constructions.
This apparent hype is not beyond substance however. In many ways this is a contemporary Encylopedie in the style of Diderot and D'Alembert in an highly condensed style. There are of course, topics already dated, those display a superficial knowledge of the critical issues and those which really are not that critical at all. But in the main, this deals with contemporary (that is, new feature) themes, locates radical changes to our lifeworld (both ideate and sensate) with essential references.
The Mondo 2000 User's Guide was written in a period of optimism. The hacker crackdown, described by Sterling, ended with in a resounding legal and public relations victory for computer-using culture. The mass introduction of graphic user interfaces and the opening of the Internet to market forces promised a widespread expanion of the use and applicability of the spirit of the Internet, the hacker technological ethic and the cyberpunk political nous. With the introduction of political democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the cold-war imperative seemed pretty well over. To the writers the historical period was a final showdown between the forces of governmental authoritarianism in the United States, and an emancipatory computer underground that now had science and culture on its side, and whose victory seemed certain. As R.U. Sirius said in the User's Guide: “Michael Synergy may be the first person I ever met who actually described himself as a cyberpunk. While the people around the Electronic Frontier Foundation are trying to gently reassure the body politic that the onslaught of information technology is not a threat to the stability of the system, Synergy will tell us that it is indeed an assault on all fronts. His message is simple: 'Surrender!'”.
The User's Guide further confirms the relationship and differences previously noted between hackers and cyberpunks. Gareth Branwyn, posting in the Mondo 2000 conference in the WELL elaborated the “the cyberpunk worldview” which included an emphasis on ideology and “computer-generated info domains” as the next political frontiers, that “megacorps are the new governments”, who are particularly suspectble to small groups or individual “console cowboys” and that the world is “ is splintering into a trillion subcultures and designer cults with their own languages, codes, and lifestyles.” The latter is particularly important as it an example that the importance of the Users Guide was not the addition of new symbolic content but to bring divergent cultural directions together under a single banner. That is, to adopt the “cyborg strategy” suggested by Dona Haraway. The overemphasis on culture is evident in the following:
“There is now a world-wide movement around the idea of techno-hippie: the old love ethic with a new high-tech implementation. Hippie failed to revolutionize the planet, but techno-hippie will DO IT. Here's a new form of liberation theology, and the services include ecstaticized, neon-painted dancing to the endless beat. It's the trance dance, to techno or house music, on a throbbing floor, all night long. ...”
Overconfident, and without a sophiticated or unified political orientation (and indeed, many explicitly rejected the idea), the User's Guide was indicative of a period that was celebrating the latest scientific endeavours in a utopian fashion and over-emphasized the political effectiveness of subcultural identity change. Diachronically, it represented the highest point of the cyberpunks, this was their golden moment, the critical point of their narrative – and, as is so true of much of the literature, the effective end of their cultural imperative was a surprise to the participants. Synchronically, the messages are many; that those who emphasize irony can have it turn on to themselves, the youthful rush of Icarus who does not beware the sun, and – with the ultimate referent return – that subcultures are not an effective medium for lasting political change. Ultimately, the charming arrogance of the User's Guide is only matched by its political immaturity – as the nouse emphasized in the early- to mid- 1980s literary scence was forgotten with the ideal of ecstatic high-tech neoliberalism. As the years wore on and momentum for some sort of cyber-revolution was gradually curtailed by the corportization and increasing government attempts at censorship, the Users Guide still has relevance as a datasource, but the optimism expressed therein provides little more than wry humour.
Even taking into account the failure of explicitly political orientation, there is still the matter of cultural norms, which the cyberpunks in the User's Guide also have evidently been unable to shift. This initially seems surprising, as the central theme of the User's Guide was that being-part of a computer-using culture was in the realm of being highly acceptable, technically and scientifically savvy. In Bordeiu's terms, they were apparently claiming making a ruling claim to matters of “distinction” and with significant intellectual backing. The reasons are clear – the mass propogation of computer use and expansion in of capabilities in the 1990s, which was significantly that that in the 1980s, was within formal institutional systems, educational institutions and workplaces and – this is particularly important – was orientated not towards making people become interesting in how computers and computer-mediated communication works, but to introduce computers into life in a systems-functional manner. Under such circumstances, the so-called “cyberpunk revolution” was inevitably born beautiful, as evident by the User's Guide, by stillborn just the same.
The Virtual Community, Howard Rheingold
[Howard Rheingold, (1993), The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Addison Wesley, 1993]
There is no need to repeat the author introduction provided in the preceeding section, rather it is possible to go straight into a synopsis of the text. According to the review by the Daily Telegraph, Rheingold's The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Virtual Frontier, was destined to become the standard text for years to come for discussion on this issue. The Info-Tech Resource Guide considers the text to be "the most thoughtful account, to date, of how and why virtual communities have begun to flourish, and what this means for our society". Certainly the name itself has gained a degree of currency, and not just in this inquiry.
In Virtual Community, Rheingold main concerns are expressed as the degree by which people have formed personal relationships through computer mediated communication, the formation of such communities along issues rather than geography, and the political concerns of system interventions, especially privacy and censorship.
The opening chapters begin with a lengthy introduction to the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), a community which grew from a mere few hundred to eight thousand between 1985 and 1993 (p2). Emphasis is placed on the networking of information and genuine human co-expression, to the point of an "online funeral". The pragmatic exclusion of non-verbal distortions to language are noted early as assisting those who have a social or physical disability, as the defined by symbolic interaction.
This mode of social being is considered by Rheingold to be the foundation of the online community, with Englebert, a former radar operator, being considered the first 'visionary' in this regard. The concept of a computer which operated with a symbolic interface was considered somewhat leftfield, however Englebert's perseverance paid off, and during the early to mid 1960s a number of computer specialists were funding through APRA in "interactive computing" and to PARC/Xerox in the 1970s. The rest is equivalent provides a descriptive account for the history of the Internet and its resources.
The next three chapters deal, respectively, with "grassroots groupminds", "multi-user dungeons and alternate identities", and "real-time tribes". All three are given specific examples of the formation of discrete communities without pre-existing internal structures. Online precursors to current electronic communities are initially described; for example Turoff's 'Electronic Information Exchange System", and the Institute for the Future (now known as The Source). These precursors are considered to have led to the establishment of usenet. The localised, non-Internet alternative of bulletin board services (bbs') are also elaborated.
The groupmind concept is further elaborated on the discussion concerning MUDs. Whilst usenet and bbs areas are on matter of mutual interest, MUDs are defined by their elaborate mechanisms of generating alternative realities and alternative identities. Rheingold makes some effort in elaborating the diversity of MUDs, whilst noting that there are dominanted by fantasy realms, used by male undergraduates, and include a greater than normal thematic content of sexual innuendo. The chapter "real-time tribes" elaborates the building of communities through Internet Relay Chat, which as mentioned in the previous Chapter, is analogous to CB-Radio. Just as there were significant community formations using that technology, so too are the effects with the IRC. As with the other chapters, a significant component is descriptive for a popular audience, however Rheingold makes extensive use of Elizabeth Reid's research, the key claim being that whilst IRC is essentially a "playground", it has developed "rules, rituals, and communication styles that qualify ... as a real community".
The following two chapters, "Japan and the Net" and "Telematique and Messageries Roses", are used to elaborate the globalisation of the Internet, or at very least, its ubiquity in advanced economies. The analysis of Japan and the net is somewhat of a surface description of the major relevant institutions and contemporary cultural mores. The most significant difference, which is not substantially elaborated, is the fact that whilst it was illegal to own a modem up to 1985, the NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) now seeks to provide broadband fibre optics to every home by 2015.
Not surprisingly, the examination of the following chapter is concerned with the development of the online community in France, specifically the origins and development of Minitel, the interventionist national information service (terminals with built in modems were freely distributed), and the proliferation of online erotic chat groups. The chapter also includes a discussion of the online community in England, which is apparently interchangeable with "British". The analysis is restricted to analogous systems to the WELL and surface cultural traits.
The final two chapters bring the political issues to the fore. The first is an analysis of "Electronic Frontiers and Online Activists", which emphasises the rebuilding of grassroots politics alongside the building of grassroots communities. This analysis traces the development through BBS's; the use of computer mediated communication by political groups to network similar interests, the birth of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the increasing importance of non-government organisations.
The final chapter, "Disinformocracy" attempts to elaborate the relevance of contemporary social theory to the Internet. Three general tendencies are noted:
(i) the preemption of communication through the dominance of advertising, of which Habermas is representative ("the commodification of the public sphere")
(ii) the use of technology for surveillance purposes, in the manner of Bentham's Panoptican (in a conscious manner), or Foucault (in an unconscious) manner
(iii) a "hyper-realist" school, of which McLuhan is considered the founder, and Debord and Baudrillard are considered contempories, which suggest that electronic media already has already altered the public debate and public consciousness
Unlike the previous authors, Rheingold's “Virtual Community” is not primarily about exotic technological subcultures of Internet and computer users. Rather, the interest in the introduction of computer mediated communicatio to “normal” society, which as elaborated in the text, can prove can be very diverse and deviant in it's own right. In Rheingold's words “There's a lot more to the BBS culture than cyberpunks and computer nerds.” Yet despite the authors' deep involvement with computer using cultures, the style and expression in “Virtual Community” often seems to be that of one of an outsider to computer use. As such, despite the title, there is actually not much that indicates the existence of “shared symbolic values” that constitute a cultural formation, whether virtual or not. Rather there is range of descriptions of locations where communities may be formed.
Of course, it is the communication pragmatics of such locations that often ensue the development of new symbolic values, a point particularly emphasized by Elizabeth Reid's "Electropolis: Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat and “Cultural Formations in Text-Based Virtual Realities”. Further to the development of new signs, signifiers and signifieds, Reid also makes the important point that the expressive presentation of communication is altered with social cues are trunctuated. People become “more so”, more honest, more deceptive, more assertive, more abusive, more public, more anonymous. Part of this is explored by Rheingold – especially Reid's first paper - in the fifth and sixth chapters of “Virtual Community”, where the text gets closest to actually studying community (MUDS, “real-time tribes”) rather than potential community locations. The point is emphasized that online identity is significantly different to their real life identity – with the explicit assumption that the forner will influence the latter, a position explored in greater detail by Sherry Turkle's Identity in the Age of the Internet. Further, Rheingold does emphasize the cross-culture influences on the developing computer mediated communication community – in particular the French and Japanese examples are provided their own chapters – but if one takes a strict analysis of community and cultural formation, Rheingold describes places, actors, but not new symbolic forms which perhaps can be descibed as “communities”, but perhaps not as “cultures”.
On the first instance, attempts to apply a symbolic or diachronic analysis to non-existent symbolic expressions would seem to be a futile exercise, rather like trying to divide a number by zero, which ultimately can have any result one desires. Nevertheless there is still a sequential diachronic history that can be derived from previous book reviews in this chapter – the analysis started with the hacker, it developed into the cyberpunk, continued to an optimistic expression of a magnificant new utopia and now, with no new cultural referent, everything is the same and the technology is a fascinating tool for ordinary life and ordinary people. Viewed this way, once again the historical tendency of technology, from the hack, to the elegant, from the enthusiast, to the normative, is becomes evident. Computer mediated communication, like every other successful technology, has become so ubiquitious that the dominant computer using culture is no longer the visionary hackers or the politically dystopic and ultimately utopian cyberpunks, but rather everyday people. Those cultures still exist of course, and their influence on the technology and the ideas of the Internet communities are pervasive, but they are they are no longer the specialist and unique view that they once were.
[
Elizabeth Reid (1991), Electropolis: Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat, Honours Thesis, Department of English, University of Melbourne, 1991
Elizabeth Reid, (1994), Cultural Formations in Text-Based Virtual Realities, Master of Arts Thesis, Department of English, University of Melbourne, 1994]
[Sherry Turkle, (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Simon & Schuster]
This however, is not the end of the story. It is important to note that the final chapters of “Virtual Community” are dedicated with online activism and the future of the public space generated by computer mediated communication. This can be interpreted along with other synchronic features of technology – as soon as a technology becomes decntralized as a personal tool, authorities will seek to regulate it. The more empowering the individual tool, the greater the urgency of the vested interests to nullify its powers. This does not require any technical or aesthetic avante-garde, although both have important contributions to make to the political process, but rather it is dependent on the participation of ordinary people in asserting their democratic rights and freedoms. Rheingold's conclusion is uncertain, and with good reason. The history of the failure of decentralized empowerment seems to be a synchronic truth, whether it is technological or institutional.
If the transformation of the subculture millieu from the early hackers to the cyberpunks was one which increased the scope of age and disciplinary orientation of mainstream computer culture – whilst maintaining existing distortions of income distribution, sex and language, the growing use of the computer mediated culture and it's internationalized connectivity noted by Rheingold provides note of further expansion in the disciplinary boundaries (i.e., to no academic orientation whatsoever) and initial steps towards genuine multi-culturalism, albeit still curtailed by the communicative competence of the users in a multilingual environment. These changes represent an expansion in the social field of computer using cultures, the introduction of new and diverse symbolic capital from external sources, but correlated with a downturn in the previously established subcultural coherence and the previously self-generated and relatively autonomous symbolic capital.
Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace., Douglas Rushkoff
[Rushkoff, D., Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace., HarperCollins., London, 1994]
Rushkoff is author of popular culture inquiries such as The Gen X Reader, and Media Virus: Hidden Agenda's in Poplar Culture. His articles have been published in GQ, PC Review, and he works as a culture consultant for the United Nations Commission on World Culture. The book, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace, received endorsement form John Barlow, of the Grateful Dead and founder of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, Dr. Timothy Leary, and editor of Mondo2000, R.U. Sirius.
"Cyberia" suggests five social sets as part of a proposed new community. This includes; (I) those involved with computers, (ii) a new drug sub-culture, (iii) a synthesis of paganism and technology as "technoshamanism", (iv) artists who utilise hypermedia, and (v) political activists who have chosen the online environment as a terrain. The first community is differentiated by the computer underground (hackers, phreakers etc), a union between psychedelics and programming from fractals and complex function theory, and the online community, particularly the WELL, and the development of virtual reality technologies.
In comparison, the new drug sub-culture further indicates an intuitive connection between technology and consciousness, especially through LSD, and its bifiburcations, MDMA and DMT: the former is considered a mild psychedelic, the latter for "smashing the ego into oblivion and discovering the very edge of what it means to be sentient". The use of psychedelic drugs is not considered just a recreational act, but is explicitly tied to Sheldrake's theory that reality is "a vast fractal of resonating fields". Designer drugs are considered particularly in the mode, and not just for the short term legal benefits. MDMA is considered to have particular a level of synthaesia with acid house music. Finally, the use of nootropics (eg., lecithin, hydergine, piracetam) and an advanced concern with nutrition suggests "organic programming".
Technoshaminism is primarily equated with development of acid house music and its use to induce-trance like states. Annulling the distinction between 'performers' and 'audience' at rave gatherings is also considered important, as is variability in individual fashion expressions. The historical inheritors of traditional paganism are deemed as Zippy's (Zen-induced pagan professionals), of which Genesis P. Orridge's 'Temple ov Psychic Youth' are an industrial wing.
Music is evidently a continuing product in this cultural paradigm and the strong relationship between technology and aesthetics is again emphasised with the description of the artistic community. Of particular note is the antipathy with the other combination of music and technology (ie., products of the Muzak Corporations). Also included are the literary works of Burroughs and Gibson, along with graphic novels (eg., Miller's futuristic Batman story, The Dark Night Returns). All these products are considered to have structural equivalence; the themes of 'cut and paste', hypertextuality, and multimedia.
Finally, the combination of acting and simulation encapsulated in roleplaying games, further emphasises a unification of the artistic and the scientific. In the political realm of the online world competition is not considered to be over territory, but over definitions. Rushkoff claims that the dominant political paradigm is counter-cultural and anti-system. A recital of the formation of the EFF and Operation SunDevil is provided, along with the claim with that various personal information and communications technologies are the new weapons of political conflicts. The concluding comparison is between the counter-cultural movement of the late 1960s, specifically in terms of altered consciousness and current reformulation through various technologies.
“Cyberia” follows the orientation as the “Mondo 2000 User's Guide to the New Edge” but, it must be stated, with significantly less justification for drawing hypothesized and cultural directions under a single banner. There are also some observations that beckon credibility. Rushkoff's claim to have observed a cyberpunk gang crack credit card paswords by using the magnetic tape of such cards and the read heads of a VCR seems highly improbable to put it mildly, as is the claim to have witnessed the leader of said cyberpunk gang inject amphetamines into his thigh whilst on a job – amphetamines are rarely injected intra-muscular and never below the waistline.
When new symbolic terms are introduced in Ruskoff's text (e.g., Zippy's) they are invariably related to the supposed “technological paganism”, psychedlics and trance-like states induced by electronic music. Whilst the original hackers and cyberpunk subcultures are noted by their preference towards recreational psychedlics, electronic music (“you can create art and beauty on your computer) and alternative religions, these codes were peripheral and associative rather than the determining feature of the cultural millieu – certainly not to the extent that the entire universe is described as a “vast fractal of resonating fields”.
If it seems difficult to correlated these features into a unified way that represents, as Rushkoff claims, “Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace”, it is because the correlations simply don't exist. As very little of this has anything to do with “cyberspace” m the text end up being an inadvertant, albeit popular, parody of the hype of the new cybercultural order, which by the time of publication was already on the back foot. By taking “cyberculture” out of “cyberspace” and placing it in the settings of discoteques and drug cultures, what becomes most notable from a historical point of view is the lack of political initiative in the post-Operation Sundevil victories, inevitably led to abandonment of the Internet as a site of political contestation. Instead, tangential and politically ineffectual subcultural mores found their way into “retreatist” lifestyles of wealthy countercultural aesthetes who could pretend that they had some connection with the new transformative technology of computer mediated communication when in reality, they had very little to do with it at all.
Evaluation of Virtual Community Literarature
The terms “community” derives from the Latin communis, and represents the notion of a common fellowship which share location, interests or both. It can, and mus be, differentiated from the notion of “culture”, representing the totality of shared symbolic values and whose Latin origins are as the past participle of colere, or “to cultivate”. A community is a location or an interest where a culture may be imported and transformed, one is the setting, the other is the process. Distinguishing between the two is important for matters of precision and in analyzing the changes in content and to evaluate the virtual community literature according to the general methodology elaborated in the first section of this chapter and particularly that of the semiotics of mediative action through communications technology.
In terms of strict physical numbers, the virtual community of the Internet and users of computer mediated communication and networked information is at the level where it is larger than most nation-states. This social space is now physically located in almost every country in the world, with most rapid national expansions occurring in the 1990s, the period of significant decentralization of the network infrastructure. These absolute features and the rate of expansion of the Internet were noted in the opening comemnts of this study. Relevant to this section, it must also be noted the development of myriad subcommunites. In terms of technically mediated setting, it is subdivided into electronic mail users, usernet, the world wide web, internet relay chat and within those settings a vast multiplicity of further subdivisions of interest. Nevertheless, it is still sensible to talk about the “Internet community” in the singular sense – and far more sensibly that terms like “the world community” or “the international community” - because it is still a particular location where one can move with relative ease from one subcommunity to another with particular pragmatic conditions in the way that symbolic structures are formed. Interpreted semiotically, the Internet community as a background is still a discernable singular narrative and a multitude of subplots with structural correlations.
The historical examination of that narrative carried out through this review of virtual community literature reveals the formation of a core culture (hackers) that proved difficult to incorporate to the needs of the social system, who generated their own symbolic codes, developed independently with politically and aesthetic values (cyberpunk), came into conflict with the authorities of the external social system (Operation Sundevil), won a decisive victory, but failed to succesfully pursue these victories in a political sense (one justifiable reason is that the Internet community was simply too small, too unknown at this stage) and as the community location expanded the cultural values became subsumed with the normal cultural paradigm of that in technically advanced societies. It is not without reason that the last significant study in this review was published as long ago as a1994. Simply put, there hasn't been a significant study of the Internet's culture since then. Rather, the texts that have been published have been about how external cultures have been influenced by the introduction of the Internet to their lifeworlds, rather than the generation of Internet cultures from within.
[Two particular examples of this are Sherry Turkle (1995), “Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, op cit, and Mark Poster (2001). “What the Matter With the Internet?, University of Minnesota Press]
A term that could be used, if there was a process of cultural generation within the Internet community today would be “Netizen”, a term used by Ronda and Michael Hauben to represent the entirety of the communities that made of the Internet's history, including, and especially, APRANET. The problem is that the Hauben's use of the term is etymologically incorrect. A “netizen” must be, in order to fit this portmanteau word, a member of a culture that is in the process of introducing a new civic society, independent of external authorities and is part of the the Internet community, both in terms of location and of interest. Such a culture would be a logical elaboration of the cyberpunk and hacker cultures, without requiring the aesthetic code and lifeworld of the former or the technical and scientific know-how of the latter. Rather, netizens would be “ordinary people” who, with and through their communication culture, could assert their right to form semotic syndedoche as associations and federations from the hermeneutic aspect of the mediative technology and metaphorical autonomous zones from the alterity aspect.
[Michael and Ronda Haubern, Netizens: On the History and the Impact of Usenet and the Internet, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997]
Instead, what has happened is that the mainstream culture has adopted the mediative technology of the Internet and become part of the community without adopting the wealth of cultural experiences of the long-term “residents”. When John Perry Barlow published A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, the remarks “they [the children of the future] are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants”, seemed to have forgotten how little evidence that invading immigrants care at all about the health, welfare and culture the natives of any location. Instead of Netizens becoming the new part of an expanded Internet culture, the culture has become marginalized within its own community locale and the new “immigrants”, now representing the majority of the residents, are facing the already experienced locational crises of identity, gender, “race” and age which is now feeding back into the the mainstream culture of advanced societies from whence they came.
[John Perry Barlow, 1996, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, http://www.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html]
The other bifurcation and trajectory that is indicitive of the recent developments in Internet culture is those recent arrivals who are have developed their technical knowledge and with their own aesthetic code is the subculture loosely associated with “pirate” bulletin board services of the 1980s. Treated with a attitude marginally below contempt by traditional hackers and with a writing style remiscent of urban ghetto spray-can scrawl, with the combination of letters and letter-like numerical signs, these “scriptkiddies”, as they are often called, are a highly marginalized community who, like the cyberpunks and hackers of yesteryear, are often accussed of being at the origin of software piracy, unauthorized computer use, propogation of viral codes and so forth. Whether or not these claims are true – and there certainly must be an element of the truth, based at least on the evidence available – neither the sociolopathological elements of the so-called “elite” (or rather “3L33T”) nor the rejection of the newcomers by traditional hackers and cyberpunks provides any sense of optimism for the future development of Internet culture.
[cf., the entry in The Jargon File, op cit, under “Crackers, Phreaks and Lamers”]
Screening out environmental and geographic factors, and the use of force, or force of circumstance, the only thing that attracts people to a community locale or interest is the culture or subculture of that community. For the better part of thirty years, the Internet and the communities of computer mediated communication have been in a state of constant growth. Now there is real empirical evidence that this growth is slowing down. To be sure, there is a finite limit to the possibility of the expansion of the Internet community – but as the recent evidence is showing, people are actually deliberately and consciously dropping out of the community. This is only happens when a community – or a society for that matter - fails to live up to its initial promises, becomes exclusive and no longer has the same aesthetic richness. This is the problem of the Internet as a community – it is facing increasing cultural impoverishment and marginalization, the development of its narrative has been stymied and, in the absence of coherent social and political leadership that can successfully incorporate the lessons of the past into a trajectory that includes newcomers and the future, the situation will inevitably become worse. Whilst as a mediative technology the Internet will have a certain functionality, it's a capability as the location and means to prove a free and democraticize society and its institutions will remain severely curtailed without the expansion of it's core cultural values.
[Pew Internet Project Report (2003), The Ever-Shifting Internet Population: A new look at Internet access and the digital divide, available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=88]
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