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 in the
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
recognized radio'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 home video 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 seemed
immanent, and yet, the home video studio never came to be. Walls
and boundaries confounding this utopian dream seemed to appear out
of nowhere. For instance, 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, and the 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 lives of 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
designed as 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 with each 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
were benign, 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 the equation. Do investors in
scientific research offer money with no restrictions attached? 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 chat lines, 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 accomplishthis 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 is dependent 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 even have 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.
 

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