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Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron have provided a provocative and necessary contribution to the emerging debate over the future of ‘Cyberspace’ (or Hypermedia).

It is unfortunate that the authors’ strident anti-Americanism somewhat detracts from the validity of their final conclusion – that the ‘State’ has a role in fostering the development of the new medium, with a view to ensuring its democratization and accessibility.

“Ideology n. 1. (arch.) science of ideas; visionary speculation. 2. manner of thinking characteristic of a class or individual, ideas as the basis of some economic or political theory or system.” [Oxford English Dictionary].

By their use of the term ‘The Californian Ideology’ Barbrook and Cameron seek to foster the illusion that, buried on a hard drive somewhere in California is a set of guiding principles which underly the development of the Web. The cognoscenti are presumably given the URL of this ‘ideology’, which is then ingested, acted upon, actions assessed, ideology modified and so on.

A somewhat cursory search through Infoseek and Alta Vista turned up one reference – that of the authors’ own site at HRC. The existence, then, of an ‘ideology’ would seem to exist only within the authors’ self-constructed, neo-Marxist universe.

While the conclusion of the paper is valid, the analysis would seem to betray a woeful ignorance of recent American – and particularly Californian – political, social and cultural history.

While there is no doubt that the new medium has spawned a flood of optimism amongst the digerati, the authors’ attempts to equate this to a new type of ‘slavery’ is risible. “Their Utopian vision of California depends upon a wilfull blindness towards the other – much less positive – features of life on the West Coast: racism, poverty and environmental degradation”, they state with a confidence bordering on arrogance.

It is this writer’s opinion and experience that, in fact, the opposite is the case. That artists and writers are still passionate about these issues; that the fight against social injustice and environmental exploitation is being joined in the new medium. Political, environmental and social activists are using the new medium to disseminate knowledge and information, forming previously impossible alliances and exchanging skills, knowledge and expertise to strengthen their cases against institutions and corporations which have no appreciation of the medium – yet.

Perhaps the authors’ major analytical flaw is in using the labels ‘New Left’ and ‘New Right’ as if they still had meaning, not only in the new medium, but in the context of American politics.

Politics in the US, on a national level, is in process of re-alignment. Ten years ago, a simple equation could be drawn: ‘Left’ = Democrat/Liberal, ‘Right’ = Republican. That is no longer the case – for example, Senator Exon – a Democrat – favors censorship of the Net, while Speaker Gingrich, a Republican, opposes same. Members of both parties in both houses have changed sides. The Democrats, in abandoning an interventionist agenda, have finally broken with the New Deal tradition in pursuit of short-term political gain. It is a step they will rue.

The political process at the national level has divorced itself from the mass of people and alienated them. Voter participation is low – ‘representatives’ often represent noone but themselves and/or their special interests. There are, of course, exceptions, but this is a view which is current at a perceptual level. Such perceptions inform action – or inaction.

In California, this process is particularly apparent. Pete Wilson was elected Governor on a rabid anti-immigrant platform. He successfully used the mainstream media to instill fear into the bosoms of those most likely to vote. And, because he had the bigger warchest, he carried off the prize. Of course, the spin-off the authors fail to mention is that his opponent, Dianne Feinstein, was subsequently elected a Senator, and has been instrumental in furthering the handgun control agenda – a piece of ‘liberal’ – and many would say ‘interventionist’ – legislation if ever there was one.

The disillusion of voters is due to one simple fact – the passage of Proposition 13 in California in 1978. This piece of legislation – voter-driven – effectively froze revenues from property taxes at 1978 levels. When a piece of residential property changes hands, the annual tax is assessed at the new market value – but only when it changes ownership. (Corporations, being enduring legal fictions, are effectively exempt.) The result has been the polarisation of communities along age lines, with established residents paying low taxes and younger newcomers paying higher rates.

For several years, the state was able to coast on the accumulated surplus of the late sixties and early seventies. By the mid/late 1980′s, the surplus was exhausted, and the state started to rein in its activities, cutting grants to cities and counties. There is widespread acknowledgment, both in and out of the ‘virtual community’, of the damaging effects of Proposition 13, particularly in the education field. Californians bemoan the fall from grace of the University of California system, which, with the help of immense state subsidies, was affordable, accessible and enjoyed a reputation for excellence. Alas, no more….

The new medium upends the existing paradigms for commerce, for social interaction, for communication – for everything. Participants in the ‘virtual world’ are, in the very absence of a coherent ideology, being forced to enter the supermarket of ideas, just to see what’s around, to make sense of their experience. This is part of the process of the redefinition of the political and social landscape. As ideas and theories are picked up, examined and rejected, so new ones appropriate to the chaged circumstances, will emerge. Many of these will be syntheses of existing notions. But it would be foolish to seek to characterize them as either of the ‘Left’ or of the ‘Right’.

The authors make much of the apparent hijacking of credit for Web development by private entrepreneurs. They cite the subsidization of Babbage’s Difference Engine by the British Government in the 1830′s. Later in their paper, they make much of the French Government’s backing of Minitel. Minitel may well have been a success at the time. But where is it now? And what about other, less successful interventionist strategies, like the nationalization of the French car industry? Along the way, they throw in references to IBM, flight simulators and just abut every gew-gaw of modern life with a technological bent.

The implication seems to be that everyone who has developed a piece of hard- or software for use on the Web should, somehow or other, render praise to the Feds for making it all possible. That is like arguing that the developers of anti-lock braking systems should give tribute to the Feds because the Government builds roads!

The authors would do well to stop searching every nook and cranny of the Net for evidence of an “anti-statist ideology”. There isn’t one.

“The business of America is business”. This truism may be riddled with inconsistencies, with false perceptions, with an over-adulation (and over compensation) for corporate entrepreneurs. But it is a guiding principle. It has given rise to beauty and ugliness in about equal measure. But that’s the way America works. We may disagree with it, but the credo’s very flexibility leaves it open to change, both from within and without. For example, Pacific Gas & Electricity has, on numerous occasions, hired the author of ‘Ecotopia’, Ernest Callenbach, as a consultant on how best to minimize the utility’s environmental impact.

California, in particular, is a state of abundant paradoxes. Consider the Yosemite valley and South Central LA. In their own ways, access to one – and the inaccessibility of the other – are both a result of the policies and practices of private enterprise, tempered by legislative and administrative action at state and federal levels.

One of California’s paradoxes is it’s love/hate relationship with the State of California and its agencies. For example, how can CalTrans, responsible for the construction of Highway 280 (one of the most elegant and environmentally sensitive freeways in the state), also be responsible for the urban blight created by the 5 years of inactivity in repairing the Cypress Freeway after the Loma Prieta Earthquake? How is it that the home of the automobile – Los Angeles – also has a brand spanking-new public transit system?

Californians are aware of these paradoxes, and about the ambiguities of life in the state. But how can we talk of “Californians” with any sense of homogeneity? San Francisco and Los Angeles are in a state of constant cultural warfare, and both disdain the inhabitants of the Central Valley…..

The fact that the paper millionaires of Silicon Valley choose to live in Mountain View is, in a sense, irrelevant. Would their work have more integrity if they lived in East Palo Alto or San Francisco’s Mission barrio? Apparently, the authors of “The Californian Ideology” believe so.

Currently, the Net is an elitist club. Access currently runs at about $3,000 for a system. Six months ago, it was $5,000. Six months from now, it will probably be $1,500, with the possibility of the $500 Internet ‘box’ a possibility in the not too distant future. Net access will become, in California at least, as ubiquitous as the automobile. (It would, as an aside, be interesting to learn the equivalent subscription rate for would-be users in the United Kingdom. In my experience, a dollar price translates to a £ sterling price 1:1.5, making Net access in Britain a truly elitist experience.)

How to democratize access is one of the challenges facing all of us, no matter where we are located geographically. The Web has no boundaries, knows no time. It is a miraculous medium, which will for ever change our thinking, our feeling, our range of life experience.

The authors of ‘The Californian Ideology’ are correct in their plea for further development to be a result of cooperation between the ‘State’ (the ‘nation-state’? – an increasingly irrelevant concept…), private industry, individuals and other, more amorphous collectives of interested participants.

It is unfortunate that a somewhat simplistic, ideologically-burdened analysis detracts from that message.

John Blower – January 18, 1996

Bay Area counter-culture veteran responds to the Californian Ideology

I was one of the demonstrators at People’s Park in Berkeley in 1969. And I now make my living as a computer consultant in the San Francisco Bay area. I share your dismay at the rise of the cyber-libertarian market ethic. At the same time, I find your attempt to link the rise of that market ethic to the counter-culture of the 1960′s to be way off the I see very little evidence to support your claim that many of the computer consultants are former hippies. For the most part, the independent computer consultants – and employees in computing in general for that matter – that I have encountered over the last fifteen years in this business have not been former hippies nor have they displayed any affinity for the counter-culture. It is true that some people from the counter-culture have turned to computers as a way to make a living. But most, like myself, have done so more as a concession to current economic reality than to any belief in technical determinism or the sancitity of the market place.

Your attempt to link the development of the PC to the counter-culture is equally flawed. Yes, there undoubtedly were some freaks in the Haight-Ashbury and Berkeley who believed that computers would liberate us from the grip of corporate greed. No doubt some of them made important contributions to the development of computers. But the home-brew computer clubs were almost entirely centered well to the south of San Francisco, in the Peninsula which includes Palo Alto and what is now Silicon Valley. The area was home to a number of important high-tech defense contractors as well as Stanford University, a very elite and very expensive private university. As a result, there were a lot of engineers in the Valley even then, and a lot of money. That probably had more to do with its prominence in the history of computing than any association with hippies. Every one I knew in those days considered that area a cultural wasteland and would venture there only in transit to another outpost of the counter-culture such as Santa Cruz. Those folks from the Peninsula who identified with the counter-culture usually left for San Francisco, the Grateful Dead being a prime example.

It is true that the counter-culture was somewhat ambiguous in its attitude towards technology, embracing LSD and amplified music while claiming to be developing a more “natural” way of living. But technological utopianism was hardly a defining characteristic of the counter-culture. Technological utopianism has been a major theme in European civilization at least since Francis Bacon. And Karl Marx assured us that once the workers seized the means of production, the industrial revolution would enable them to create a paradise where humanity would be freed from physical labor. Despite its lapses in this regard, the counter-culture was generally less tied to high technology than the general society that surrounded it. The first things the occupiers of People’s Park did with the land was plant a community garden and put up a childrens’ playground. This emphasis on community interdependence and the rejection of a society based on the production and consumption of commodities were the true hallmarks of the counter-culture of the 1960′s and 1970′s. I don’t know where your libertarian followers of McLuhan were in those days, maybe they were smoking their weed in Cupertino, or New York, or London. But they weren’t much of a factor in Berkeley or the Haight.

In fact they still aren’t. The voting record for San Francisco and Berkeley shows a political direction almost diametrically opposed to the conservatism that has overtaken much of the rest of California. While the rest of the state has voted in favor of ballot propositions attacking the rights of immigrants and enhanced employment oportunities for minority groups, San Francisco and Berkeley have opposed them by margins as high as 2 to 1. Those cities recently voted in favor of universal, government-sponsored health care – anathema to the libertarians. Democratic political candidates carried Berkeley and San Francisco throughout the 1980′s even when the rest of the state and the country was voting for Ronald Reagan or George Bush by a wide margin.

It would be difficult for your readers to know, but People’s Park is still in existence. Shortly after the 1969 riots the University of California agreed to lease the land to the City of Berkeley for one dollar a year so that the city could maintain it as a park. Over the years, the park has become a hangout for a rather rough crowd. Two or three years ago the city and the univeristy agreed to end the lease so that the university could build housing on the site. There was another riot. A much smaller one to be sure. But then again no one had even put up any fences yet. And a very significant portion of the taxpayers and homeowners of Berkeley – the aging hippies who you claim have given up on their ideals – demanded that the park be preserved. Most of these people were professionals in their forties who wouldn’t feel safe walking around Peoples Park. But the symbolic importance of that little piece of land was still sufficient to bring angry groups of them down to city hall. The potentially explosive situation scared the hell out of the local authorities and they quickly agreed to guarentee the park’s continued existence.

I am not claiming the counter-culture is nearly as strong and vibrant as it was twenty-five years ago. For the most part people have simply drifted away – into libertarianism in some cases, but mostly into a more mainstream American existence. Nonetheless, what remains is more than a tattered remnant, although it is certainly les visible. Age is partly responsible. People tend to be less outrageous in their behavior. Nonetheless, significant numbers of people are still working on community supported agriculture, child-care, community health and hospice care. The Bay Area is still an important center of opposition to American military intervention overseas, and more recently, the global economy.

Meanwhile, the closing paragraphs of your own manifesto on “The Californian Ideology”, display the same technological naivete and elitism that befuddled your McLuhanite hippies of twenty-five years ago. You proclaim the “Promethean possibilities of hypermedia” which will allow a liberated “virtual class” of “digital artisans” to “create a new machine aesthetic for the information age.” How is all of this going to lead to social emancipation for those who are not in the privileged group of “artist-engineers -designers of the next stage of modernity?” Are folks who are not digital artisans going to have any say in what the next “stage of modernity” is going to look like? What is the likelihood that a group of digital artisans could ever retain control over a large-scale, capital-intensive technology such as hypermedia?

And what makes you think that your revolutionary efforts won’t be co-opted if they are successful? I suggest you think about some basic things such as where your food comes from or how you care for your children. Think about what resources you really have which are independent of international corporate interests. Unless your creative efforts address those kinds of issues, you won’t change a damn thing.

Last year, a critical essay entitled The Californian Ideology by Richard Barbrook and Andrew Cameron (University of Westminster) appeared on the Internet and quickly became a focal point for growing criticism of the glossy and widely influential Wired magazine. However, the author’s difficulty in sorting out the origins of the ideas behind Wired and it’s version of the “Digital Revolution” was painfully obvious in their essay.

I’d like to argue that the group which has consistently promoted the worldview expressed by Wired and, in effect, publishes and writes the magazine today isn’t American at all — it’s the English. If anything, Wired represents yet another attempt to invade American culture and to undermine American political and economic initiative — another of the attempts which have characterized American relations with the English for many centuries.

Wired magazine is not an American institution, nor is it even distinctly Californian (although its association with San Francisco is certainly undeniable). And, it’s ideology is also not nearly as novel as Barbrook/Cameron and some other European commentators seem to suggest — although, arguably, it is appearing in a new and, therefore, potentially confusing form. Each of the magazine’s elements, including free-market economics, hedonic lifestyle, techno-utopianism and, crucially, complete disdain for the uniqueness of human consciousness are all specifically and historically English.

For that matter, the magazine’s sponsors are all English (or self-confessed Anglophiles). Its themes are largely English in origin and its strategy of world-domination through techno-utopian revolution is English (specifically H.G.Wells) to the core. Indeed, Wired is a house-organ for the modern political expression of British radical liberalism and it’s philosophical partner British radical empiricism. Politically, philosophically, financially and psychologically, Wired is a concrete expression of the English ideology.

The Wired project began when the director of MIT’s Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte (an Anglophile who’s ideal digital-slave is an AI-spawned robotic English butler), plucked Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe from obscurity in San Francisco’s European sister-city, the other Anglo-Dutch “experimental” metropolis, Amsterdam. Before Wired, Rosetto’s greatest previous literary achievement had been a book describing the high-budget nudie shenanigans at the filming of Caligula. This movie, in turn, was the boldest effort by Penthouse magazine’s Bob Guccione, whose introduction to porn-production was under English tutelage in Tangier and who sent his sons to British military finishing schools.

Negroponte’s apparent goal was to meld Rosetto/Metcalfe with the now flagging San Francisco-based Whole Earth project of his longtime associate, Stewart Brand (who had previously contributed the book/marketing-brochure Media Lab). First to join the Wired editorial team was Brand protege and Whole Earth editor, Kevin Kelly, in what was billed as an ambitious relaunch of the original effort designed to amp-up the graphics, capture consumer product advertisers and spearhead the, now digital, techno-Utopian world revolution. Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll were now “tired”; Wired was now “wired.”

Wired, which positioned itself as the journal of this post-psychedelic world revolution, was launched with seed money from Negroponte (buying him the back page and ultimately a best-seller) and from game designer Charlie Jackson. But the glossy mockup failed to attract the crucial second round of investment and Wired appeared to be still-born until Negroponte introduced them to the San Francisco-based private bank, Sterling Payot, which fronted the money for the magazine’s launch. Continued existence, however, was still in doubt until the notoriously Anglophile (a polite word for English in American clothing) publisher Si Newhouse’s Advance Publications stepped in for the last push. (No, despite its name, the Newhouse published magazine, The New Yorker is actually not an American publication — it’s English.)

In this tumultuous process involving financial reorganizations, whatever notions of editorial independence which might have been initially entertained at Wired were quickly contained. The editorial content of the magazine from its inception has been heavily influenced by the larger utopian agendas of Brand and his Whole Earth-to-Wired editorial colleague Kevin Kelly. In particular, the multi-national scenarios-planning company co-founded by Brand and previously London-based Royal-Dutch Shell futurist Peter Schwartz, the Global Business Network (GBN), has been decisive in shaping Wired’s “content.” From promoting GBN’s consultants endlessly with cover-stories and interviews to actually producing a “special issue” on the future totally with GBN resources, Wired handed over its editorial reigns to GBN and it’s New Dark Age scenarios (more on this below) from day one.

To be sure, proclaiming the gloomy truth of the GBN scenario-planned and social-engineered future is not exactly Wired’s public mission. Wired is all about the “optimism meme” and is committed to catalyzing the creation of a “better world” — at least for the 5% of the population who are expected to comprise the new Information Age rulers. This new “class” even has a name — the “Brain Lords” (and what else would the English call the Information Age aristocracy, anyway?) — according to Michael Vlahos, a policy analyst at Newt Gingrich’s think-tank, the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Editorial support for Gingrich’s brand of “revolution” as well as consistent backing of his technocratic policy advisers, most notably Alvin Toffler, has been a Wired commitment from its earliest issues.

The project which preceded Wired, the Whole Earth Catalog (and its various off-shoots, such as the computer conferencing system known as the Well and the newer Electric Minds), had been the product of Stewart Brand et. al’s 1960′s efforts to engineer a utopian counter-culture which, it was hoped, would broadly transform society at large. So, aren’t I confusing my history here? Isn’t Brand all American? No, I don’t think so. Scratch a Stewart Brand and what will you find? None other than the English anthropologist Gregory Bateson, of course. And, it is from Bateson’s lifelong commitment to re-program a humanity which he deeply despised and, in particular, his explicit drive to destroy the religious basis of Western civilization by replacing God with Nature, that the Whole Earth project was born. It was literally the beginning of a new religion with Nature at its center and mankind portrayed as the dangerous ape threatening to destroy it all.

Bateson’s British (and American) intelligence sponsored takeover of the nascent field of cybernetics in the 1950′s from its creator, Norbert Wiener, led directly into Bateson’s LSD-driven experiments on schizophrenia and creativity in Palo Alto, which in turn, were the origins of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and their house band, the Grateful Dead. Indeed, Stewart Brand’s own career as a publicist for what was first conceived of as drug and then computer-based techo-utopian revolution owes much to Bateson’s cybernetics guidance. Brand was among the first to recognize that personal computers and computer networks might have even greater potential to re-program the humans who “used” them than the psychedelics which fueled his earlier efforts. Indeed, based on Brand’s success at promoting LSD at his Trips Festivals, he was hired by Doug Englebart to stage the first mass demonstration of the mouse and windows system which Englebart had invented at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).

Bateson is the son of the English geneticist, William Bateson, whose attacks precipitated the suicide of his principle Continental rival, Otto Kammerer, is chronicled in Arthur Koestler’s Case of the Mid-Wife Toad. And, if the Englishman Bateson doesn’t satisfy your hunger for a proper genealogy for psychedelic San Francisco, one might consider Captain Al Hubbard (no relation to L. Ron), the Johnny Appleseed of LSD. He was born in Kentucky but by the 1950′s had renounced his U.S. citizenship and sailed right up to Vancouver, British Columbia, to become a commodore in their very English yacht club. That’s where he set up the world war-room to target the destruction of Western culture (through San Francisco) and from this base that he joined forces with Humphrey Osmond (English military psychiatrist, lead English MK-ULTRA researcher and the originator of the term “psychedelic”) and Aldous Huxley (English black-sheep godson of the original techno-utopian, H.G. Wells) to spread LSD among the intelligentsia to achieve the world revolution. To be sure, San Francisco’s cultural scene has long been shaped by its close association with English/Anglophile intellectuals and social engineers.

But, it’s not sufficient to demonstrate the intellectual genealogy of Wired to fully describe their tight affiliation with the English ideology. There is a crucial component of the technological and biologically deterministic utopian worldview at the core of Wired’s “content” which must be carefully situated as well. Wired’s techno-utopianism is merely the modern expression of H.G. Wells’ attempts in the first half of this century to construct a technocratic global empire ruled by a new elite — much like the audience that Wired seeks to rally behind its now digital but still self-consciously revolutionary banner.

In its various forms, following Thomas More’s coining of the term Utopia with the publishing of his book with that title in 1516, utopian writing and, indeed, utopian social experiments tended to be pastoral and, if anything, anti-technology. It was H.G. Wells who changed all that with his 1905 publication of his novel, A Modern Utopia (one of the few of his 20th century works which is still in print). And, it was Wells who initiated the entire inquiry into a technology-defined future (and, indeed, launched the field now known as futurism) in his seminal 1902 essay, Anticipations.

While Wells is popularly known as the first true science fiction writer, he lived for 50 years after he completed his cycle of four major sci-fi novels in 1897. During this half century, he was very busy designing the future of the British Empire — the Third Rome as he put it (or as Toffler would later put it, the Third Wave) — as a vision of a world knit together by communications and transportation technologies and controlled by a new class of technocrats. What Wells’ described in volume after volume throughout the rest of his life (both in fictional and essay format) is indistinguishable from the digital revolution Wired hopes to lead. It’s a post-industrial world that has abandoned the nation-state in favor of Wells’ World State, that has scrapped the premises of it’s industrial past, embraced the scarcity of an anti-growth economics and based itself on the emergence of a newly indoctrinated post-civilization humanity.

Wells had devoted himself to organizing a world revolution based on technology, synthetic religion and mass mind-control — the same revolution discussed monthly in the pages of Wired. In Wells’ A Modern Utopia, the rulers are called the “New Samurai” and they are a caste of scientist/priests who social-engineer the global society Wells called the “World State.” John Perry Barlow’s Wired-published, Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace would have made Wells very happy, I have no doubt. Yes, that’s Wells’ “World State” lurking in the margins of Barlow’s manifesto despite his waffling on the specifics of future forms of “governance” — except to say that the future of politics will be conveniently (from the social engineer’s standpoint) “post-reason.”

But, aren’t I heading straight into the jaws of an overwhelming and categorical contradiction? Wells was certainly no free-marketeer. He was a professed socialist and Wired appears on its face to be thoroughly free-market capitalist. How could I claim any affinity between the British radical liberals and Wells (and with both and Wired)? Aren’t I just gluing together two sets of intellectual forebears — who both just happen to be English? How do I avoid the “bizarre fusion” description favored by Barbrook/Cameron? In the end, doesn’t my English ideology argument collapse as just another curious historical accident combine with an overworked imagination?

I don’t think so. Despite the naked attempt to rescue Well’s socialist legacy in a recent biography by the past-head of the British Labour Party, Michael Foot, Wells was indeed a very strange socialist. Likewise, when the substance of its arguments are carefully considered, Wired strikes the pose of a very odd sort of capitalist. I’m convinced that they both choose to adopt protective coloring to enhance their stature in their respective times and places but that, just beneath the surface, they are both simply utopian/corporativists — the same ideological impulse which gave rise to Fascism — and not what they may appear to be to the more casual and, too often, more credulous observer.

Both Wired and Wells are, in fact, utopians and elitists with overarching ambitions of leading a world revolution. This revolution is intended to produce radical economic and political transformation which would put their ilk in charge of running a new worldwide empire. From a strategic standpoint — fundamental goals and premises — Wells, Wired (and their common antecedent the anti-human radical Liberals) were/are all fighting for the same new imperial outcome. While there are certainly many tactical twists and turns in this plot over the centuries, this entire grabbag is precisely what I’ve been referring to as the English ideology — the ideology behind a global empire which combines an anything-goes small-scale private life (libertarianism) with rigidly defined large-scale constraints (technocracy). If you would like another description of the same utopian ying-yang, refer to Jaron Lanier’s November 1995 editorial in the Spin magazine issue on the future and his characterization of the Stewards (technocrats) and the Extropians (libertarians) as the post-political poles of discourse.

Wells’ dalliance with the Fabian Society (he tried to take it over by promoting free-love to the wives of its board members) may be one of the sources of confusion leading to Wells’ apparent “socialist” credentials. But, as even a cursory reading of Wells’ quickly demonstrates, their was absolutely no room for working class revolt (or certainly working class leadership) in Wells’ worldview. He was thoroughly convinced that the downtrodden could never lead or even comprehend the revolution he saw coming. Wells’ life was dedicated to organizing a completely new class of technical and social scientific experts — technocrats — who would assume control of a world driven to collapse and ruin by workers and capitalists alike. Wells wanted to completely re-program humanity — through the creation of a synthetic religion — and, like all utopians, had no affection for the commoner of his time at all. Wells considered socialism, in its various Social Democratic to Marxist manifestations, to be a string of completely anachronistic failures and a throwback to the era of human folly and self-destruction which Wells sought to leap past — much like Toffler dismissing nation-states and representative democracy as “Second Wave.”

In fact, Wells was very clear what sort of corporativist world he wanted when identified the earliest of the multinational corporations as the fledgling model of his ideal economic organization. In his 1920′s novel, The World of William Chissolm, and the companion essay, Imperialism and The Open Conspiracy, Wells cites early multi-nationals as the only kind of globe-spanning (and, therefore, anti-nation-state) economic structures which could embody his revolutionary principles. He chides both government and business leaders who think that any remnant of the still British-nation-centered Empire could survive and calls on the heads of multinationals to join in forming the vanguard of his revolutionary “Open Conspiracy.”

He also published extensively about the inevitable scrapping of democracy and any form of popular rule in his World State. His “New Samurai” were volunteers who pledged their lives to the pure experience of ruling as a new caste of priest/scholars. No elections, no parliament, no hereditary titles and no buying your way in, Wells was clear that his new ruling class would be a religious elite with global reach. He even predicted that a new field of inquiry, which he termed Social Psychology, would arise and become the “soul of the race” by developing social control techniques which would systematically re-train the masses which he openly despised. And, following WW II, the core of British and American psychological warfare leadership created just such field to pursue worldwide social engineering. H.G. Wells was a very strange “socialist”, indeed.

Oh, he did call for the abolition of all socially significant private property. But, then so has Wired with their repeated claims that in the Information Age intellectual property will disappear in cyberspace — a posture that has not gone unnoticed in the more orthodox neo-liberal circles as demonstrated by Peter Huber’s scathing critique of Wired in his piece for Slate, Tangled Wires. Such a call for abolishing property was also featured by the native U.S. fascist movement, Technocracy — which was launched out of the Columbia University Engineering Department with 1932 nationwide radio broadcast. In fact, while Wells rejected the offered allegiance to his “Open Conspiracy” by native British fascist, Oswald Moseley, he did it by pointing out that “what we need is some more liberal fascists.” Being educated as he was, Wells surely understood (and I believe embraced) the philosophical heritage of radical “liberalism.”

As a matter of fact, independent economic sovereignty (the essence of politically effective private property) is what Wells (and all his empire building successors have) objected to. It is the independence of large scale economic forces — particularly those associated with strong nation-states — that both Wells and the radical Liberals both objected to so forcefully. It is only such forces, operating with determination and resolve, that function as a bulwark against empires like Wells’ World State. Despite their surface appearance of conflict, Wired-style free-marketeering and Wells’ “Open Conspiracy” both lead to the same political-economic outcome — oligarchist/corporativist control of a global economy. This is why the intellectual progenitor of modern libertarianism, Hayek, spent his career at the nominally Fabian socialist London School of Economics alongside Keynes, they were simply two birds of the same feather. Another ying-yang twinned pairing pointing to a common endgame.

While it admittedly flies in the face of conventional categorization, right-wing and left-wing utopian/oligarchists are still fundamentally and most significantly utopian/oligarchists — even if their protective plumage might temporarily succeed in confusing some birdwatchers. They differ merely on the tactics, while presenting a home for confused fellow-travellers of all persuasions, while they thump for the same 1000 year empire and imagine themselves sitting behind the steering wheel. This should be no more confusing than watching Alvin Toffler, and his wife Heidi, move from active Communist Party membership and factory floor colonization to becoming chief advisors to Newt Gingrich. Tactics may change; the strategy remains unaltered.

What sort of future do the futurists see for us? Despite the sugar-coated promises of wealth and power being held out to those who make the cut and get inducted into the supreme religious cult which gets to play imperial Wizard of Oz, the reality of a Wells/Wired future won’t be nearly so cinematic for most earthlings. As every honest futurist has admitted, the future will be painful and pointless for most who survive. The Information Age will be a Dark Age. It will bring pre-mature death to half or more of the earth’s population and it will represent the deliberate scrapping and then forgetting of humanity’s greatest achievements.

Perhaps, the harsh truth of the Information Age was best described in Michael Vlahos’ January 1995 speech, “ByteCity -or- Life After the Big Change.” Vlahos is a Senior Fellow at Newt Gingrich’s thinktank, the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF), and a past geo-political analyst who has led PFF’s exploration of implementing the Toffler/Wells plans. Vlahos presents a terrifying future scenario roughly 20 years in the future in which society has stratified into elites and gangs. In fact, life is so threatening in ByteCity that we spent most of our time in our rooms staring at wall sized vidscreens — if we’re lucky enough to have a room, that is.

Vlahos’ world is run by stateless modern robber-barons, which he terms the “Brain Lords” and which he characterizes as “rampaging not through the landscape but making billions in the ether.” These new aristocrats will come from the merger of telecommunications and entertainment multinational giants and much like in Wells’ formulation, the “Brain Lords” do not inherit their class status and they will burn out from looting at an early age. After 40 they will retire to run the world. They will comprise 5% of the population, he says. They are Wells’ “New Samurai.”

Below them he stratifies in the “Upper Servers” and the “Agents” who comprise another 20% who will spend their lives destroying the value of professional education and association in a vicious “information” driven chase for individual recognition. Below that, roughly 50% of the population lives as service workers slaving 12-15 hours a day in front their living-room vidscreens “servicing” their global clients in a world that respects no time zones.

And the bottom 25%, who, if they are not pacified will provide ample motivation for people to stay indoors to avoid being attacked by roving gangs, are what Vlahos calls “The Lost.” Roughly twice as large a population share as those who were discarded by the Industrial Revolution in Britain according to Vlahos, “The Lost” are those that will never become a functioning part of “ByteCity.” Sustained by modern “Victorians” who know the threat posed by the poor, “The Lost” are merely the most wretched of the wretches. Life all the way up the line from “lost” to “lord” will entail such radical disruption of personal safety and well-being that, in effect, Vlahos has turned dystopian cyberpunk literature into a policy statement. Naturally, expecting to rise to the top, Vlahos appears to feverishly await the “Big Change.”

No less chilling is the scenarios planning exercise that Wired’s wizards-behind-the-curtain perform on their multi-national clients. From General Motors to AT&T, the Global Business Network (GBN) charges hefty sums to show the yellow-brick-road towards “ByteCity” to strategic planners and top corporate brass. In one recent and rare public discussion of the results, GM’s top planning team defined the three “alternative futures” which emerged after years of GBN counciling. The first is just like our world and, so by definition, is not very interesting. The second is an eco-fascist regime in which car designs are completely “Green” and the companies can only follow orders. The third is the fun one, however. This is the world in which armed gangs roam the streets and surface travel is a series of car chases. This scenario has already been anticipated with a Cadillac that includes armored protection and a “panic” button installed in the middle of the dashboard. The car has a satellite tracking system built in and it can call the local authorities (presumably your multi-national’s private swat-team) and get help when you get trapped by the natives.

Vlahos/PFF/Gingrich and Wired/GBN/Brand and Wells/Toffler/”Open Conspiracy”. What ideology is being expressed by all these 20th century New Dark Age “revolutionaries”? Is this ideology “Californian”? Or, does it have another historical context and another tribal association? I merely suggest that accuracy, intellectual faithfulness and international solidarity require us to pin the tail on the real (Benthamite) donkey. This is the English ideology and, as usual, it’s hell-bent on ruling the world — over our dead bodies.

[Copyright New Media Associates, 1996]

I first read a draft of ‘The Californian Ideology’ given to me by Andy Cameron during his visit to Los Angeles last summer for the SIGGRAPH ’95 Convention. At that time, Andy was showing Anti-Rom at SIGGRAPH on my invitation as part of an exhibition of alternative new media called the lounge@siggraph which I organized for the conference. Andy was staying near my house at a beachside motel in Santa Monica and wore sandals for the entire period of his stay. We ate cheap Mexican food for lunch every day across the street from the Convention Center. We had lively discussions on a variety of topics. With the exception of a few technical problems during the show, he seemed to have a lovely visit with us here in California. If I am not very much mistaken, he left Southern California with a bit of a tan.

What, Precisely, Is California?

“American and England are two nations divided by a common language.” Oscar Wilde was succinct in his observation, if not a bit simplistic. There is much more that divides America from England than mere linguistics. And if we are on the subject of California, the division is even more drastic since California is as far away from England as any place in the U.S., including Alaska, but with the possible exception of Hawaii.

It is typical of Americans to be myopically ignorant of their own history – not to mention everyone else’s – which is how the Republican Party is able to repeatedly succeed at the polls. But a glimpse into our history, and particularly the history of California, is useful in understanding the basis for the Californian Ideology.

California is and has always been characterized by pioneers and gold diggers. From the gold rush, to the movie industry, to the computer revolution, the Californian Ideology has always been one of spirited individualism and entrepreneurialism. A less utopian way to look at it is that California is a breeding ground for greed and self-interest. Both interpretations are correct. By way of example, take a look at this list of just a few of the things California has brought the world:

Levis Movies Charles Manson The Grateful Dead Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon Silicon Graphics Microsoft and Apple Industrial Light & Magic Los Angeles and San Francisco Scientology Disneyland

A Member of the Virtual Class

Bearing all that in mind, I’d like to analyze some of Cameron and Barbrook’s points from the perspective of someone who must live – and survive – the Californian Ideology on a daily basis. By way of qualifying that statement, let me confess at once and without shame that I am a member of the ‘virtual class’ described in the article. The description of this individual – the independent contractor, free to come and go as they wish, well-paid, but at the same time, suffering from acute workaholism – fits me to a tee. All except the well-paid part. And that is a myth. It is true that many of us are well paid by the hour. However, it is also true that many of us spend between fifty and seventy-five percent of our time trying to secure that hour of work. Furthermore, prospective clients often expect us to do work on spec or for very low rates, often with no assurance that work will not be used without our participation. Those of us to are pushing the envelope the hardest, and particularly, those who are trying to make product with social and cultural merits, must fight every step of the way. The people who are at the forefront of the digital revolution, the true vanguards, are blazing their trail at tremendous personal risk.

The condition of the ‘virtual class’ cannot be blamed on the individuals within it, but must be looked at in a larger context. In America, artists receive very little support from the government or, for that matter, the society-at-large. Since the 1930′s and the New Deal, when WPA funding was created to support a variety of arts and cultural projects, America has systematically eroded away its art and cultural support, much as a desperate animal gnaws its own foot off to release itself from a trap. In our anti-intellectual culture, artists are considered subversive and unnecessary. In America, anything that does not generate revenue is viewed as gratuitous.

And herein lies the key to understanding the Californian Ideology. The most important thing in America is making money. Period. If we begin our discussion starting from that axiom, we can start to make a little more sense of what the Californian Ideology is all about.

“Bigger is Better”

In many arenas, America prides itself on matters of size. “Bigger is better” is the general belief. But one of the primary reasons for the average American’s sense of political impotency is that America is quite simply too big to manage. The European Community will ultimately be a better model for managing governments than the United States of America. If you look at any large country with a large physical area and a large population, you will recognize that it is almost impossible to run a large country with any measure of freedom to its members. If you are autocratic and highly centralized, as was the Soviet Union or the People’s Republic of China, you can have some measure of control. However, once you start letting people have any say in what’s going on, things start to degenerate, as we are now seeing with former Soviet republics.

To compensate for this flaw in large-scale decentralized management, we have developed, in the form of corporations and companies, our own form of a tribal culture. Big companies like Disney, IBM, McDonald’s or Coca-Cola, are small nations unto themselves with their own culture, ethics, even their own language. These tribes cluster themselves into “industries” – software, entertainment, automobile, and so on. It is within these corporate tribes that most Americans find the unity and security one might expect to be provided by government in a place where the “common good” is seen as a priority.

Capitalist Cyberhippies

Why is Silicon valley overrun with capitalist hippies? It is easy to label these individuals are revolutionaries who ‘sold out’ to the capitalist ethic. But when you live within that ethic, you can also look at it another way. We learned in the 1960′s, after our President, his brother, and our two most influential civil rights leaders were murdered, that politics was a dangerous path to take in building a revolution. The Nixon regime further drove home the point that politics was no place for a respectable individual to devote their time and energy. Furthermore, it doesn’t take a genius to see that in reality, there is no politics in America, only economics. So to say that Americans are apolitical is absolutely correct. And that is because our country is about economics, not politics. In Europe, there are countries. In America, there are corporations. It is the corporations who take care of the people, not the government. Those things which are typically government supported in social democracies, like medical insurance, education, and even the arts, are provided by corporations. We have created a modern-day feudal society. And the only way to secure any real power in America is to either make -or control- large sums of money.

In the 1960′s, the generation that seemed destined to revolutionize America was utterly derailed by the events described above from a political path to change. They did, in fact, change America, but not in the ways we thought they would. Those who would have excelled in politics turned instead to industry. In another time and place, it might have been Bill Gates in the White House rather than Bill Clinton. But their generation learned the hard way that politics is as treacherous in America as it is pointless. The mere comparison of the two Bills should attest to that.

Siliwood & the Military Entertainment Complex

From Silicon Valley, you can follow the California fault to the other nexus of activity in California – Hollywood. Hollywood is the home of the entertainment industry, Silicon Valley of the computer industry. And in the past three years, these two powerful forces have “gotten in bed together” (as we say in showbiz) and given birth to a new phenomenon aptly known as ‘Siliwood’.

But beneath the self-congratulatory glitter of this marriage, both regions are tied together by a much stronger bond, a bond much less glamorous, but no less profitable. That bond is the military. As ‘The Californian Ideology’ very astutely points out, virtually every aspect of the computer industry has its roots in government-funded military technology, and California has always been a leader in military contracts. This all but explodes (pun intended) the myth of the autonomous pioneer. For every Apple in California, there is a Lockheed. Considering Silicon Valley is the domain of the cyberhippie-turned-capitalist culture, there is a deep irony in the fact that people who were once anti-war demonstrators have built an entire industry on the shoulders of the military. The brushing over of this fact is yet another example of historical myopia.

But one can scarcely explore the ironies of this without acknowledging Siliwood’s companion movement, the ‘Military Entertainment Complex’. In the wake of military downsizing, many military contractors, scratching their heads and wondering “Who, but the military, can afford us?” turned to their liberal neighbors in Hollywood. The result is a whole series of hybrid technologies, some of which I have had the pleasure of participating in the development of. I rather enjoy the concept of forging weapons into ploughshares, especially since both of the military-cum-entertainment projects I have worked on consisted of non-violent content. In spite of my staunchly pacifist position, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the fact that none of this would be possible without the military. In a way, the military could be looked at as the front end of the technological adoption curve.

Adoption Curve

‘The Californian Ideology’ spends a good deal of time on the topic of technological determinism and elitism. In America, we call this the ‘adoption curve’. Here’s how it works: Technology is developed at tremendous capital expense. It is released on the market at exorbitant prices, prices that the ‘average’ person cannot begin to afford. It is targeted to a certain demographic – affluent, young, educated, eager to impress themselves and each other. These are the people who ‘lead’ the market. They run out and buy ‘the latest’ thing, drop it in the trunk of their BMW’s, and take it home to their house in Marin County while listening to the CD player in their trunk, perhaps having a phonecall in the car on the way. If and when enough of these ‘early adopters’ invest in the technology, one of two things will happen. More often than not, the technology falls on its face for whatever reason and becomes obsolete, rendering the expensive device virtually useless. However, if the right combination of factors are present, and a certain saturation level is reached, then presto! The price begins to plunge, and the subsequent tiers of adoption trailers follow, and eventually, the technology becomes available and affordable on a mass level. This process can sometimes take years, and there is fairly consistent demographic sequence to this pattern. This is the general means by which technology achieves mass market penetration in the U.S. and these are the actual terms that are used to describe this.

On the one hand, this can be viewed as an elitist system. And in many respects it is. But the fact is that if the technology is really worthwhile, eventually, the cost will keep being pushed down until it becomes affordable on a mass level. And the people at the head of the adoption curve are the ones who pay the price. Because they buy the device at a premium, subsidizing further development so that a year or two later, others can buy it at a fraction of the cost. No-one feels sorry for them because that’s their job.

Underlying it all is the axiom with which we started. Profits profits and more profits. In France, you give free MINITELs to everyone. In America, you sell them for a lot of money to early adopters.

Social Capitalism & Autodidactic Communalism

If you prefer to exist outside the corporate culture, you must take on the role of a renegade and become a member of ‘the virtual class’. If you play your cards right, you can evolve into a consultant, which is basically just a renegade who knows how to market themselves.

Contrary to the myth, renegades to not operate in a vacuum, nor would the vast majority of us claim to. Instead, we form our own loosely structured, somewhat anarchistic communities. Because we share the common resource of the ‘digisphere’, we can, in fact, function in this way, without the ‘big brother’ protection of a feudal master. There are two systems of community which this has given rise to, which I call Autodidactic Communalism and Social Capitalism.

Most people in new media are autodidacts. As in all fields, education is always about twenty years behind industry, so anyone with any time in the new media business is, by definition, self-taught. The computer is, of course, the ultimate heuristic tool (and as I am speaking to a British audience, I can rest assured that you all know what this word means.) As such, it is the boon of the autodidact. But autodidacticism is also a myth and nowhere is this more true than in the computer field. In fact, we autodidacts work together. We learn by doing, and we learn by showing each other how to do things. HTML is a great example of autodidactic communalism. Everyone learns how to do it from their friends. Shareware is another great example. I can get all kinds of software on-line, and I can even download manuals. As people learn to do things, they make their learning available to each other, and this is very much a part of the hacker ethic. While the corporate world takes a proprietary posture, hoarding ‘intellectual property’ and charging a premium for its use, and the military world is entirely shrouded in secrecy, autodidactic communalists freely share – and steal – ideas and information, fully aware that such an open architecture is to the benefit of all.

Social Capitalism is a system by which a series of individuals or small companies develop horizontal, collaborative relationships providing each other with various services to support each others’ work. Sometimes, this work is done on contract, other times, it is taken in barter. But unlike the traditional hierarchical structure, in which one person is always ‘boss’ and the other always ‘worker’, relationships under social capitalism are reciprocal. I may be your client one day and you may be mine the next. Or, we may join forces and create a larger ‘alliance’ in order to take on a project than neither alone could do. This model is much less competitive than the corporate model in which large organizations vie for absolute power. In this model, cooperation and a sense of community is seen to benefit all. In the interactive multimedia field, there are many small companies and individuals who operate in just this way, and in fact, they have become the backbone of the industry. If you got to any of the major content producers in the U.S. multimedia industry, you will find that a significant number of them contract out the majority of their work to small production companies. Those who have tried to produce in-house have given up, finding they get better, faster and cheaper results if they contract out to a multimedia ’boutique’. Unhindered by the burden of high overhead or executive bottlenecks, these smaller organizations are frequently more efficient, more creative, and just plain better at what they do. (It may surprise some to know that it is becoming quite fashionable for American companies to call on the talent of small British companies for their multimedia needs.)

These two movements combine together to create a community of individualists. For those of us who are trying to break new ground, we have no choice but to live on the edge, but we cannot live on the edge alone. We must of necessity join together. Those of us who do share a sense of social conscience and do everything in our power to broaden the landscape and create a more inclusive forms of technology. But we must always fight an uphill battle to do so.

Many young entrepreneurs are creating cybercafes and other venues that allow free and open access of technology to a much wider audience. And although the Internet does promote individual expression, as suggested by ‘The Californian Ideology’, it also promotes freedom of access to information and a sense of community that transcends geographical boundaries.

This disintegration of these international boundaries is precisely what makes this type of discourse possible. As an inhabitant of the Californian Ideology, I can choose to write an article for Mute, rather than Wired, because to a large extent, I am more closely aligned to its ideology.

In spite of the apparent absolutism of ‘The Californian Ideology’, I happen to know that Andy Cameron spends his Friday nights watching American television programs. In fact, Andy knows more about American TV than I do. (I rarely watch it!) As much as the British may disdain our unsophisticated ways, just as the proponents of the Californian Ideology cannot deny their ties to the military, neither can its critics deny their ties to California.

Look at the world. On the one hand, we are in the midst of a number of major planetwide transformations. Multinational corporations are changing the face of the global economy. The earth’s environment is on the brink of major disaster. While half of Europe coalesces, the other half disintegrates. And in and around this complex landscape is the digital ‘Global Village’ (to unabashedly quote the oft-maligned Marshall McLuhan), simultaneously contracting and exploding, a parallel universe of which we all the architects – whether we read Wired, Mondo 2000 or Mute. In light of all this, it seems absurd to speak at all of ideologies which are geographically based. Rather, it would make more sense to define a new ideology which takes into account our individual political, social and economic realities, while creating a forum for change that goes beyond those limitations towards a global community consciousness that we can all aspire toward.

I’m in broad agreement with the argument of ‘The Californian Ideology’ and its attack on that ideology in which “the ahistorical dogmas of neo-liberalism are beefed up with added techno-determinism.”

The argument does have a weakness in the alternatives it presents:

- an idealistic view of the French Minitel system of which there is evidence that its use is mainly by young professional men;

- the pan-European ideology of modern Gaullism, Europe versus America, a Europe which is not subject to the same analysis of inequality and exploitation applied to the USA.

This insufficiency is excusable given that the Californian ideology, ironically constructed by people with a psychic need to see themselves as rebels, is now ‘the conventional wisdom’. Alternative models are liable to be viewed optimistically by those opposing the dominant ideology. This is especially so when the European Commission’s own Bangemann Report undermined any European strategy when it embraced the Californian ideology with enthusiasm.

What’s less excusable is that this ‘Gaullist’ point of view in ‘The Californian Ideology’ is to ignore initiatives in the USA like the Public Information Exchange (PIE) based in Maryland. It is described as “an electronic clearing house that brings together a wide variety of public information consumers and producers. It has organized coalitions of health care organizations, consumer groups, environmentalists and civil rights groups to put information on-line in America’s 15,000 public libraries.” It has also attempted to provide real information about candidates, their histories and programmes before elections. This in stark contrast to the frightening prospect of instant referenda without the time or means being provided to give the information on which judgements could be made. Against this Mao’s view: “No opinions without research.”

This insufficiency can only be remedied by an informed and scrupulous tracking of what possibilities are offered by the variety of tools made available by the new computer-driven technologies. That and a cold-eyed analysis of what social democracy is capable of doing in this area, whether it is capable of doing anything serious at nation-state level. What I mean by social democracy here is the ability of the state or supra-state structures to regulate what exists, and instigate what does not, with the aim of enhancing the power of those without historically-made resources. Here again a more scrupulous look at the difference between the Gore/Clinton programme of cultivating small-scale public initiatives and making public libraries on line, and that for example of the British Labour party, whose prospective deal with BT makes sense from the point of view of national economic development but depends rather a lot on exhortation and enclouragement when it comes to on-lining all schools and libraries. Geoff Mulgan of Demos (a New Labour thinktank), for example thinks the Gore approach better than the Labour-BT promise.

The techno-utopianianism of the Californian ideology would see these questions as irrelevant political and moral anachronisms. For me, they are difficult and unpalatable. I see myself as being part of a socialist libertarian tradition which has little trust in the nation-state or social democracy. Little trust, because enhancing the power of those without historically-made resources involves some degree of restricting the power of those who have them in abundance, and at minimum their perception of that exclusive power. This is something social-democracy has usually not had the stomach for.

This libertarian socialist tradition I am proud to identify myself with sees the twin evils of elitism and exploitation as what must be fought to make the world civilized and sustainable. Let alone the global reality of these evils, even the words do not exist in the interminable supply of printed text from the Californian ideologists. Who, at the same time, define themselves as libertarians for whom the state is a necessarily stupid – because centralized-oppressor which they no longer need. This at a time when after years of being trashed, there are signs of a rehabilitation of the New Deal and even Johnson’s Great Society. There is hard evidence beyond sentimental recollection, that the state-instigated initiatives of the New Deal (regardless of the motivations of its instigators) released the creativity of masses of poor Americans.

One of the main reasons given by the text for the ‘emergence’ (as Kevin Kelly might put it) of 1960s libertarian hippies in the Californian ideology is the physical defeat of the Californian left by then Governor Ronald Reagan. Fear -and the US state and capital has always been especially violent towards ‘leftist activity’ – is likely to involve a fair degree of displacement activity, the direction of energy to safer goals. Income, ageing, and ambition may also have been involved as well as a genuine intellectual-utopian excitement. California is also an exceptionally privileged area of the globe for a good part of its population. More than that, it is not surprising that this ideology of a computer-driven revolution of infinite potential should come from an area of the globe which is so successful in producing many of the key bits and pieces of this revolution. The re-discovery of American self-confidence vis-a-vis Japan has emanated specifically from this sector of production. That this happened in the presidency of a nominally social democratic President with a seriously IT enthusiast Vice President is either coincidence, or is further evidence of the wilful non-acknowledgement of state support for this sector which the text demonstrates. For the Californian ideology it shows – without regard for anything as banally economic as a long-term over-valuation of the Yen – the triumph of genuine individualism against a corporate version of capitalism.

The embracing of free-market ideology (as articulated by then President Ronald Reagan) by a techno-counter-culture with a psychic need to see itself in rebellion, requires a massive array of flim-flam. In particular it has used Fuzzy Implication and Dodgy Analogy. Global has been a key word in both techniques. It implies an internationalist and ecological view of the world. In fact it has replaced ‘imperialism’ in a way which hides the global hierarchy of exploitation that ‘imperialism’ (however degraded its use became) did not. It derives not just from McLuhan but more tangibly from the icon of 1960s technological optimism, the space programme and those shots of the earth as a globe in space. This image is key in the development of the most fuzzy forms of ecology which also originated in the USA and centred around the phrase ‘Spaceship Earth’. Spaceship earth – we’re all in this together – again had the role of hiding the global hierarchy of exploitation, which in the most tangible ways, prevents the development of any real ecology. I emphasise this because this kind of ecology was important in the 1960′s counter-culture (Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalogue for example) and in Kevin Kelly’s present individualized ecological concerns which have been a rich source of dodgy analogies.

From the global we are lurched into equally fuzzy Good Things as proclaimed by this ideology, the Holistic – the Non-Linear. The fuzziness of these involves the implication that they are automatically non-reductionist which is a Very Good Thing. The preferred course taken by the Californian ideology in the use of these words has been chaos theory. The degraded notion of the holistic can also be seen in the work of ‘management gurus’. We have Richard Pascale of Stanford University urging a ‘holistic approach to management. And we have Tom Peters, frequently described as an evangelist or missionary of management, entitling his latest best-seller, Thriving on Chaos.

Chaos theory, with its dependence on number-crunching, is a child of the computer revolution. It proclaims that there is pattern, that the world is mathematical, just that these patterns are far more complex than linear Newtonian physics would allow. Its holistic/ecological claim is seen in the metaphor/partial reality of an event in one part of the world having an effect on the climate elsewhere. It also creates beautiful patterns called Fractals. On the basis of this it rather fetishizes Weird Connections via its use of statistics on a scale unknown before computing power. It makes big claims for itself in stark contrast to the modesty expressed in Eugene Wigner’s great essay, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.

In some respects it mimics the breakthroughs of the modernist science of quantum physics – just as post-modernism takes the Uncertainty Principle of quantum physics and makes of it a lazy analogy for a bogus relativism – in its use of the non-local effect which is central to that physics. N.B. The non-local effect is proposed by J.S. Bell and later proved by Alain Aspect in an experiment in which two unrelated atoms influenced each other without being able to signal each other. A wonderful piece of science, but one which is open to plenty of dodgy analogizing. That we should be vigilant about dodgy analogizing, should be clear from the late 19th century notion of Social Darwinism. The revolutionary theory of evolution, the liberation from monotheism (and the accompanying soul-body dualism) it offered, was analogized into a banal and rather nasty prop to elitism and comepetitive capitalism. Still today, it lurks behind both: to justify the unjustifiable in the one; and to prop up the nostalgic version of itself which the multi-natioanl corporations and their planning staffs maintain as a working ideolgy in textbooks.

Chaos theory like quantum physics is not-Newtonian. What is lazy, and will therefore hide various dirty corners of bad faith, is the assumption that what is anti-Newtonian is A Good Thing in itself. In Kevin Kelly’s Out of Control there is a continual complacency about anything which is non-linear, not-Newtonian; the interchangeable networks/swarm systems/complex adaptive systems he sees across the board. Yet he does not acknowledge the real anti-Newtonian breakthrough of the pre-computer mathematicians of Quantum Physics. Perhaps it is too uncomfortable, whereas Chaos theory, we might say, puts the Certainty back into the Uncertainty Principle.

Equally the attack on Newtonianism from Ilya Prigorgine (Order Out of Chaos) is far tougher. What it does is to attack the notion of timeless equilibria in the Newtonian and posit against it the “irreversible arrow of time” from his own speciality: thermodynamics. Spurious notions like “the End of History” and the equilibria-based mathematical models of neo-classical/liberal economics are both dependent on non-acknowledgement of the irreversible arrow. Chaos theory is static and timeless in its claims to be able to draw the unexpected, with iteration doing the rest, as if all time and all dynamics was a process of iteration. We can see this in the interest of Chaos theory in commodity prices and their historical cycles. There is a safety to it. Just as Kevin Kelly, futurologist, lives in a perpetual present in which, discussing money, there are no questions about the cashability of future pensions for example.

If we compare the technological utopianism of the 1950s which focussed on atomic energy, featured non-photogenic squares, working for the state in white coats and smoking pipes to that of the more exotic Californian ideologues of now what we see is a change of language from the control of nature to that of its management. This reflects those ecolgical and holistic concerns of the present hiding how it is global patterns of exploitation which determine Spaceship Earth’s condition. It also shows a touching faith in our powers of observation and data-gathering (increased so greatly by satellite and computer) to solve ecological problems by themselves. This is the supposed fallacy if intellectuals: if you’re aware of a problem, it’s OK, it’s then manageable. In addition, Who is doing the watching? Who is doing the interpreting?

It is precisely these political questions the Californian ideology avoids, just as those pipe-smoking squares dodged them. They have more than that in common, they share a techno-determinism which tends to be uncritically optimistic. I would like to seperate this from that smug and crass element of Gaullism which likes to pose a wise European scepticism against an exclusively American brash optimism: techno-determinism is not exclusively American. Instead it has an uncanny resemblance to the individualist optimism that comes from the theorizing of the free-market by von Hayek for example. This too raises difficult questions about the nature and possibilities of social democracy. Socialism has usually been characterized as an Enlightenment project with a fundamental belief in human reason and the perfectability of humans; while a reactionary view of the world was based on the notion of original sin. Modern social democracy seems to see the world as a pretty shitty, and that therefore controls and regulations are needed to protect the weak. My doubts about it remain that it hasn’t done much of a job of it.

This techno-determinism has something else in common. I’ve said that non-reductionism was an important strand of that weave of flim-flam the Californian ideologists have created. In its uncritical embrace of the new however this strand is revealed as flimsy.

This flimsiness is revealed in the embracing of Marvin Minsky’s notions of Artificial Intelligence. Aside from the argument that there are limits to the number-crunching which would be involved, the most effective critique of AI comes from the mathematician Roger Penrose, someone with great confidence in mathematics but who says mathematical understanding is non-computational as is understanding in general. As an example of what he is arguing he quotes Godel saying that no system of computational rules can characterize the properties of natural numbers and then points out that children can grasp the notion of them.

It is hard to say whether the especially heavy dose of fuzzy and dodgy analogizing by Kevin Kelly on this question is because he can see the reductionism there or not. Whatever way, the chapter of Out of Control entitled ‘Machines with Attitude’, focussing on the work of Marvin Minsky and Rodney Brooks, is a tour de force of flim-flam. We are jumped from quote to quote: – from the philosopher Daniel Dennett, “The idea that the brain has a centre is just wrong. Not only that, it is radically wrong.” – to an approving reference to “the bureaucratization of the brain” – to the collapse of the USSR being soley ascribable to the instability of any centrally controlled complexity to “There is no ‘I’, for a person, for a beehive, for a corporation…” (this a knowing nod in the direction of post-modernist orthodoxy) – to the really specious analogy filched without acknowledgement from quantum physics (whose practitioners have warned against such analogy) it is very likely that intelligence is a probabilistic or statistical phenomena.

With the reader suitably softened up from this scatter gun of analogies, up pops Marvin Minsky to tell us “You can build a mind from many little parts, each mindless by itself.” Followed by Kelly telling us “Singly, each is a moron; but together, organized in tangled hierarchy of control, they can create thinking.” Kelly then has a few problems with this “hierarchy of control” but soldiers through that, warning the anarchists they would be wrong to be disappointed by this necessity and by the use of tangle which he has previously used in a string of metaphors, “the web of life, the tangle of the economy…” He bypasses the reductionism inherent in Minsky with the concept of complexity: “Complexity must be grown up from simple systems that already work.” ‘The Californian Ideology’ points out that the new multi-media technologies make up something greater than its parts, but this does not mean that this is true of the world in general or of natural sciences.

In his superb attack on the genome Project in The Politics of DNA, Richard Lewontein analyses why so much biochemistry research is focussed on the bits and pieces. It is easier to do, to get results than examining the working of the central nervous system for example that can only be understood as a whole. The bits and pieces do not necessarily add up.

With Roger Brooks’s alternative of many small robots, Kevin Kelly says, “So difficult was the task of co-ordinating a central world view that Brooks discovered it was far easier to use the real world as its own model…With no centrally imposed model, no one has the job of reconciling disputed notions; they simply aren’t reconciled. Instead, various signals generate various behaviours. The behaviours are sorted out (suppressed, delayed, activated) in the web hierarchy of subsumed control.” Then in a brazen piece of reader flattery he says “Astute observers have noticed that Brooks’s prescription is an exact description of a market economy.” It is not just flattery but that most dangerous of analogies and time-worn ideological props, that the capitalist free market is a Natural state of affairs.

The virtues of the market economy have already been implied by the fetishizing of “decentralization” as a Good Thing in itself. In the world of lazy and dodgy analogizing, the righteous celebration of diversity, difference and multiplicity; the creative potential of the non-linear and some of the insights of quantum physics; and the structuralist critique which kicked away so many of the props of White-man-centricity, has been hijacked by that relativism which says that nothing is better than anything else, one which has always been a handy tool for those doing very well with the way things are. The notion of de-centralization can be proclaimed by post-modernism as an at-last reflection of the multiplicity of human life. In reality it has been used to kick way the vestiges of class struggle in the social democratic mode, i.e. regulation of the conditions of exploitation and an element of redistributive taxation. For the relatively powerless there is no one to negotiate with anymore, governing institutions are consciously made ad hoc. It reminds me of a self-critical pamphlet from the socialist libertarian movement and entitled, The Tyranny of Structurelessness.

This de-centralization has its objective base not in post-facto, dusted down monetarist economics, but in real globalization, especially that of money. It is the global movement of capital made ever easier by the developments of communications technology which consistently undermines any aspirations to a Global ecology. The free movement of capital is seen as one of the essential constituents of that de-regulated free trade ideology which rules the world from various centralized locii of financial power. Ricardo may have been rubbished as all classical economics has been by the free marketeers, but his theory of comparative advantage has been constantly re-used by its ideologues. In fact the theory of comparative advantage assumes that factors of production, including capital, are immobile. The present interpretation is that capital can be mobile, labour not. There are no regulations on the movement of capital: there are an ever-increasing raft of them when it comes to labour. Turn the rafts over, drown the fuckers as the Italian state has it. With decentralization the forces of lazy analogy have also been hard at work. In the latter years of the Cold War planning was made synonymous with centralization and the state. In the West planning continued and continues apace, the planning by large capitalist concerns called corporations. They have anthroplogical, technical, sociological, economic philosphical talent working on it constantly. They have always planned. The difference now is that:

- the role of state as planner has been reduced to the production of infrastructure when and if required by these corporations; – the corporations also have the gurus of the Californian ideology on the team. On the team partially on their own terms, as consultants. Thus Stewart Brand and Peter Schwartz’s ‘Global Business Network’ for example.

In the polemic one of the sharpest arguments is how much of the technology which celebrates its free birth and development in fact originated with state spending. In both the USSR and the USA this took place largely through defence budgets. I think this argument could be widened without becoming fuzzy. Free markets have always depended on the state to bail it out when major fuck ups take place. The de-regulation of the S&L banking set-up in the USA lead to massive scandals and losses. The state, using a large chunk of that taxation that is anathema to free-trade ideology, rescued it In The Public Interest. Something similar seems to be happening now in the UK with the de-regulation of pensions.

How anyway does the free market component of the Californian ideology look in relation to its own history and present. They may hold Bill Gates up as a baddie but the fact is that he is a monopolist, and a successful one, in the heart of their world. Mr Murdoch’s very recent move into Telecoms with MCI is also indicative. The regulation of US ‘national interest’ between the rights of big capital and its monopolizing and the cutting edge that real competition should provide is at present all being determined in the US legal system. There are no regulatuions but it is here that the arbitration of the respective rights of dynamic corporatist capitals and a dynamic technology is taking place on a case by case basis. The recruitment policy of Microsoft, the baddie, has also been copied by Californian ideologists who profess to see him as an anemy. Microsoft scoured India for the best and cheapest programmers and instituted a hierarchical system with an elite of mega-programmers to point these saps on their way. In the true traditions of the Californian ideolgy they could dress as they liked and worked which hours they liked as long as they did the hours and kept to their subservient role of serving the meta-programmers.

The Californian ideologists have been more interested in the programmers of the ex-USSR and their ideas. There is a programming cottage industry in the low-wage Ukraine. There are also ideas. If the difference between the USSR and the USA in the Cold war period could be characterized (as it is so often is) as between the empiricists and the theoreticians, the empiricists are now reaping the benefit of the theoretical brilliance of Russian computer experts financed by the very defence budgets which helped finish off the “state-socialist” USSR. Many of these brightest and best of the ex-USSR state are employed by Californian hi-tech industries for that theoretical brilliance which enabled them to stay up with the USA in the space race even though the US government had banned them from access to super-conducters.

In a thoroughly snide interview of Kevin Kelly by Peter Yorke in The Guardian (one which makes me instinctively sympathize with Kevin Kelly) there is one revealing section with deals with the basic question of empowerment and the net, one which many people have raised.

PY: “Won’t a lot of people be left outside these new media?” KK: “There will be a large number left outside and it’s unfortunate, we should bring them in. No one argues about that. Let the rich buy technology now, to make it cheaper for the poor. The issues are not the haves and the have-nots but the haves and the have-lates.” He goes on to say that what is important is shrinking the time-lapse.

All the evidence is that a whole range of hard and software which began as being very expensive has got cheaper and cheaper. It may also be true that in many cases it is the rich who have been conned into buying all sorts of dubious up-dates. On the other hand what Kelly is saying sounds suspiciously like ‘trickle-down’ theory, that socio-moral get-out clause of hard-line free market economics, which asserts that if the bounds are removed from the rich getting much richer (bounds like health and safety requirements at work as well as minimum wages) wealth will be generated which the poor will (again there is a time-lapse) eventually benefit from. All the evidence here is that this is not the case.

I don’t want this to stand as a dodgy analogy but there is a similar question to be asked which is, why should those doing very, very well out of how things are want this situation to change. Some people who are very clever do have an edge right now and a lot of them are in California. What is implied by the Californian ideologists’ techno-determinism is that this technology is different, that this technology cannot help but be progressive and democratic.

In the absence of public or autonomous initiatives wotking to make it so, this is wilfully optimistic. It ignores the fact that though there may be legendary small outfits in Silicon Valley the industry is still dominated by large capital. Time-Warner, Viacom-Blockbuster, Rupert Murdoch, telephone companies, they’re all in there. More specifically, IBM has not gone bust. Predictions of Microsoft being ‘in trouble’ in relation to Netscape sounds like whistling in the wind from the Jeffersonian ideologues.

In the Financial Times of 2nd Febuary 1996 it was announced that Visa International and MasterCard International have agreed to collaborate in creating a system to ensure the security of credit card transactions on the net. The system will be called Secure Electronic Transactions. The software code will be made freely available. “This is the first step in making cyberspace an attractive venture for banks and merchants,” said Mr Edmund Jensen, president and chief executive of Visa International. The report also says that until now Visa had been working with Microsoft on the project, and Mastercard with Netscape. They are now all working together.

In the early issues of Wired magazine, encryption was seen as the cutting edge of rebellious libertarian work in the new technologies, creating the means for genuine privacy from the state I do not want to try and describe Kevin Kelly’s chapter on E-money, he gets into terrible difficulties with the potential use by organized crime, but to say that a means of safe payment on the net is precisely what is required for full commercial exploitation of it. It is here that a ‘trickle-down’ notion of the Net runs into difficulties and the price of information likely to be prohibitive without social democratic and autonomous initiatives.

My suspicion of social democracy remains for the reasons I have given and also because it is been elitist in the sense of managing and representing its clientele in a way which allows them little input. What it might be able to offer is some protection and resources to make autonomous initiatives flower and make the new technology truly a tool for liberation.

1: Proliferating Futures

What about the Becoming of the Net? We cannot describe the Net as one single process of Becoming, but as proliferation of different coexisting processes. Therefore we can’t make a statement about the future of the Net. Many different futures will coalesce within it.

Different intentions can enter the Net, different processes of semiotization can coevolute. The Net is not a territory, but a multiplanary Sphere. Infinite plateaux are rotating inside this Sphere. What is forbidden on one level can be done on another.

The Net cannot be conceptualized within the Hegelian concept of Totality. In Hegel, the Truth is the Whole. The Hegelian Whole is Aufhebung – the annihilation of every difference. In the Net, every connection between points of enunciation creates its own level of truth. Truth is only found in singularity.

In the Net, the world cannot be considered as the objective reference point of a process of enunciation. The world is the projection of enunciation itself.

Networking is the method of a new social paradigm – one that goes beyond the social oppositions and conceptual contradictions inherited from the modern world. Because capitalism is still in power, acting as the general semiotic code, the old social oppositions and conceptual contradictions are not vanishing yet. This is the reason why we are still concerned with the old problem of the State versus the Market. Notwithstanding the emergence of the Net, the State and the Market still exist.

2: High Tech Deregulation

The discourse about the Net (cyberculture) is still dominated by ideologies which are the legacy of the past twentieth century. Cyberculture is still dominated by the conceptual and political alternatives coming from the industrial society. A sort of high tech neo-liberalism is emerging from the American scene. In the theoretical core of this philosophical movement, I see a misunderstanding: the identification of technology with economics within the paradigm shift. Thinkers like Alvin Toffler, Kevin Kelly and Esther Dyson support the neo-liberal agenda of Newt Gingrich because, they argue, the free market is the best method for expanding free communications – and free communications are the key to the future world.

Sounds good, but what does the ‘free market’ mean? In the social framework of capitalism, free market means power to the strongest economic groups – and the absorption or elimination of society’s intellectual energies.

Kevin Kelly, in ‘Out of Control’, says that, thanks to the digital technologies and computer networks, mankind is evolving into a superorganism, a new biological system. The biologisation of culture and society which is described by Kelly is nothing but the disappearance of any alternative from the social field, the absorption of intelligence itself within the framework of capitalist semiotization. The possibility of choice is denied, eradicated.

This is the main effect of the integration of technological development, scientific work and economic power. Michel Foucault describes the formation of modern society in terms of the imposition of discipline on the individual body and on social behaviour. What we are now witnessing is the making of what Gilles Deleuze defines as a society of control: the code of behaviour is being imprinted directly onto the mind through models of cognition, of psychic interaction. Discipline is no longer imposed on the body through the formal action of the law – it is printed in the collective brain through the dissemination of techno-linguistic interfaces inducing a cognitive mutation.

3: Old Alternatives are Misleading

In their article ‘The Californian Ideology’, Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron criticize the mystification of this high tech neo-liberalism. But what do they oppose it with? They talk of a European way – the way of the welfare state, public intervention within the economy, public control over technological innovation. Can we believe in this solution? I don’t.

Barbrook and Cameron say that MINITEL in France has shown the possibility of a European way to build the Net. But this is pointless. This example shows exactly that public intervention cannot achieve this goal. MINITEL is a rigid and centralized system, unable to face the challenges of virtualization. And in Italy, the experience of Olivetti shows that it is impossible to develop innovation on the basis of state investment and controls. From this point of view, the American model of development is working better. It opens the way to creative innovations. It captures these innovations through techno-social interfaces.

Barbrook and Cameron say that Europe must oppose the process of globalization which is led by the U.S. But this idea is naive and dangerous. Stopping globalization, preserving identities: these are the ideas which are generating nationalism and fundamentalism. These are what are called retrofascism by Kroker and Weinstein in their book ‘Data Trash’.

The war between neo-liberalism and the old fashioned welfare state is not over – as shown by the strikes of the French railwaymen. The struggles of Fordist workers will probably go on for a long time, but they are doomed to defeat. The strategic defeat of industrial labour has already happened – FIAT 1980, Peugeot, the Miners Union, Detroit were the stages of this defeat during the ’80s. The marginalisation of industrial labour began in that period.

The new composition of social labour is marked by the emergence of the cognitariat – what Kroker and Weinstein call the ‘virtual class’. The social labour of the collective intelligence, or general intellect as Marx calls it in ‘The Grundrisse’, remains dominated by capitalist social relations in spite of its formal independence. Marx distinguishes two different kinds of domination of capital over human activity: formal domination and real domination.

Formal domination is the legal imposition of discipline, the legal subordination of human time to the capitalist exploitation. Real domination is the technological and material dependence of social activity on the capitalist form of social relations. We are probably entering today a new phase of capitalist domination, beyond formal and real: mental domination, realized through the pervasiveness of the semiotic code of capital within the collective brain, within language, within the mind, and within the cognitional activity. The capitalist paradigm is imprinted on the collective intelligence, inside the techno-social interfaces, in the semiotic framework of social communications.

The alternative between policies of deregulation and policies of state intervention is a false alternative. There is no way of regulating capital. Capital is a proliferating process of semiotization, informing techno-social interfaces and producing neural pathways and frames of social interaction. Since capital is pervading all social relationships, it is the regulator, not the regulated. The problem is not the legal regulation of capitalism, the problem is capitalism itself.

The industrial world is fading, the industrial composition of labour is dissolving, and a new composition of social activity is emerging. But the capitalist code is still pervading it. And in its current virtual (dis)incarnation, capitalism seems to be a system without any alternative. The alternative cannot be found in the past.

Imaginary Futures will be available to the public from Pluto Press in May 2007. Copies can be ordered at www.plutobooks.com (£16.99 GBP – $26.95 USD). Or, orders can also be made from Amazon.co.uk.

Download an introduction to Imaginary Futures here. Or to find out more about the book and view a video introduction, click here.

A seeming understanding of the Digital Revolution’s crucial left-right fusion of free minds and free markets, followed by a totally out-to-lunch excursion into discussions of the role of the government, racism, and the ecology in California, ending with a startling admission of the need to marry “some of the entrepeneurial zeal and can-do attitude” of California to a uniquely European (but not even vaguely defined) mixed economy solution – all of it betraying an atavistic attachment to statism, and an utterly dismal failure to comprehend the possibilities of a future radically different than the one we currently inhabit, one that is actually democratic, meritocratic, decentralized, libertarian.

Far from building the Digital Revolution, the US Defense Department sucked up 6 to 7 percent of US GNP for 40 years and utilized up to 40 percent of all engineering talent, chanelling these resources not into technological growth, but into tanks, bombs, and military adverturism. In point of fact, it was the cutback in American defense spending following the Vietnam War and the subsequent firing of thousands of California engineers which resulted in the creation of Silicon Valley and the personal computer revolution.

A descent into the kind of completely stupid comments on race in America that only smug Europeans can even attempt. (Any country which prohibits its own passport holders from residing within its borders, or any people who are currently allowing genocidal war to be waged in their own back yard after the stupefying genocide of WWII, shouldn’t be lecturing Americans about anything having to do with race, much less events which occurred 200 years ago.) The charge of technological apartheid is just plain stupid: “Already ‘red-lined’ by profit-hungry telcos [isn't every company, by definition, "profit hungry?", although that description in this context is also stupid since telcos are regulated monopolies with government enforced rates of return], the inhabitants of poor inner city areas are prevented from accessing the new on-line services through lack of money.” Oh really? Redlined? Universal telephone access is mandated in the US. And anyone with a telephone has access to online service. Lack of money? Online is cheaper than cable television, and you can get a new computer for less than $1000, a used one less than $500.

The utterly laughable Marxist/Fabian kneejerk that there is such a thing as the info-haves and have-nots – this is equivalent to a 1948 Mute whining that there were TV-haves and have-nots because television penetration had yet to become universal, the logical conclusion being that, of course, the state had to step in and create television entitlements. This whole line of thinking displays a profound ignorance of how technology actually diffuses through society. Namely, there has to be a leading edge, people who take a risk on new, unproven products – usually upper tenish types, who pay through the nose for the privilege of being beta testers, getting inferior technology at inflated prices with the very real possibility that they have invested in technological dead ends like eight track or betamax or Atari. Yet they are the ones who pay back development costs and pave the way for the mass market, which, let me assure you, is every technology company’s wet dream (the biggest market today for the fastest personal computers is not business, but the home). Not haves and have-nots – have-laters.

This anal retentive attachment to failed 19th century social and economic analysis and bromides is what allows you to claim that the laughable French MINITEL system is a success, when in fact it is a huge impediment to France developing a real networked economy since the dirigisme which mandated an instantly obsolete closed technology for deployment into every home in France – and then conspired to stifle any alternative – has insured that France remain resolutely outside the mainstream of the Internet.

A profound ignorance of economics. The engine of development of the Digital Revolution was not state planning, whether you call that an industrial policy or a defense policy. It was free capital markets and venture funds which channeled savings to thousands upon thousands of companies, enabling them to start, and the successful to thrive. Contrast this with the sorry history of European technology development, where huge plutocratic organizations like Siemens and Philips conspired with bungling bureaucracies to hoover up taxes collected by local and Euro-wide state institutions and shovel them into mammoth technology projects which have proven to be, almost without exception, disasters. The true measure of the failure of European (in other words, statist) direction of technology can be measured by the fact that in ten years, during the biggest technology boom the planet has ever witnessed, Europe has gone from a net exporter of technology, to a net importer.

Let’s get real here: High European taxes which have restricted spending on technology and hence retarded its development; state telco monopolies which have kept prices high and service bad, again impeding networking in business and the home; state-directed technology investment, which has resulted in the monopolization of risk capital, uniformly bad technology policy, and the squandering of resources and opportunities; social welfare policies which reward parasitical living rather than risk-taking; a truly attavistic, sick attachment to the compulsion and non-meritocratic elitism of statism as a way of life; and a kneejerk disdain for truly radical social and political thought which falls outside Euro PC dogma (read failed Marxist/Fabian) – have all retarded and will continue to retard Europeans; if the US and Asian countries had conspired to insure Europe continued to cede export markets, they could not have come up with a better stategy that the one you advocate: continued statist meddling).

Meanwhile, it’s Europeans who are discussing ‘California Ideology’, not Californians who are discussing ‘European Ideology’. And not because some clatch of bureaucrats in Strasbourg or Luxembourg have issued yet another directive. Because Europeans are recognizing that 19th century nostrums are not solutions to 21st century problems – on the contrary, they are the problem – and it’s time to encourage competition, risk taking, democracy and meritocracy, and dare I say it, dreaming about a different, better future.

Ask me again, and I’ll really tell you what I think.

Yours for the Revolution,

Louis Rossetto
Editor-in-Chief, Wired

Meet the author at his book launch celebration in London’s SoHo.

Barbrook will speak during the press preview and present visuals. He will be joined by Simon Schaffer, Cambridge University Professor and BBC4 presenter, who will give an introduction and overview of Imaginary Futures. Late night entertainment will feature legendary Chicago house performer Robert Owens and DJs Keith Franklin and Ray Stanley.

DATE: 16 May 2007-03-22
PRESS PREVIEW: 4-7 pm
BOOK LAUNCH PARTY: 7-9 pm
AFTER PARTY: 9 pm – 2 am
VENUE: Madame JoJos
www.madamejojos.com
8-10 Brewer Street, London, W1F OSE

For an invitation contact lisa@imaginaryfutures.net

Download a PDF Press Invitation here

Abstract

During the Sixties, the New Left created a new form of radical politics: anarcho-communism. Above all, the Situationists and similar groups believed that the tribal gift economy proved that individuals could successfully live together without needing either the state or the market. From May 1968 to the late Nineties, this utopian vision of anarcho-communism has inspired community media and DIY culture activists. Within the universities, the gift economy already was the primary method of socialising labour. From its earliest days, the technical structure and social mores of the Net has ignored intellectual property. Although the system has expanded far beyond the university, the self-interest of Net users perpetuates this hi-tech gift economy. As an everyday activity, users circulate free information as e-mail, on listservs, in newsgroups, within on-line conferences and through Web sites. As shown by the Apache and Linux programs, the hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software development. Contrary to the purist vision of the New Left, anarcho-communism on the Net can only exist in a compromised form. Money-commodity and gift relations are not just in conflict with each other, but also co-exist in symbiosis. The ‘New Economy’ of cyberspace is an advanced form of social democracy.

The Legacy of the New Left

“… when … [Ben Slivka] suggested that Microsoft consider giving away its browser, à la Netscape, Gates exploded and called him a ‘communist’ … [1]

The Net is haunted by the disappointed hopes of the Sixties. Because this new technology symbolises another period of rapid change, many contemporary commentators look back to the stalled revolution of thirty years ago to explain what is happening now. Most famously, the editors of Wired continually pay homage to the New Left values of individual freedom and cultural dissent in their coverage of the Net. However, in their Californian ideology, these ideals of their youth are now going to be realised through technological determinism and free markets. The politics of ecstasy have been replaced by the economics of greed [2].

Ironically, the New Left emerged in response to the ‘sell-out’ of an earlier generation. By the end of the Fifties, the heroes of the anti-fascist struggle had become the guardians of Cold War orthodoxies. Even within the arts, avant-garde experimentation had been transformed into fashionable styles of consumer society. The adoption of innovative styles and new techniques was no longer subversive. Frustrated with the recuperation of their parents’ generation, young people started looking for new methods of cultural and social activism. Above all, the Situationists proclaimed that the epoch of the political vanguard and the artistic avant-garde had passed. Instead of following the intellectual elite, everyone should instead determine their own destinies.

“The situation is…made to be lived by its constructors. The role played by a passive…’public’ must constantly diminish, while that played by those who cannot be called actors but rather… ‘livers’ must steadily increase.’ [3]

These New Left activists wanted to create opportunities for everyone to express their own hopes, dreams and desires. The Hegelian ‘grand narrative’ would culminate in the supersession of all mediations separating people from each other. Yet, despite their Hegelian modernism, the Situationists believed that the utopian future had been prefigured in the tribal past. For example, tribes in Polynesia organised themselves around the potlatch: the circulation of gifts. Within these societies, this gift economy bound people together into tribes and encouraged cooperation between different tribes. In contrast with the atomisation and alienation of bourgeois society, potlatches required intimate contacts and emotional authenticity [4]. According to the Situationists, the tribal gift economy demonstrated that individuals could successfully live together without needing either the state or the market. After the New Left revolution, people would recreate this idyllic condition: anarcho-communism [5].

However, the Situationists could not escape from the elitist tradition of the avant-garde. Despite their invocation of Hegel and Marx, the Situationists remained haunted by Nietzsche and Lenin. As in earlier generations, the rhetoric of mass participation simultaneously justified the leadership of the intellectual elite. Anarcho-communism was therefore transformed into the ‘mark of distinction’ for the New Left vanguard. As a consequence, the giving of gifts was seen as the absolute antithesis of market competition. There could be no compromise between tribal authenticity and bourgeois alienation. After the social revolution, the potlatch would completely supplant the commodity [6].

In the two decades following the May 1968 revolution, this purist vision of anarcho-communism inspired community media activists. For instance, the radical ‘free radio’ stations created by New Left militants in France and Italy refused all funding from state and commercial sources. Instead, these projects tried to survive through donations of time and money from their supporters. Emancipatory media supposedly could only be produced within the gift economy [7]. During the late-Seventies, pro-situ attitudes were further popularised by the punk movement. Although rapidly commercialised, this sub-culture did encourage its members to form their own bands, make their own fashions and publish their own fanzines. This participatory ethic still shapes innovatory music and radical politics today. From raves to environmental protests, the spirit of May ’68 lives on within the DIY culture of the Nineties. The gift is supposedly about to replace the commodity [8].

The Net as Really Existing Anarcho-Communism

Despite originally being invented for the U. S. military, the Net was constructed around the gift economy. The Pentagon initially did try to restrict the unofficial uses of its computer network. However, it soon became obvious that the Net could only be successfully developed by letting its users build the system for themselves. Within the scientific community, the gift economy has long been the primary method of socialising labour. Funded by the state or by donations, scientists don’t have to turn their intellectual work directly into marketable commodities. Instead, research results are publicised by ‘giving a paper’ at specialist conferences and by ‘contributing an article’ to professional journals. The collaboration of many different academics is made possible through the free distribution of information [9].

Within small tribal societies, the circulation of gifts established close personal bonds between people. In contrast, the academic gift economy is used by intellectuals who are spread across the world. Despite the anonymity of the modern version of the gift economy, academics acquire intellectual respect from each other through citations in articles and other forms of public acknowledgement. Scientists therefore can only obtain personal recognition for their individual efforts by openly collaborating with each other through the academic gift economy. Although research is being increasingly commercialised, the giving away of findings remains the most efficient method of solving common problems within a particular scientific discipline [10].

From its earliest days, the free exchange of information has therefore been firmly embedded within the technologies and social mores of cyberspace [11]. When New Left militants proclaimed that ‘information wants to be free’ back in the Sixties, they were preaching to computer scientists who were already living within the academic gift economy. Above all, the founders of the Net never bothered to protect intellectual property within computer-mediated communications. On the contrary, they were developing these new technologies to advance their careers inside the academic gift economy. Far from wanting to enforce copyright, the pioneers of the Net tried to eliminate all barriers to the distribution of scientific research. Technically, every act within cyberspace involves copying material from one computer to another. Once the first copy of a piece of information is placed on the Net, the cost of making each extra copy is almost zero. The architecture of the system presupposes that multiple copies of documents can easily be cached around the network. As Tim Berners-Lee – the inventor of the Web – points out:

“Concepts of intellectual property, central to our culture, are not expressed in a way which maps onto the abstract information space. In an information space, we can consider the authorship of materials, and their perception; but … there is a need for the underlying infrastructure to be able to make copies simply for reasons of [technical] efficiency and reliability. The concept of ‘copyright’ as expressed in terms of copies made makes little sense.” [12]

Within the commercial creative industries, advances in digital reproduction are feared for making the ‘piracy’ of copyright material ever easier. For the owners of intellectual property, the Net can only make the situation worse. In contrast, the academic gift economy welcomes technologies which improve the availability of data. Users should always be able to obtain and manipulate information with the minimum of impediments. The design of the Net therefore assumes that intellectual property is technically and socially obsolete [13].

In France, the nationalised telephone monopoly has accustomed people to paying for the on-line services provided by Minitel. In contrast, the Net remains predominantly a gift economy even though the system has expanded far beyond the university. From scientists through hobbyists to the general public, the charmed circle of users was slowly built up through the adhesion of many localised networks to an agreed set of protocols. Crucially, the common standards of the Net include social conventions as well as technical rules. The giving and receiving of information without payment is almost never questioned. Although the circulation of gifts doesn’t necessarily create emotional obligations between individuals, people are still willing to donate their information to everyone else on the Net. Even selfish reasons encourage people to become anarcho-communists within cyberspace. By adding their own presence, every user contributes to the collective knowledge accessible to those already on-line. In return, each individual has potential access to all the information made available by others within the Net. Everyone takes far more out of the Net than they can ever give away as an individual.

“… the Net is far from altruistic, or it wouldn’t work… Because it takes as much effort to distribute one copy of an original creation as a million … you never lose from letting your product free…as long as you are compensated in return … What a miracle, then, that you receive not one thing in value in exchange – indeed there is no explicit act of exchange at all – but millions of unique goods made by others!” [14]

Despite the commercialisation of cyberspace, the self-interest of Net users ensures that the hi-tech gift economy continues to flourish. For instance, musicians are using the Net for the digital distribution of their recordings to each other. By giving away their own work to this network community, individuals get free access to a far larger amount of music in return. Not surprisingly, the music business is worried about the increased opportunities for the ‘piracy’ of copyrighted recordings over the Net. Sampling, DJ-ing and mixing are already blurring property rights within dance music. However, the greatest threat to the commercial music corporations comes from the flexibility and spontaneity of the hi-tech gift economy. After it is completed, a new track can quickly be made freely available to a global audience. If someone likes the tune, they can download it for personal listening, use it as a sample or make their own remix. Out of the free circulation of information, musicians can form friendships, work together and inspire each other.

“It’s all about doing it for yourself. Better than punk.” [15]

Within the developed world, most politicians and corporate leaders believe that the future of capitalism lies in the commodification of information. Over the last few decades, intellectual property rights have been steadily tightened through new national laws and international agreements. Even human genetic material can now be patented [16]. Yet, at the ‘cutting edge’ of the emerging information society, money-commodity relations play a secondary role to those created by a really existing form of anarcho-communism. For most of its users, the Net is somewhere to work, play, love, learn and discuss with other people. Unrestricted by physical distance, they collaborate with each other without the direct mediation of money or politics. Unconcerned about copyright, they give and receive information without thought of payment. In the absence of states or markets to mediate social bonds, network communities are instead formed through the mutual obligations created by gifts of time and ideas.

“This informal, unwritten social contract is supported by a blend of strong-tie and weak-tie relationships among people who have a mixture of motives and ephemeral affiliations. It requires one to give something, and enables one to receive something. … I find that the help I receive far outweighs the energy I expend helping others; a marriage of altruism and self-interest.” [17]

On the Net, enforcing copyright payments represents the imposition of scarcity on a technical system designed to maximise the dissemination of information. The protection of intellectual property stops all users having access to every source of knowledge. Commercial secrecy prevents people from helping each other to solve common problems. The inflexibility of information commodities inhibits the efficient manipulation of digital data. In contrast, the technical and social structure of the Net has been developed to encourage open cooperation among its participants. As an everyday activity, users are building the system together. Engaged in ‘interactive creativity’, they send e-mail, take part in listservs, contribute to newsgroups, participate within on-line conferences and produce Web sites [18]. Lacking copyright protection, information can be freely adapted to suit the users’ needs. Within the hi-tech gift economy, people successfully work together through “… an open social process involving evaluation, comparison and collaboration.” [19]

The hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software development. For instance, Bill Gates admits that Microsoft’s biggest competitor in the provision of Web servers comes from the Apache program [20]. Instead of being marketed by a commercial company, this program is shareware [21]. Like similar projects, this virtual machine is being continually developed by its techie users. Because its source code is not protected by copyright, the program can be modified, amended and improved by anyone with the appropriate programmingskills. When someone does make a contribution to a shareware project, the gift of their labour is rewarded by recognition within the community of user-developers.

The inflexibility of commodified software programs is compounded by their greater unreliability. Even Microsoft can’t mobilise the amount of labour given to some successful shareware programs by their devotees. Without enough techies looking at a program, all its bugs can never be found [22]. The greater social and technical efficiency of anarcho-communism is therefore inhibiting the commercial take-over of the Net. Shareware programs are now beginning to threaten the core product of the Microsoft empire: the Windows operating system. Starting from the original software program by Linus Torvalds, a community of user-developers are together building their own non-proprietary operating system: Linux. For the first time, Windows has a serious competitor. Anarcho-communism is now the only alternative to the dominance of monopoly capitalism.

“Linux is subversive. Who could have thought even five years ago that a world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-time hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the planet, connected only by the tenuous strands of the Internet?” [23]

The ‘New Economy’ is a Mixed Economy

Following the implosion of the Soviet Union, almost nobody still believes in the inevitable victory of communism. On the contrary, large numbers of people accept that the Hegelian ‘end of history’ has culminated in American neo-liberal capitalism [24]. Yet, at exactly this moment in time, a really existing form of anarcho-communism is being constructed within the Net, especially by people living in the U. S. When they go on-line, almost everyone spends most of their time participating within the gift economy rather than engaging in market competition. Because users receive much more information than they can ever give away, there is no popular clamour for imposing the equal exchange of the marketplace on the Net. Once again, the ‘end of history’ for capitalism appears to be communism.

For the hi-tech gift economy was not an immanent possibility in every age. On the contrary, the market and the state could only be surpassed in this specific sector at this particular historical moment. Crucially, people need sophisticated media, computing and telecommunications technologies to participate within the hi-tech gift economy. A manually-operated press produced copies which were relatively expensive, limited in numbers and impossible to alter without recopying. After generations of technological improvements, the same quantity of text on the Net costs almost nothing to circulate, can be copied as needed and can be remixed at will. In addition, individuals need both time and money to participate within the hi-tech gift economy. While a large number of the world’s population still lives in poverty, people within the industrialised countries have steadily reduced their hours of employment and increased their wealth over a long period of social struggles and economic reorganisations. By working for money during some of the week, people can now enjoy the delights of giving gifts at other times. Only at this particular historical moment have the technical and social conditions of the metropolitan countries developed sufficiently for the emergence of digital anarcho-communism [25].

“Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production.” [26]

The New Left anticipated the emergence of the hi-tech gift economy. People could collaborate with each other without needing either markets or states. However, the New Left had a purist vision of DIY culture: the gift was the absolute antithesis of the commodity. Yet, anarcho-communism only exists in a compromised form on the Net. Contrary to the ethical-aesthetic vision of the New Left, money-commodity and gift relations are not just in conflict with each other, but also co-exist in symbiosis. On the one hand, each method of working does threaten to supplant the other. The hi-tech gift economy heralds the end of private property in ‘cutting edge’ areas of the economy. The digital capitalists want to privatise the shareware programs and enclose the social spaces built through voluntary effort. The potlatch and the commodity remain irreconcilable.

Yet, on the other hand, the gift economy and the commercial sector can only expand through mutual collaboration within cyberspace. The free circulation of information between users relies upon the capitalist production of computers, software and telecommunications. The profits of commercial Net companies depend upon increasing numbers of people participating within the hi-tech gift economy. For instance, Netscape has tried to realise the opportunities opened up by such interdependence from its foundation. Under threat from the Microsoft monopoly, the company has to ally itself with the hacker community to avoid being overwhelmed. It started by distributing its Web browser as a gift. Today the source code of this program is freely available and the development of products for Linux has become a top priority. The commercial survival of Netscape depends upon successfully collaborating with hackers from the hi-tech gift economy. Anarcho-communism is now sponsored by corporate capital [27].

“”Hi there Mr CEO [Chief Executive Officer] – tell me, do you have any strategic problem right now that is bigger than whether Microsoft is going to either crush you or own your soul in a few years? No? You don’t? OK, well, listen carefully then. You cannot survive against Bill Gates [by] playing Bill Gates’ game. To thrive, or even survive, you’re going to have to change the rules …”" [28]

The purity of the digital DIY culture is also compromised by the political system. The state isn’t just the potential censor and regulator of the Net. At the same time, the public sector provides essential support for the hi-tech gift economy. In the past, the founders of the Net never bothered to incorporate intellectual property within the system because their wages were funded from taxation. In the future, governments will have to impose universal service provisions upon commercial telecommunications companies if all sections of society are to have the opportunity to circulate free information. Furthermore, when access is available, many people use the Net for political purposes, including lobbying their political representatives. Within the digital mixed economy, anarcho-communism is also symbiotic with the state.

This miscegenation occurs almost everywhere within cyberspace. For instance, an on-line conference site can be constructed as a labour of love, but still be partially funded by advertising and public money. Crucially, this hybridisation of working methods is not confined within particular projects. When they’re on-line, people constantly pass from one form of social activity to another. For instance, in one session, a Net user could first purchase some clothes from an e-commerce catalogue, then look for information about education services from the local council’s site and then contribute some thoughts to an on-going discussion on a listserver for fiction-writers. Without even consciously having to think about it, this person would have successively been a consumer in a market, a citizen of a state and an anarcho-communist within a gift economy. Far from realising theory in its full purity, working methods on the Net are inevitably compromised. The ‘New Economy’ is an advanced form of social democracy [29].

At the end of the twentieth century, anarcho-communism is no longer confined to avant-garde intellectuals. What was once revolutionary has now become banal. As Net access grows, more and more ordinary people are circulating free information across the Net. Crucially, their potlatches are not attempts to regain a lost emotional authenticity. Far from having any belief in the revolutionary ideals of May ’68, the overwhelming majority of people participate within the hi-tech gift economy for entirely pragmatic reasons. Sometimes they buy commodities on-line and access state-funded services. However, they usually prefer to circulate gifts amongst each other. Net users will always obtain much more than will ever be contributed in return. By giving away something which is well-made, they will gain recognition from those who download their work. For most people, the gift economy is simply the best method of collaborating together in cyberspace. Within the mixed economy of the Net, anarcho-communism has become an everyday reality.

“We must rediscover the pleasure of giving: giving because you have so much. What beautiful and priceless potlatches the affluent society will see – whether it likes it or not! – when the exuberance of the younger generation discovers the pure gift.” [30]

Footnotes

1. James Wallace, Overdrive, p. 266.

2. For a critique of the neo-liberal politics of Wired, see Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, ‘The Californian Ideology’.

3. Guy Debord, ‘Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency’s Conditions of Organisation and Action’, p. 25.”

4. The Situationists discovered the tribal gift economy in Marcel Mauss, The Gift.

5. For the historical antecedents of New Left anarcho-communism, see Richard Gombin, Les Origins du Gauchisme, pp. 99-151. For its later influence on the new social movements, see George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left, pp. 204-212.

6. For instance, in their famous analysis of the 1965 Los Angeles Watts riots, the Situationists praised looting as the revolutionary supersession of money-commodity relations: “… instead of being eternally pursued in the rat race of alienated labour and increasing but unmet social needs, real desires begin to be expressed in festival, in playful self-assertion, in the potlatch of destruction.” Situationist International, ‘The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy’, p. 155.

7. See John Downing, Radical Media.

8. DIY stands for ‘do-it-yourself’. This slogan is used to emphasise the need for people to tackle social problems through collective direct action rather than to wait for someone else to solve them. See Elaine Brass, Sophie Poklewski Koziell and Denise Searle, Gathering Force.

9. See Warren O. Hagstrom, ‘Gift Giving as an Organisational Principle in Science’, p. 29.

10. This is why the increasing role of private funding can hamper as well as help academic research. See David Noble, ‘Digital Diploma Mills’.

11. See Mark Geise, ‘From ARPAnet to the Internet’, pp. 126-132.

12. Tim Berners-Lee, ‘The World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future’, p. 11.

13. See Neil Kleinman, ‘Don’t Fence Me In: Copyright, Property and Technology’.

14. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, ‘Cooking Pot Markets’, p 10.”

15. Steve Elliot of Slug Oven quoted in Karlin Lillington, ‘No! It’s Not OK, Computer’, page 3. Also see Andrew Leonard, ‘Mutiny on the Net’.

16. For instance, one of the major components of the 1993 Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was increased protection for patents and copyrights, especially with agriculture and medicine, see John Frow, ‘Information as Gift and Commodity’.

17. Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community, pp. 57-58.

18. Tim Berners-Lee, ‘Realising the Full Potential of the Web’, p. 5.

19. Bernard Lang, ‘Free Software For All’, p. 3.

20. Keith W. Porterfield, ‘Information Wants to be Valuable’, p. 2.

21. Shareware is also often known as freeware or open source software. All these names emphasise that the program is a gift to anyone on the Net, especially those who have the skills to improve its code. See the use of these terms in Douglas Rushkoff, ‘Free Lessons in Innovation’; Free Software Foundation, ‘What is Free Software?’; and Eric S. Raymond, ‘Homesteading the Noosphere’.

22. See Andrew Leonard, ‘Let My Software Go!’.

23. Eric S. Raymond, ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’, p. 1.

24. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man.

25. “Gift cultures are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in populations that do not have significant material-scarcity problems with survival goods.” Eric S. Raymond, ‘Homesteading the Noosphere’, p. 9.

26. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, p. 700.

27. See Netscape Communications Corporation, ‘Netscape Announces Plans to Make Next-Generation Communicator Source Code Available Free on the Net’.

28. Eric Raymond describing his pitch on behalf of shareware to commercial software companies in Andrew Leonard, ‘Let My Software Go!’, p. 8. Bill Gates doesn’t just believe that free software is ‘communism’, but even allowing other companies to have access to Microsoft products before their release date! See James Wallace, Overdrive, p. 57.

29. Wired uses ‘The New Economy’ as a synonym for its neo-liberal fantasies about the Net. See Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy.

30. Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, p. 70.

References

Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, (1996) ‘The Californian Ideology’, Science as Culture, volume 6 part 1, number 26, pages 44-72,

Tim Berners-Lee, (1996) ‘The World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future’.

Tim Berners-Lee, (1997) ‘Realising the Full Potential of the Web’.

Elaine Brass and Sophie Poklewski Koziell with Denise Searle (editor), (1997) Gathering Force: DIY culture – radical action for those tired of waiting, Big Issue, London.

Guy Debord, (1981) ‘Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency’s Conditions of Organisation and Action’ in Ken Knabb (editor), Situationist International Anthology, Bureau of Public Secrets,
Berkeley CA.

John Downing, (1984) Radical Media: the political experience of alternative communication, South End Press, Boston Massachusetts.

Free Software Foundation, (1996) ‘What is Free Software?’ .

John Frow, (1996) ‘Information as Gift and Commodity’, New Left Review, number 219, September/October, pages 89-108.

Francis Fukuyama, (1992) The End of History and the Last Man, Penguin, London.

Mark Geise, (1996) ‘From ARPAnet to the Internet: a cultural clash and its implications in framing the debate on the information superhighway’ in Lance Strate, Ron Jacobson and Stephanie B. Gibson (editors), Communications and Cyberspace: social interaction in an electronic environment, Hampton Press, Cresskill New Jersey, pages 123-141.

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, (1998) ‘Cooking Pot Markets: an economic model for the trade in free goods and services on the Internet’, First Monday, volume 3, number 3, March, .

Richard Gombin, (1971) Les Origins du Gauchisme, Editions du Seuil, Paris.

Warren O. Hagstrom, (1982) ‘Gift Giving as an Organisational Principle in Science’ in Barry Barnes and David Edge (editors), Science in Context: readings in the sociology of science, The Open University, Milton Keynes, pages 21-34.

George Katsiaficas, (1987) The Imagination of the New Left: a global analysis of 1968, South End Press, Boston.

Kevin Kelly, (1997) ‘New Rules for the New Economy: twelve dependable principles for thriving in a turbulent world’, Wired, volume 5, number 9, September, pages 140-144, 186, 188, 190, 192, 194, 196-197.

Neil Kleinman, (1996) ‘Don’t Fence Me In: Copyright, Property and Technology’ in Lance Strate, Ron Jacobson and Stephanie B. Gibson (editors), Communications and Cyberspace: social interaction in an electronic environment, Hampton Press, Creskill New Jersey, pages 59-82.

Bernard Lang, (1998) ‘Free Software For All: freeware and the issue of intellectual property’, Le Monde Diplomatique, January.

Andrew Leonard, (1998) ‘Mutiny on the Net’, Salon.

Andrew Leonard, (1998) ‘Let My Software Go!’, Salon.

Karlin Lillington, (1998) “No! It’s Not OK, Computer,” The Guardian, On-Line Section, 6th April, pages 2-3.

Karl Marx, (1973) Grundrisse, Penguin, London.

Marcel Mauss, (1990) The Gift: the form and reason for exchange in archaic societies, Routledge, London.

Netscape Communications Corporation, (1998) ‘Netscape Announces Plans to Make Next-Generation Communicator Source Code Available Free on the Net’, Netscape Press Release, 22 January.

David Noble, (1998) ‘Digital Diploma Mills: the automation of higher education’, First Monday, volume 3, number 1, January.

Keith W. Porterfield, (1997) ‘Information Wants to be Valuable: a report from the first O’Reilly Perl conference’.

Eric S. Raymond, (1998), ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’, First Monday, volume 3, number 3, March.

Eric S. Raymond, (1998), ‘Homesteading the Noosphere’, First Monday, volume 3, number 10, October.

Howard Rheingold, (1994) The Virtual Community: finding connection in a computerised world, Secker & Warburg, London.

Douglas Rushkoff, ‘Free Lessons in Innovation’, The Guardian, On-Line Section, 9th April.

Situationist International, (1981) ‘The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy’ in Ken Knabb (editor), Situationist International Anthology, Bureau of Public Secrets,
Berkeley CA.

Raoul Vaneigem, (1972) The Revolution of Everyday Life, Practical Paradise, London.

James Wallace, (1997) Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace, John Wiley, New York.

A spectre is haunting the Net: the spectre of communism. Whatever their professed political beliefs, every user dreams of the digital transcendence of capitalism. Yet, at the same time, even the most dedicated leftist can no longer truly believe in communism. The horrors of totalitarianism have discredited its promises of social emancipation. Seizing this opportunity, the prophets of American neo-liberalism are now laying claim to the future. The adoption of information technologies will lead to the privatisation and deregulation of all economic activities. The freedoms of the information society will be created by an elite of entrepreneurs, technocrats and ideologues. Needing to popularise their prophecies, right-wing gurus emphasise that every hi-tech professional can compete to join the emerging digital aristocracy. Above all, they predict that everyone will eventually enjoy the technological marvels currently only available to the lucky few. In the late-1990s, the prophets of American neo-liberalism measure our progress towards utopia through increases in the ownership of digital artefacts: home computers, Net connections, mobile phones and laptops. Ironically, this right-wing futurism echoes the preconceptions of Stalinist communism. In the former Soviet Union, the enlightened minority was also leading the ignorant masses towards eventual emancipation. Any suffering caused by the introduction of new technologies was justified by the promise of future liberation. During the 1930s, Josef Stalin similarly measured progress towards utopia through the rising output of modern products: steel, cars, tractors and machine-tools. Although the Soviet Union has long disappeared, the ideologues of American neo-liberalism are still inspired by the Stalinist version of communism.

vanguard party	digerati
The Five-Year Plan	The New Paradigm
boy-meets-tractor	nerd-meets-Net
Third International	Third Wave
Moscow	Silicon Valley
Pravda	Wired
party line	unique thought
Soviet democracy	electronic town halls
Lysenkoism	memetics
society-as-factory	society-as-hive
New Soviet Man	post-humans
Stakhanovite norm-busting	overworked contract labour
purges	downsizing
Russian nationalism	Californian chauvinism

According to most politicians, executives and pundits, the Net is founded upon the buying and selling of information. As in other cultural industries, intellectual labour within cyberspace must be enclosed into commodities and protected by copyright. However, computer-mediated communications was never designed for trading information. On the contrary, the scientists who invented the Net were working within the academic gift economy. As a consequence, they embedded the free distribution of information within the technical structures and social mores of the Net. Over time, the charmed circle of users has slowly grown from scientists through hobbyists to the general public. Crucially, each new member doesn’t just observe the technical rules of the system, but also adheres to certain social conventions. Without even thinking about it, people continually circulate information between each other for free. By giving away their own personal efforts, Net users always receive the results of much greater amounts of labour in return from others. Instead of needing a market, people can now work together by circulating gifts between each other. Although many on-line activities are trivial, some collaborations are creating very sophisticated products, such as the Linux operating system and interactive music pieces. Despite their power and wealth, the multi-media multinationals are unable to impose the commodification of intellectual labour within cyberspace. At the dawn of the new millennium, Net users are developing a much more efficient and enjoyable way of working together: cyber-communism.

commodity	gift
enclosure	disclosure
copyright	piracy
fixed	fluid
product	process
proprietary	open source
digital encryption	free download
original recording	latest remix
scarcity	abundance
alienation	friendship
New Soviet Man	post-humans
market competition	network communities
e-commerce	cyber-communism

In earlier times, the abolition of capitalism was envisaged in apocalyptic terms: revolutionary uprisings, mass mobilisations and modernising dictatorships. In contrast, Net users are engaged in the slow process of superseding capitalism. In this dialectical movement, hi-tech neo-liberals perfect the existing relations of production by developing e-commerce: work-as-commodity. Reacting against this enclosure of cyberspace, left-wing activists celebrate the piracy of copyright material within the on-line potlatch: waste-as-gift. For those nostalgic for ideological certainty, there can be no compromise between these contradictory visions of the Net. Yet, the synthesis of these dialectical opposites is happening for pragmatic reasons. The low ‘cost of entry’ into e-commerce is due to the absence of proprietary barriers within the Net. The rapid expansion of the hi-tech gift economy is facilitated by hardware and software sold by large companies. Above all, Net users always adopt the working methods which are most beneficial to their own interests. Sometimes, they will engage in e-commerce. On most occasions, they will prefer to collaborate within the hi-tech gift economy. Many social activities are already organised by voluntary labour and with donated resources. Now, with the advent of the Net, this gift economy is challenging market competition at the cutting-edge of modernity. Living within a prosperous society, many people are no longer solely motivated by financial rewards. If they have sufficient time and money, they will also work to gain the respect of their peers for their efforts. Within the Net, people are developing the most advanced form of collective labour: work-as-gift. During the last two hundred years, the intimate bonds of kinship and friendship have simultaneously inhibited and underpinned the impersonal relationships needed for market competition. The modern has always co-existed with the traditional. Now, within cyberspace, the exchange of commodities is being both intensified and prevented by the circulation of gifts. The modern must synthesise with the hyper-modern. Far from needing leadership by a heroic elite, ordinary people can now successfully construct their own digital future. In the age of the Net, cyber-communism is a mundane everyday experience.

The Positive:	The Negation:	The Negation of the Negation:
work-as-commodity	waste-as-gift	work-as-gift
e-commerce	potlatch	network communities
reactionary modernism	revolutionary anti-modernism	revolutionary modernism

 

in the beginning…

The expansion of industrial capitalism led to the realisation of the consumer society, which creates a society split between leisure and labour, a leisure society in which we work to obtain the instruments of leisure, the machines of pleasure, and this split organises our thoughts in every way. Eventually everything has to be subordinated to the illusion of leisure as information becomes “infotainment” and work becomes almost a luxury, a privilege. In our desperation to free ourselves we rush with open arms to the soothsayers of technical futures, to the Utopias made possible by technology. We, and they, forget that it is purely a human and social decision as to how any technology is used. If, for example, we live in a deregulated monopoly capitalist society, then they way we use technology will serve the interests of that society, unless an effort is made to create the freedom, intellectually and psychologically, to that will allow us to use the technology the way we dream we are able to: to make a better world.

Ideology

The Limits of Democracy

“…society becomes a mechanism and an organism which ceases to be comprehensible to the very people who participate in it, and who maintain it through their labour.” Henri Lefebvre, on the process of alienation. [1]

“The Western model has made tabula rasa of the old forms of oppression and instated a democracy of the supermarket, a self-service autonomy, a hedonism whose pleasures must be paid for. … The system has realised in the nick of time that a dead human being is more of a paying proposition than a dead human being – or one riddled by pollutants.” Raoul Vaneigem [2]

The trouble with a state that purports to base its existence on the People’s Will, is that it then has to go some way in ensuring that the People’s Will is met, or at least pay lipservice to the idea. This is the position in which the Western industrial nations found themselves after the Second World War. Vestiges of old notions of tradition, privilege and precedent could no longer be appealed to. People knew their “rights” and one of these was the right to vote. In response, the expansion of the “consumer society” which had been developing steadily since the turn of the 19th century due to assembly-line mass-production techniques [3], was stepped up, partly as a response to the Cold War challenge of Stalinism and Communist theory. The consumer society served to create an ideology of consumer capitalism based on the notion of the citizen as consumer and spectator, rather than participant, of events. This was even true in the Soviet Bloc, as post-Stalinist leaders were able to hold out promises of consumer goods to ensure the smooth running of the state apparatus. [4] Of course, none of the capitalist oligarchs and communist apparatchiks wanted to have anything to do with the “People’s Will.” In the Soviet sphere, the carrot-and-stick approach was dependent upon a rather big stick, the gulag. In the West, as the above quote from Raoul Vaneigem points out, a cunning system of free elections, consumer choice and growth of an entertainment culture served to keep the energies of the population in check, while actual freedoms were tightly governed by State control. 1968 saw the crisis point of this system in both East and West. In Czechoslovakia, reformers within the Czech Communist Party were instituting a series of mild reforms, while, far more importantly, allowing an explosion of free speech all over the country. It was this latter development that alarmed the Russians, and influenced their decision to send in troops. The crushing of the Prague Spring showed how terrified the system was of freedom of thought, and discredited, for once and for all, the Soviet system. [5] In the West in that same year, French students and workers revolted against de Gaulle’s government and the whole post-war French state system. In the United States, opposition to and criticism of US involvement in Indochina was dramatically increasing, encompassing, as in France, a wholesale rejection of the American state and what it now stood for. In the West, although a police response was used to counter these expressions of protest, allegiance to the system was ensured by still greater abundance of pleasures to consume. [6] But it is more than simply “bread and circuses” that maintains the Western system of consumer capitalism. Rather, it is the mentality of consumption and spectatorship which dominates our thought and decides our priorities.

Hegemony: Power and Practice

As early as the 1920′s, jailed Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci was articulating the idea of what he called “egemonia” (in Italian “the presence of power,” usually translated as “hegemony”). Hegemony is not simply the “superstructure” as more conservative Marxist critics would maintain, but the most everyday factors of life as these are lived within the frames that we think of – if we think of them at all – as having freely chosen. This “everyday consciousness” is produced and shared by all members of the polity, but is dominated by the dominant class. There is political society, which is the realm of the State, and civil society, the realm of the people – and Gramsci sees these in a conceptual opposition, although they are one and the same. Gramsci is careful to avoid reductionism, however. For example, a state-run broadcasting system is clearly at one level part of political society. But this does not mean that everything which takes place within the system, or everything that is broadcast, will be subservient to the State or reflect ruling-class interests. [7] Civil society is the site of consent and hegemony; political or state society is the site of coercion and control, yet of course they make up the single entity we live in and consider “society.” Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony, or the permeation of popular thought by the ruling class, is a useful tool for cultural historians and in cultural studies, as it can be used to analyse culture as a set of material forms and practices, and the institutions in which cultural forms are produced and by which they are rendered significant. For practical purposes, Gramsci had no innovative solution to the problem of the domination of hegemony by the ruling class. He hoped that it might be counteracted by a systematic but gradual re-education of the People by an organised Communist intelligentsia based on the experience of the workplace. [8]

The New Left

Following the Second World War, and the defeat of fascism by the combined strengths of “democracy” and “communism,” the forces that shaped the popular consciousness were influenced by technological development, deliberate expansion of the consumer society and the even further decline of traditional society and traditional social bonds. In the Soviet bloc, no secret was made of the fact that the State was the source and regulator of this. In the West, however, the democratic idea meant that choice and participation were still expected to be the deciding factor in what kind of society people lived in. There were critics who distrusted the democratic idea, seeing it as essentially self-serving the oligarchies and the “military industrial complex.” To old-style Leninists it was all perfectly clear: the repository of all good lay in Moscow, the precedent of the Bolshevik revolution was a serviceable global precedent, and it was up to them, the slogan-wielding vanguard of the working class (even if they were not personally working class) to lead the class struggle. Other socialists preferred a Gramscian approach to revolution, of permeation through education, where they vied with liberals who followed the ideas of Matthew Arnold to attempt to create a culturally aware, individually-responsible morally “good” intellectual and political culture. Other leftist intellectuals attempted to look more deeply into why the society of capitalist consumer production appeared to be working, not to mention thriving. To Althusser, the institutions which direct our information, culture and education are “ideological state apparatuses” and we are controlled by them, and that is a large part of how we function as a society. But schools, universities, newspapers, broadcast media, churches, political parties, “think tanks” and so on are more than State apparatuses, though they may be that too – they are agencies of power which organise our thinking. Michel Foucault maintained that modern society is marked by the unending struggle, or Will, towards power – conflicting discourses piled upon discourses. Foucault suggested notions of sabotage, resistance and counter-discourse to wrest power from the dominant. But he rejected the economic bais: the needs of the system of industrial capitalism, and thus forgot, or ignored, that the discourses of power and the truths they claim, do emerge from social, economic and technological realities. The struggle for power is not (deterministic) necessarily for its own sake but because these particular realities present crucial threats or opportunities to the contestants. But Foucault was right to see contestation for the power-domination, rather than the simpler assumption that one sector of society (e.g. the Rich, Men etc.) was bigger and stronger and therefore would dominate. Cultural and intellectual domination also perturbed the Frankfurt school. These philosophers and cultural critics on the Left disagreed with Leninism and its methods, but at the same time, warned against the industry of cultural production, identifying “mass” culture as manipulated and degenerate and serving only the status quo. To them, cultural production under capitalism worked the way religion had in Marx’s day, as “opiate of the masses” to lull them into passivity and consumerism of shoddy, hollow junk goods. [9]

Henri Lefebvre and “Everyday Life”

In France, Henri Lefebvre was less concerned with the shoddiness of the goods and more concerned with the fact of alienation, one of the linchpins of Marxist thought but one which had gone virtually unremarked in orthodox Marxism. Lefebvre saw that alienation operated at all levels and in both capitalism and Soviet societies, where it was declared to no longer exist. To Lefebvre, everything in contemporary industrial consumer culture worked to turn the worker’s attention from the realities of everyday life and exploit the alienation that capitalism relied on to operate. That is, alienation was more than simply the by-product of industrial capitalism but a cornerstone of it. The division of life into the realm of labour and the realm of leisure served to divide the human “from himself, from nature, from his consciousness, dragged down and dehumanised by his own social products.” (p. 180) the realm of labour is one that Marxist had hitherto spent a lot of time discussing, and the workplace was considered the starting point of revolution. But Lefebvre argued for the consideration of leisure as at least as important. We think of “leisure” as something we have earned after putting in time at the factory or office. But leisure exists in a dialectic with work; it is not free, it is not hours but is as dictated by the rhythms and needs of capitalism as much as is the timeclock and the paystub. Furthermore, leisure as it exists substitutes for an “immediate sensory life” and is instead more often than not passive activity, which itself alienates or anaethsetises man from his “everyday life.” Lefebvre exempts the all too rare occurrence “cultivated or cultural leisure” by which he means productive leisure such as hobby photography or painting, and is critical instead of the leisure we obtain through “leisure machines” (p. 33) which we buy with our wage packets purely to serve the purpose of occupying our time, our “leisure” time, as passively as possible while we are excused from labour. We have even created “leisure activities” which mimic work, like camping and sailing, as a response to the charge of passivity, though these too are essentially escapist and fantasial. But most leisure is extremely passive: Lefebvre notes the phenomenon of the “sportsman” who “participates in the action and plays sport via an intermediary” i.e. as a spectator.(p. 41) But the main form of leisure in the post-war era was of course the “couch potato” forms of radio and, even more so, television, of which more later. To Lefebvre, everyday life and the commodities, roles and discourses which inhabit (and inhibit) it, are the true realm of political debate. It is the very realm over which we ought to have the most control, yet we experience “everyday life” as dull and mundane, a source of worry and insecurity that is largely constructed by the promises of fulfilment to which we rush, in dazzled blindness, in the world of commodity pleasures.

Media for a Spectacular Society

Situationism: Create and Arm Your Desires

Lefebvre’s critique of alienated man was taken up by the Situationists of the 1950s and 60′s. The Situationists were concerned with recapturing the arena of everyday life and most importantly recapturing the spirit of desire unfettered by the artificial desires created by commodity culture. [10] They called the commodity culture, which forced the worker into passive consumption of leisure, and deprived him of any real opportunity to participate in the construction of his own reality, the “society of the spectacle” and called for the creations of “situations” outside the spectacle to challenge its domination. Guy Debord was one of the main theorists of the “society of the spectacle” in his 1967 work of the same name, which followed many essays and pamphlets developing these ideas. He begins by asserting that “In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.” [11] The spectacle, he goes on to say, “presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and as the instrument of unification. As a part of society it is specifically the sector which concentrates all gazing and consciousness” but “the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of generalised separation.” [12] To challenge the spectacle, Debord and the Situationists believed, nothing less than popular action to reclaim creative control of everyday life as well as political control of the means of production, would be needed. To the Situationists, the real horror in the society of the spectacle was its boringness. The dialectic of alienated Labour in the workplace and alienated leisure, made a dreary, mundane substitute for reality, lacking passion, desire and joie de vivre. As Ivan Chtcheglov wrote, “it has become essential to bring about a complete spiritual transformation by bringing to light forgotten desires and by creating entirely new ones. And by carrying out an intensive propaganda in favour of these desires. [13] And Vaneigem promised that “we have a world of pleasures to win, and nothing to lose but boredom.” [14]

From the New Left to DIY culture and Beyond

Vaneigem said, of romantic individualist liberalism and revolutionary communism, that “too many corpses strew the paths of individualism and collectivism. Two apparently contrary rationalities cloak an identical gangsterism, and identical oppression of the individual man.” (p. 23) The course of political movements in the latter part of the twentieth century has shown the truth of Vaneigem’s assertion. Following the events of 1968 it started to become clear that the intellectual critiques of modern culture that took into account how mentalities and perspectives are created and perpetuated, were legitimate analyses on which to base radical action. Radicalism in the contemporary period shares several things in common: criticism and suspicion of democratic political systems as they exist today; suspicion of the media and “big business” interests and perhaps most significantly, the idea that “everyday life” can be reclaimed by looking at the smaller issues which then build into a comprehensive challenge to the status quo. Contemporary “alternative culture” is deeply suspicious of the work/leisure dialectic. For the dialectic no longer works in reality: in this “post-industrial” society of structural unemployment, underemployment and deskilling, “work” is no longer the assured centrepoint of most people’s lives. However, our “leisure” activities predominate in our consciousness, and most of them appear to be based around the media. Contemporary alternative culture is largely concerned with creating viable alternatives to the mainstream culture of media and commodity exchange, and framing their protest in terms of these alternatives.

Media for a Spectacular Society

Lefebvre had noted the importance of the passive media as early as 1947:

Television – the sudden violent intrusion of the whole world into family and “private” life, “presentified” in a way which directly captures the immediate moment, which offers truth and participation, or at least appears to do so. (p. 41)

Arguably, all forms of media are entertainment, even if not overtly “entertaining.” But crucially, they also offer information, and we base most of our knowledge about the world and ourselves on the information supplied to us by the media. What is “the media” and how does it work? There are essentially three types of media available in Western society: public service media, which is usually broadcast media (but also includes newsletters etc.) which are produced by State-owned, tax-funded bodies which may or may not be responsible to the governing Party; Private enterprise media, which today are deregulated conglomerate media, often encompassing the whole range of media, from broadcast to print to music to digital media in one multinational corporation; and alternative or Do-It-Yourself (DIY) media, in which individuals or small independent groups take responsibility for creating and disseminating their work with no recourse to either of the other two media, examples include fanzines and small magazines, underground film and music, video journals, pirate radio, the Internet.

In this paper I am going to concentrate on the efforts of alternative media to challenge the society of the spectacle by creating and representing themselves as an alternative culture based on desires, and disseminating their ideas through the use of carnival and pleasure, while at the same time overtly challenging the dominance of ideas about culture, economics and society portrayed in the mass media. In part 4 I will look briefly at the history of popular radicalism and the media; in parts 5 and 6 I will look at television and the uses of video; part 7 will describe the relationship of activism and the media; part 8 will present a case study of Small World Media, an alternative media company struggling to survive by creating Undercurrents “alternative television”; and part 9 will consider alternative futures promised by the fusion of television and computer. Concluding , in part 10, will be a discussion as to whether alternative culture and alternative media is fated to recuperation.

Popular Radicalism and the Media

“Knowledge is Freedom”

“The free flow of information and communication is essential to a democratic society, and thus democracy requires that powerful instruments of information and communication be accessible to all.” Douglas Kellner [15]

The democratic idea is predicated upon two essentials: knowledge and choice. Knowledge so that the citizen/voter knows what the issues are, and choice so that s/he can make an informed decision between possible options. Yet is these very essentials that are most tightly controlled and subjected to dissimulation. There are various reasons for this: the interests of governments, businesses, interest groups which vie to dominate popular thinking; and basic laziness and willingness to accept whatever is put before one. This, however, is often the result of realising that the choices offered are illusionary, but not considering whether one can do anything about it. “The media” are routinely blamed for disseminating half-truths, speculations and opinions disguised as “news” or “information.” So much so that contemporary alternative publications speak of “media-proofing:” techniques, if not charms, to disempower the hold that media (usually broadcast media, in this context) has on everyday life. [16] Yet until recently “the media” was held to be the cornerstone of democracy, and still is, as Kellner’s quote asserts.

Print Culture and Popular Radicalism

The printing press was invented in Europe in the late 15th century, though a type of press was in use in China long before that. Nevertheless the press easily lent itself to producing printed work in the far simpler European alphabet in Latin and then, swiftly, the vernacular tongues. Immediately upon its invention it was constantly modified, altered and perfected in details, and its products turned to a growing diversity of uses. With the availability of printed matter came a desire to understand it, and although there are no proper indicators of literacy rates for the Renaissance-Early-Modern period, we do know that the literacy rates grew in all European regions, until, on the eve of the French revolution in Paris, literacy rates stood at between 86 and 93 percent for all classes. [17] In addition, for every reader of a printed item, there were those who could be read to, not to mention the milieu of coffee-houses and cafes. [18] Literary culture allowed for the dissemination of “fact” which purports to be unambiguous and to imply reality. The first publications which may be said to be devoted to this were the early newspapers, such as More Newes from Europe (1623) which was one of the first to provide a consistent account of events which also provided a recapping of earlier news. This foreign news, which dealt mainly with the events of the Thirty Years War, was soon followed by several papers which reported the news from Parliament, and during the Civil War rival newspapers purported to tell the “truth” from the King’s or Parliament’s point of view. These early papers were text-based but featured elaborate woodcut illustrations, mainly of a symbolic rather than an illustrative nature, thus keeping contact with the older methods of communication. In 1665 the first regular paper appeared in England, the Gazette and the first American paper appeared in Boston in 1690, but was soon suppressed. [19] Advertisements appeared in the 18th century and became very prevalent by the end of the century. In the 18th century the press was refined to the point that a small, easy-to use hand-operated press could be purchased relatively inexpensively. These were bought or leased to operate as small family-run businesses. This ease of access made the press available to a much greater number of people and especially to political radicals who wished to disseminate their ideas and gain support for their aims. Despite heavy Government suppression and censorship, these publications continued. [20] The printers and writers played their part in the great agitation for social and political reform of the late eighteenth century, in France (where newspapermen like Danton were key Revolutionary players) and elsewhere. As Richard Barbrook notes, “according to the revolutionaries, individual citizens directly shaped the policies of the state by engaging in reasoned debate over political issues in print,” thus creating a common political culture based on freedom of expression and private ownership of the means of production and distribution. [21] Despite Government suppression of the unlicensed press, there remained a high demand for cheaply-printed texts until the second half of the nineteenth century. A whole popular political culture was shaped by this access: “the mass of broadsides, addresses, letters, pamphlets, newspapers and occasional books were the very fabric of political activity.” [22] The life of 1840′s Chartist radical Thomas Frost is indicative: with some knowledge of compositing and a small capital of £25, Frost was able to earn his living by founding and editing a local newspaper in his native Croydon, launching a short-lived satirical magazine called Penny Punch, editing the Owenite Communist Chronicle and then his own Communist Journal, acting as correspondent for Lloyd’s London Newspaper and the South Eastern Gazette, and contributing to Chambers’s Papers for the People. Throughout the period he was continually on the bread line … but he was able to launch a series of publications with virtually no capital and, what is of equal significance, see them all fail without being permanently ruined. [23]

Karl Marx was in the thick of the newspaper milieu when, as a young man, he wrote for the liberal ‘Rheinische Zeitung.’ Throughout his life and work, he never developed the awe of the power of the press to manipulate thought that is the hallmark of most post-Marx political orders. Rather, he insisted upon the right to a free press, and, in his early work, envisioned a DIY culture where writers and artists would simply be ordinary people expressing themselves, not “professionals.” [24] However, rival Utopian socialist Wilhelm Weitling noted that “a ‘free’ press is impossible if people are not free and editors [are] hirelings of a wage system.” [25]

The steam press made possible faster and immeasurably better quality papers to be produced far more cheaply. The price of a good-quality illustrated paper fell dramatically, due to economies of scale which allowed far greater variety of reading material. The drawback was that the press itself was very expensive to own and operate. So only wealthy concerns could afford them. The rotary press, developed in 1870, allowed real mass-production of printed material for the first time, but again, the hardware was very expensive. Within a few years the large presses were churning out all manner of printed material, from comics to newspapers, under the aegis of a large capitalist concern. What we can recognise as our modern-day “newspaper” came into being, but these could only be created “by the collective labour of large numbers of wage workers on mechanised presses.” [26] Writers, artists and, later, photographers, were put on salary and their work strictly supervised as to content, and spirit, by the owner or his representatives. Press barons like Northcliffe and Beaverbrook became very powerful. The era of the individual or small group producing their own information or creative work and putting it out into the world was all but over.

After the press was professionalised, the idea of a DIY press was taken up by artists, but artists with a political agenda, from the Futurists to the Dadaists, the Lettrists and the Situationists, and spilled into the late 60′s-early 70′s hippie “counterculture” movement. The “punk” era of the 1970s saw the creation of the “fanzine,” deliberately crude, photocopied magazines which blended cod-anarchist politics and an appreciation of punk style and music. These “fanzines” still exist, as does an informal international network of distribution. [27] Revolutionary political groups equally saw the press as an organ of change, from Lenin’s “What is to be Done?” to last month’s Class War tabloid, the classic mouthpiece of the vanguard has been the newspaper, as anyone who has walked the Socialist Worker gauntlet of paper-sellers will recognise.

The alternative press gained dramatically with the advent of the desktop computer and printer: a whole magazine could be produced and typeset in an afternoon, if necessary. It could incorporate text and pictures, even pictures taken directly from video. Distribution was still a problem, as only small independently-run bookshops – themselves a vanishing breed – could usually be persuaded to sell them. Then the Internet was set up. That same magazine could be put onto the Web, saving paper and distribution hassles. As the software advances, the pages themselves become more graphic and less dependent on text, even incorporating small video clips. Even better, anyone with access to a computer can write in and share news, opinion and ideas. The potential for political and social debate away from governments, moral arbiters (these used to be the churches but now it seems anyone with enough gall can set themself as a moral spokesperson) and capitalist forces is tremendous.

Broadcast Media and the “Couch Potato”

The millions of human beings who were shot, tortured, gaoled, starved, treated like animals and made the object of a conspiracy of ridicule, can sleep in peace in their communal graves, for at least the struggle in which they died has enabled their descendants, isolated in the air-conditioned apartments, to believe, on the strength of their daily dose of television, that they are happy and free. [28]

Vaneigem’s bitter statement reflects a dissatisfaction with the way the broadcast media has apparently turned its back on its role in providing the tools of democracy; information upon which to base knowledge, and choice. He sees the history of the struggle for freedom as betrayed by a broadcast media which tells us we are happy and free, entertains us, tells us what and what not to worry about (e.g. “the economy” – whatever that is, in real terms – not “poverty”). Prior to broadcast media, which is essentially designed for private consumption in the home, film – the newsreel, the comedy and the melodrama projected as a neat package – was the agent of shared cultural experience. It still fulfils a role in cultural consciousness but it is nowhere near as powerful as television for explaining the world to us, and for sheer routine entertainment. As with print media, film and radio in their earliest stages appeared to be a participatory format. Although difficult to master, the technology of early film and radio was not impossible for an enthusiast to learn. But, as Barbrook notes about radio, “using mass production techniques, radio-set manufacturers soon started producing simple receivers as consumer commodities … by using Taylorist labour discipline and assembly-lines, manufacturers were able to lower the price of radio receivers until almost everyone could afford a set.” Radio programming became mass programming, created by people hired to produce certain things in a particular way. Similarly, film-making soon passed from the realm of independent artists to the businessmen of Hollywood, who created the studio system and enormously expensive, widely-distributed spectacles. By the 1960s, television and radio, had totally replaced film as the information media, as the newsreels which used to precede every feature quietly disappeared from the screens. The public experience of theatrically-released film was made over solely to fictional entertainment, and news and information reception was to be a private experience. The Fordist production of media, its reliance on economies of scale, creates a vast division between producers and consumers. As Vaneigem acerbically notes, “it is useless to expect even the caricature of creativity from the conveyor-belt,” as the products become ever more formulaic, predictable and remote from human experience.

Television

Watching the Box

“Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.” Walter Benjamin [31]

Who can forget the late winter of 1991? Sitting glued to the television as CNN delivered the horrendous news from the far-flung desert wastes of Iraq: war. [32] As the scene unfolded, we watched in enchanted, stricken horror, never knowing whether it would all result in nuclear annihilation. As the days passed, we gradually became aware that the news reports and interviews with steely-eyed military personnel were more and more broken by commercial advertisements. This was war, brought to you by Coca Cola, McDonalds and The Gap. At any moment it seemed that Sly Stallone would turn up and “waste” Saddam Hussein, and everything would be all right. The very unreality of the war on television, a “spectacle” unlike any hitherto seen, made it seem like an entertainment. Jean Baudrillard even went so far as to claim that the war never really happened, that it was a media construct. [33] This would certainly have been possible. Instead, as we now know, the coverage of the Gulf War was as biased as it could possibly have been, hiding the realities of heavy civilian casualties and the murder of retreating Iraqi troops.

As noted earlier, television viewing is essentially a private activity, but one in which the “sudden and violent intrusion of the whole world into family and ‘private’ life” means that the world comes to us; we do not have to go ‘out there’ for our information about the world around us; we don’t have to go into the marketplace or out on the road. [34] As we passively contemplate the world through the rectangular box, we are sharing our private experience with others all over the globe. The technology of television is global and, increasingly, the content of what we see is global too. The homogenisation of culture is a fact. American cultural producers dominate television broadcasting internationally, just as they dominate film production. Economies of scale mean that vast media conglomerates, including networks and their subsidiaries, can reproduce and recycle almost infinitely a relatively small amount of cultural product. George Gerbner, a media researcher and outspoken critic of global media consolidation explains:

“Most of what we see and what our children see on television is not produced for us [Americans]; it is produced for the global market. The reason other countries import it is because our syndicators present them with an irresistible deal. They say: “We can sell you an hour’s worth of this television show or motion picture for less money than it would cost you to produce one minute of your own programming.” That’s destroying their own industries, their own creative people, the integrity of their own culture … [for the sake of] dumping action-packed cheaply produced violent material on them.” [35]

Gerbner goes on to explain why this tendency has negative consequences for the American people: their own culture and society is not represented accurately, nor are their interests in terms of everyday life addressed. Since programs essentially serve as an atmosphere for sales, they have to be compatible with the advertising message. That means they present a world where the best customers dominate. In this world, men outnumber women three to one…One third of our population – namely people with lower incomes and less education – is represented by 1.2 per cent of the characters.

The sort of programming Gerbner is talking about is concerned with selling not only a particular product (say, sports shoes), but a way of life in which we see these products as essential to living. This is not only happening in television, but in the full range of the “media corporations’” services. “By eroding cultural differences between nations, [media multinationals] dreamt of an international electronic marketplace where all forms of information would be traded under their control.” [36]

Infotainment

Here Gerbner has been talking about programming that is overtly “entertaining” – sitcoms, films, game shows. But increasingly, “news” and documentary television has been reshaped to reflect the obsession with entertainment. Finding the “entertainment” angle on the news is easier than one might think: in the afore-mentioned example of the Gulf War, once it became clear that the world was not going to be blown up by the nuclear arsenal, people felt free to cheer on “their team” and to collect Gulf War trading cards. [37] In terms of day-to-day news programming, the Undercurrents video “Snodland News” features a typical ITN “human interest” story that takes up a full two minutes of news time, and over the saccharine tale lists nine important news stories which didn’t make it into ITN’s broadcast that day, including:

Seven London police charged with assault and attempt to pervert the course of justice. Muslims clash with Government forces in Nigeria following the arrest of their spiritual leader. The first senior French politician is forced to stand trial for sending Jews to death camps. MoD blocks a Newbury District Council survey of radiation leaks from two atomic power stations. Australian maritime unions impose a ban on shipping movements to protest at the arrest of two Indonesian labour leaders.

Any of these would have made an interesting and informative two minutes, but ITN chose instead the story of a toddler who ran away from nursery school and was found safe at home?! [38] Television documentary film-making is likewise under pressure to create a “human interest” angle. Commissioning editors invariably want a documentary with distinct “characters” and for the piece to unfold in a dramatic way, that is, to resemble dramatic entertainment.

Both George Gerbner and Richard Barbrook believe that “the imposition of a marketing formula on journalists and creative people” [30] forms a particularly tight noose of censorship, as “the majority of the population were only offered a choice between almost identical one-way flows of communications.” [30] Both blame the deregulation and privatisation of the electronic media, which sacrifices creativity, public input and fresh approaches to representation, to the financial bottom line.

Public Service Broadcasting

Outside the United States, most countries have at least some form of public broadcasting. This is a publicly-funded (through taxes and/or license fees) television network which may or may not have advertising. In Britain, the BBC was founded in the 1920s, and the Canadian CBC was modelled upon it. Both the BBC and the CBC were supposed to completely independent of any kind of direct control by Government or other interests. [41] In recent years public service broadcasting has come under attack from neo-liberal “market force” advocates who claim that private enterprise has the money to buy in the creativity to make better programmes and thus provide greater choice. Notable exceptional programmes from private broadcasters do not unfortunately prove this true. The license fee debate is represented in the popular press as a “cash grab” by the snob John Birt to rip off the television consumer, who would rather watch private, cable or satellite television anyway. It is no accident that the papers which make this claim (the Sun among others) are owned by corporate media magnates that are ideologically hostile to public broadcast television, such as Rupert Murdoch. Governments are following on this trend, with swingeing cuts as a result. The BBC has just laid off thousands of workers as it closed many departments in favour of “contracting out.” In Canada, the CBC, which is financed by a direct government grant (no license fee) and advertising, was severely cut in the recent Liberal budget. Approaching election year, the CBC fought back. In a carefully-staged “town hall” style public meeting, the campaigning Prime Minister Jean Chretien was to meet with members of the public to answer questions and listen to their views. Alas for Chretien, the CBC staffers had carefully chosen the most verbose, aggressive and angry voters for the meeting, and the Prime Minister, a career populaist whose image has been crafted to represent that of an “ordinary guy,” was made to look foolish, arrogant and vague as he was bombarded with questions about unemployment and the future of the resource industries under NAFTA, issues he had wanted to side-step. [42]

The Uses of Video

Video and Utopian Technology

Video has enabled events to be captured immediately upon happening; thus it is much faster than film and, since it employs push-button technology, is easier to learn (though not necessarily easier to do well). “Video Vultures, TV News in America” shows how a freelance camera unit combs the streets of New York City recording events, and selling them to television stations as “news.” The significance of the Rodney King case cannot be underestimated for what it says about the possibilities of camcorder culture and ways of challenging mainstream representation and interpretation. In Britain, various counterculture and political groups – which have far more adherents than the mainstream media would like to acknowledge – have started producing their own camcorder-generated news-video compilations which are sold, lent and exhibited in squats, clubs and pubs around the country. In the USA, video-based cable-access television allows groups to make their own television programmes for limited broadcast. The ability to distribute information and generate debate appears to be within the grasp of possibility, given that a V-8 or VHS camcorder can cost as little as £500 (or $500), implying that anyone can record and present documentary programmes and “news.”

The technological determinism of Marshall McLuhan still hold appeal for both pundits and developers of new electronic media technology. McLuhan’s assertion that the development of print media determined the emergence of liberal society ignores most other historical developments in the period. [43] But Utopianism is still with us; having predicted glorious futures for radio, television and video, Utopians now see our future salvation in the Internet. Jon Dovey, in “the Revelation of Unguessed Worlds” cites the experience of video as a heralded Utopian technology to caution overly optimistic thinking about digital technology. [44] While acknowledging the potential impact for camcorder activism, he notes the current fashion for camcorder-based television: incredibly cheap, populist “home movie” TV which use mainly camcorder-generated material. The end result is not so much “reality TV” as simply cheap and nasty television. “The trick,” said Vaneigem, “is that the spectators of the cultural and ideological vacuum are here enlisted as its organisers. The spectacle’s inanity is made up for by forcing its spectators … to participate in it.” [45] Meanwhile, camcorder activists like the Undercurrents and Conscious Cinema crews, don’t get a look in.

Fear of the Electronic Eye

In one local daily paper on one day chosen at random I discovered the following TV-fear stories:

“Tougher TV curbs to protect children” London Evening Standard, 10 December 1996, page 2 – a call for censorship of television to protect children from sex and violence.

“1 in 4 Children Under 5 Have Bedroom TVs” London Evening Standard, 10 December 1996 page 4 – this is written in such a way as to assume that this is a bad thing.

The second story suggests several things, the main one being that we have evidently achieved a society where parents need an electronic device as a child-minder. The first story appears at first glance to be yet another annoying and wearisome call for censorship. Will these uptight people never give up? Surely they could exercise some form of voluntary control over their children’s viewing habits? But then I realised, these people calling for regulation of violent and sexual content in television are actually crying out for some kind of input, some kind of participation and role in deciding what is fed to them by the great leisure machine. Gerbner makes a similar point when he notes that “the so-called culture warriors” like evangelist Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan are cashing in on people’s legitimate grievance. [46]

The newspaper press regularly features stories about television, but very rarely positive stories about television. The idea that television corrupts children is a familiar theme. If it is true that “by the late 1980′s many people within the advanced industrial countries were spending more time watching television than working,” then we are obviously doomed. [47] Why this fear? It cannot be simply rivalry – rather, is it the intrinsic fear of the “electric eye” in the house, the alien within, whom we cannot live without but whom we secretly fear?

To answer these fears, Canadian university professor Timothy Collings has invented the “V-chip” which has been taken up enthusiastically by the Clinton administration as a sop to conservative critics, and will be marketed in the US this year. This device allows the television to filter out sex and violence that is broadcast, presumably allowing the parents to disengage it so that they can freely watch the ruttings and maimings that are so unsuitable for their young. Unfortunately, the chip does not filter out poor plot, bad characterisation, wooden acting, idiotic advertisements, shallow reportage, fatuous hosts, racial and sexual stereotyping, sheer dullness and condescension … the list goes on.

What we really fear is not so much sex and violence, but the fact that we are enslaved to a television culture, we rely on it to palliate us, entertain us, inform us, narcotise us and recreate us in the fashion of the day. Yet we feel powerless before its seductive glamour. We don’t realise that, in its essence, television is as simple as picking up a video camera and sticking a transmitter on top of a tall tree or tower-block.

Activism and the Media

DIY Culture

“The struggle against mass culture can consist only in pointing out its connection with the persistence of social injustice.” Max Horkheimer [48]

“To be radical is to grasp something at its roots. But for man the root is man himself.” Karl Marx

According to Jon Dovey, the use of a technology is only as good as who is using it: the 1970′s Utopian project of community video failed “because the political movements in which it was embedded failed.” [49] In the mid-1990′s there are new radical movements, which use video and computer technology, to doubly challenge the social and political status quo, and to offer a participatory alternative to the mainstream media itself. They reject what they see as an “official” culture sanctioned by the partnership of government, corporations and the media elite as being appropriate for public consumption. Further, they reject politics, believing that popular participation in the official political prcess is possible but pointless. [50] They use the tactics of direct action, and many were first influenced by the environmental movement. [51]

Direct action does work in the West to the extent that, since we don’t live under the sort of oppressive regimes that exist elsewhere, propped up by Western-armed dictators and Western-owned multinationals, the activist is unlikely to be found headless and mutilated in a ditch. In the end, the main threat Western states can offer the activist is prison. According to activist Lotte Kronhild of Project Ploughshares, fear of prison keeps us inactive; by openly doing action which will send us to prison we break the power of the state. [52] In the eighteenth century, when the death penalty was laid down for crimes of property, particularly poaching, juries were reluctant to convict. Challenging the dominance of the State is not risk-free but it is not a life-or-death situation. However, the price of challenging the corporations can be high, for example, the gargantuan two-year libel suit McDonald’s has brought against pro-vegetarian activists. [53] The main weapon Western regimes have toward activists is the weapon of silence, isolation. This doesn’t always work., as activists have learned the skills of networking (e.g. persuading a popular music group to openly support them) and guerrilla publicity (e.g. AIDS awareness group ACT-UP).

Since the 1960s, the underground press, community television and radio, in small self-managed groups, usually co-operatives, have waxed and waned in the alternative scene. They have never entirely gone away. The underground press continues, especially in the USA, to thrive and produce interesting material. The promise of cable-access local television comes and goes; in parts of the US, several years ago, cable access was certainly serving the alternative movement, but the neo-Nazi alternative. Lately, however, the price of video equipment has dropped so dramatically that for the first time, real community and/or activist television is possible in the same way that pirate radio is possible. And alternative groups are making videos, setting up websites. Examples of current alternative campaigns are too numerous to describe fully, but instead of a single movement (e.g.socialist struggle) there are many, which together make up a sort of counterculture. The fact that there is no great plan or scheme is both a strength and a weakness. The Situationist ideas of direct democracy and reclamation of everyday life from consumer culture, are a large part of alternative practice. Do-It-Yourself culture is the expression of a generation which grew up into an adulthood of shrinking job opportunities, lowered expectations and a deep distrust of the political system, in which parties offer variations on the single theme of conservatism and the reign of “free market” economics at the expense of the environment, people and the future. “You don’t sit around wait for something to be handed to you on a plate,” says one woman involved in creating free festivals. However, rejecting the yuppie idea of “go and get it,” the DIY culture attempts to provide as much as possible for free, funded by donations, or through co-operative means. They “create situations” rather than sloganeer and demonstrate (e.g. Reclaim the Streets festive urban street parties; the anti-roads campaign inhabiting Claremont Road and throwing vast free parties every week; Earth First proclaiming the “Cascadia Free State” in the Oregon forest, and so on). With the same sort of enthusiasm, the activist’s disgust at the media’s portrayal of them has led them to try and make an alternative media. How successful this will be remains to be seen.

The New Radicalism

In the past, governments relied on class divisions and the power of the state to crush popular radicalism, while at the same time it was buying allegiance with material goodies. Now, children of the middle classes reject as unattainable the certainties that their parents built their lives upon: career, marriage, nice home etc. since the reality they see is divorce, unemployment, underemployment, debt, environmental damage, corporate greed, homelessness and so on.

Alternative culture tries to counter the globalism of the media by forging grassroots global links with other groups around the world.

Alternative culture is carnivalesque. The whole ethos of DIY is to cast off passivity and embrace life, action, decision, in everyday life. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, the great theorist of carnival, carnival is oppositional. It is not simply a “break” from labour or everyday life, not a leisure or entertainment. It has no utilitarian motive. It is not to be observed, but to be lived. The point of the DIY culture as it exists in free festivals, squat centres and activist campaigns, is to live in a carnivalesque manner. Use of costume, mask and theatrical devices, which are “connected with the joy of change an reincarnation, with gay relativity and with the merry negation of uniformity and similarity,” are common. [54] Gone is the sacrificial radicalism derided by Vaneigem:

Violence has changed its meaning. Not that the rebel has grown weary of fighting exploitation, boredom, poverty and death: the rebel has simply resolved no longer to fight them with the weapons of exploitation, boredom, poverty and death. For the first victim of any such struggle is anyone who engages in it full of contempt for their own life… If the ancient cry of “Death to the Exploiters” no longer echoes through the streets, it is because it has given way to another cry, one harking back to childhood and issuing from a passion which, though more serene is no less tenacious. That cry is “Life First!”. [55]

Replacing the revolutionary tactics of the past, Vaneigem sees the activists of the present as “groups whose collective decision-making admits of no intrusion by political representation, shuns all organisers or leaders and combats all hierarchy.”

One recurring theme in radical culture and the emphasis of many of the actions which are carried out, is a call for love and respect for the natural world. While there are echoes of a “golden age” mythology at work here, a hearkening after a lost state of innocence, it cannot be ignored that modern global capitalist practices are causing rapid depredation of both the natural environment and the cultivated/inhabited environment. Whether it is forced monoculture dependent on harsh pesticides, chemical-based animal-rearing practices, opencast mining, clearcut logging or pro-roads/pro-automobile policies, all of these practices are factored inot the global economy now. Short term profit there may be, but activists realise that the long term consequences are ones which we have to live with, in terms of health and quality of life, and these have the potential to be very dangerous. Instead of nostalgia, the activists of today seek to recoup that which we have lost and are losing by an insistence on direct democracy and radical action.

Anarchism is the one romantic idea that has not yet been tainted by corrupt practice, and so many people involved in creating alternative culture are self-confessed anarchists. Like the hippies of the late 60′s, some glory in the fact that mainstream consumer culture recoils at their style and behaviour: a song accompanying an Earth First video of an action to protest Clinton allowing logging of old-growth forests had these lyrics:

“Hurrah for the riffraff. Come join our circle of jolly fools Squatters and crusties who make their own rules. Rebels and beggars, carousers and thieves. Our only motto: Anarchy!”

and has other references to Luddites and Diggers, and ends with “go ahead and stare, we’re everywhere!” [56]

Rejection of the mainstream is more than just about wearing dreadlocks and mohawk hairstyles, or adopting veganism. One anti-logging protester says from his camp in the Oregon wilderness “the collective spirit that’s evolved up here is nothing like anything that exists down below. It’s truly the Cascadia Free State, nothing to do with the Babylonian US principles of individuality and everyone for themselves and greed.” [57] As stated earlier, the rebels of the 1990′s differ from those of the 1960′s and early 70′s in that they have much less to lose by rebelling. They know that most of the old hippies became yuppies, as Vaneigem notes, “became career bureaucrats and covered themselves with glory as cogs in the apparat of State and marketplace.” [58]

Alternative culture is not afraid to use the mainstream. Undercurrents (of which more later) sells camcorder footage to television to help finance its activist video projects. The band Zion Train, interviewed at a free rave, acknowledges that the label they have signed to, Time-Warner, are “arms manufacturing completely cold-hearted capitalist pigs.” Zion Train defend their decision to sign however, by saying that Time Warner can now “spread the message much further than we ever could, and that way we are able to provide an alternative to Quentin Tarantino, Ice T, the Fugees, glorifying sex, death and money, coz that’s not what we’re about! We’ve had chart entries and as a result we’ve had people come up to us who’ve never heard of Newbury or RTS [Reclaim the Streets] or anything like that and say “I’ve joined the animal rights movement,” or “I was down at Newbury…” We do what we can.” [59] In the summer of 1996, the activists opposing the Newbury bypass joined forces with mainstream group Friends of the Earth (prominently sponsored by Tory-supporter Andrew Lloyd-Webber) and a number of artists to create a huge one-day art festival on the land immediately adjacent to the bypass site, and spilling over into the site. The event was well-attended, as genteel Guardian readers mixed with dreadlocked stewards for a day of performance and visual art with an anti-automobile theme.

The representation of activists in the mainstream media has long been one of “shiftless, lazy hippies.” This dates back to the 1960s when many in the counterculture adopted a distinctive aesthetic style which made them very easy to identify. Creating a common bond using subcultural style has its assets and its drawbacks. It can help to create a sense of an identifiable community, but it can also serve as a “uniform” which excludes as much as it includes. What is interesting in the contemporary scene is that increasingly people who might once have been identified as “straight” or mainstream are starting sympathise with alternative culture. [60]

In the video “Celtic Enemy” the dispute is between local people in rural Wales and Celtic Energy over open-cast mining in their area, documented on video and distributed by Undercurrents [52]. The locals, mainly elderly and middle aged, describe how they tried “all conventional routes as far as campaigning is concerned” but “for three years we tried all the legal channels and got nowhere.” As news of their protest filtered outside of the community, numbers of activists arrived in the village. At first they shocked the locals by their appearance (“some of them had dreadlocks…”) but soon the locals realised that “somebody cared” about what was happening, and together they embarked on a fierce protest. The vile images of environmental ruin wreaked in the end by the mine contrasts with the beauty of the countryside in its original state, but the locals state that they feel that the struggle has given them the courage to continue the fight. The video shows clearly the brutality of the police, directed by big-business interests and the government, and the equally-brutal destruction of the landscape; the vaunted “reconstruction” of the countryside after the mining companies have gorged their fill, is shown to be a surreal joke: the the new landscape is hideous and artificial and nothing like what was there before.

By making a video like Celtic Enemy, the activist video-makers and Undercurrents want to provide information about the struggle of the Welsh villagers against the Establishment of big business and the government, but also, and more subversively, they want to show the gradual alliance of the villagers with the counterculture activists.

Today the ennui of the assembly-line has been replaced by the ennui of the dole queue and the McJob. [61] Unless things change drastically, there is no real reason not to put energies into creating a viable radical critique and an alternative way of life.

Undercurrents

Undercurrents And The Camcorder Action Network

“Subjectivity is the only truth” Soren Kierkegaard

“How can anybody be truly objective? Everybody has a point of view, and that’s what makes you take up the camcorder in the first place The idea is to be honest and show people what they’re otherwise not going to get to see.” Paul O’Connor, Undercurrents [62]

By the early 1990s, the grassroots direct action movement was finding its own strength as people tackled situations issue by issue, refusing to get caught up in mainstream political posturing.

The road protest movement formed spontaneously as a response to the Government’s policy of creating access and bypass roads to facilitate motorway traffic. In the process, land which had been zoned for agriculture, for environment protection, or – as in the case of the M11, residential – was expropriated. Rather than simply demonstrating, the protestors occupied the sites, creating “alternative communities.” The protestors at Claremont Road, in East London, created a kind of “alternative village” and held regular free parties and art exhibitions, attracting international media attention. The Government’s response was to send in heavy security forces to enforce the building of the road.

With the rapid drop in prices of video-recording equipment in the 1990s – when a basic camcorder can be had for under £400 and a Hi-8 for under £1000, new possibilities arose for documenting the struggles.

At the M11 protest site, Thomas Harding, a Cambridge graduate, who had been involved in the protest movement surrounding the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, met Jamie Hartzell, another neophyte documentary film-maker, who was also a trainee editor at the BBC, and Zoe Broughton a media studies student. Paul O’Connor, originally Irish, an activist and photographer, also became involved in the group. As well as being actively involved in the protest action, all were attempting to document the event, seeing it as a crucial change in British political involvement on the grassroots level. They all found that their environmental films and photographs were rejected by the media as being “too political.” While they took this as a compliment, as the work was intended to be political, they were getting no distribution and the movement was getting no recognition.

They made a 40-minute documentary on the M11 road protests, which came out long before the movement had any publicity whatsoever, failed to be broadcast on any British station, though it later won first prize at Germany’s 1994 Okomedia Film Festival

Hartzell then left the BBC and he, Broughton, O’Connor and Harding set up Small World Media, as a co-operatively-owned non-profit media company to rectify the trouble that they and other independent documentary makers were having getting their work distributed and/or broadcast. They started Undercurrents, a video magazine of “camcorder journalism” to report on the issues and events ignored by the rest of the broadcast media, and to encourage grassroots direct-action.

The first issue of Undercurrents came out in April 1994, and featured the M11 film, together with a film on the subject of the media’s self-censorship of direct action, a critique of local councils’ attitudes to environmental issues, and a round-up of the UK’s direct action campaigns. This effort was the result of around 50 pieces of footage shot by the Small World group, and collected from other activists. Edited together and “whacked out” as O’Connor calls it, onto five hundred VHS tapes, the first Undercurrents video went out on sale at alternative bookshops, festivals and mail order.

Sales were slow, which did not discourage the group, which by now was actively seeking material from activists up and down the country. In December 1994, the second issue came out, with a focus on the impending Criminal Justice and Public Order Act: videos on squatting, common land issues, Solsbury Hill, Claremont Road road-protests and the rave crackdown were featured, along with a report on the McLibel campaign and television censorship of anti-Indonesian logging adverts.

At this point, the Guardian did an interview (December 5th, 1994) followed in February by the Independent. These articles prompted an “avalanche” of media response: TV, magazines – all wanted to interview the group. This presented the members of the group and the activists with whom they were working with a dilemma: to gain coverage for the campaigns they supported and to sell videos and fund the continuation of the project they would have to get as much “free” publicity as possible. But they were also aware that they ran the risk of becoming “flavour of the month.” While they did agree to be featured on “The Little Picture Show” and “The Late Show,” they insisted that no reporters were to come to their offices and film them in the spartan Oxfam-furnished editing suite as talking heads behind desks. Instead, the journalists were to accompany them “into the field” to the campaign sites and show them working on site with activists, filming security-protester conflicts etc. This gave publicity to the campaigners as well as to Undercurrents.

At this point, Undercurrents was hoping to capitalise on the publicity to try and convince national and local television to purchase individual items. The creation of the Camcorder Action Network and creation of an archive of activist video has gone some way to realise this goal but as yet no television station has seen fit to broadcast any Undercurrents film. O’Connor says, “ideally, really we’d like to see a spot maybe twice a week on Channel Four where the videos could be broadcast and there would be some opportunity for feedback.” In fact, Channel Four has a mandate to show “alternative views” and has publicly said they want more innovative documentary work. [63]

Simon Hattenstone, writing in The Guardian, summed up the relationship of Undercurrents and groups like it to the broadcast media:

“Actually, Undercurrents would sit easily and proudly in the medium for the masses, but TV has never been quite as democratic as it likes us to believe, not even in the days when the BBC cuddled up to Ken Loach, or when Channel Four darned the socks of any documentary film-maker who could spell “anti-establishment.” [64]

Undercurrents and TV : Ethics and Aesthetics

Undercurrents’ most recent video issues have “blown the whistle” on the mystique of television reportage. As O’Connor says, “we’ve never met anyone yet who can’t do it. By the time it’s finished it’s a good film.” In fact, he goes on to say, the worst films are made by those who fancy themselves as film-makers: the auteur impulse is too strong to make effective reportage! The incredible power of television to get the message across is not so difficult to access. Over the past two and a half years, the Undercurrents team has trained over one hundred people in camcorder video technology. Some of these have started their own activist video co-ops, like Brighton’s Conscious Cinema and the anarchists of the 56a Infoshop in London. Others continue to contribute to Undercurrents and projects in their own communities.

O’Connor and Harding both agree that that what they are trying to do with Undercurrents is not television-making but “camcorder activism.” The problem, if it is a problem, is that in order to appeal to people brought up on television, it must be entertaining enough so they will watch it. The Undercurrents videos are entertaining, but as O’Connor says “most of the people who involve themselves with Undercurrents come from a DIY cultural backgrounds, and there’s always been a strong sense of humour there. Natural humour, not scripted humour – real people not sound bites!” The rhetoric and aesthetic of carnival are present in the anarchic, irreverent humour of the activist videos, implicitly recognising the truth of Vaneigem’s statement that “the project of participation is grounded in the passion for play.” [65] The question is, would this type of humour appeal to people outside of the DIY cultural background? Obviously it is difficult to tread the fine line between the spactacular nature of our telelvision-viewing habits and expectations, and the use of television as a medium for alternative news. The work of Undercurrents is designed to inform and provoke, not simply to entertain. But they realise, rightly, that didacticism and humourlessness have no popular appeal. The aesthetics of television are difficult, and maybe impossible, to avoid. The trick is to combine the ethics of activism with the aesthetics of television. This in itself means aping as well as satirising the medium that they are criticizing. There are no easy answers.

But it may be a problem that the rhetoric and aesthetic of television is too seductive to camcorder activists. O’Connor admits that, compared to the first few issues, Undercurrents 5, when the group had the Avid and had mastered the equipment well enough, was “so slick it’s – sick!” It may be difficult to go on producing material that challenges, mocks and exposes television, yet operates within its boundaries. It must entertain, but not so much that people confuse it with television, and treat it with the same passive consumerism that they treat “The X Files.” The other potential “danger” is the lure of a professional broadcast career as a result of this activist work. This is already happening with Undercurrents: Zoe Broughton is already working on BBC commissions. There are potential benefits of this, of course; the danger lies in the possibility of recuperation (see part 10).

Keeping the Thing Alive

As the experience of the New Left radical movement shows, the co-operatively run self-management model of media production declined and fell away during the 1980′s period of reaction, as the former activists decided to go and make some money, and the tenuous financial support that had been available dried up. In the United States, formerly hard-core radical Bibles of the 60′s and 70′s like Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Ms. and Village Voice became slick, glossy, expensive – or disappeared. College radio, in some campuses a hotbed of free speech and focus for environmental and social justice groups, was forced throughout the 1980′s to chase after corporate sponsorship as student funding was cut. Undercurrents are already feeling this type of squeeze: one original member has already left. A recent grant has allowed them to recruit new administrative personnel, but in order for Undercurrents to survive, the new blood will have to be as firmly committed as they are highly competent. Will they survive? O’Connor does not think it is so important that the actual entity of Undercurrents survives, so long as camcorder activism continues. “We don’t want to become an institution here,” he says. “Ultimately the dream is more powerful than the product.”

“Broadcast Quality”

According to both the BBC and Channel Four, the problem with “activist productions” is that they are not ‘broadcast quality.’ This is a charge that might initially have been levelled at Undercurrents; in the beginning none of the members knew how to do more than the most rudimentary editing, for example. However, this is no longer true. Personal financing, gifts, an EU grant and the sales of footage have allowed Undercurrents to set up a professional Beta/Avid editing suite, a format transfer system and Hi-8 camcorders. In addition, they train activists onsite and in the edit suite to shoot and edit their own videos, with an emphasis on quality. Finally, as the Undercurrents group has learned more about the techniques of editing, they have made the last few issues quite slick and televisual. Cheap and cheerful the videos Undercurrents, Conscious Cinema and the anarchists of the 56a Infoshop produce may be, their quality is high enough to make them accessible, and their aesthetic and rhetoric retains the carnivalesque flair that characterises contemporary radical DIY culture.

This move has been mirrored by the BBC and CNN, among others, who send many of their foreign correspondents into the field equipped with nothing more than Hi-8 camcorders. And news programmes do buy camcorder-generated material.But still they are reluctant to broadcast activist films. Ironically, this intransigence comes at a time when television, in Britain as in the USA, is buying up cheap camcorder material for dubious “real life” programmes, also known ingenuously as “reality TV.” [66] Jon Dovey, in “The Revelation of Unguessed Worlds” argues that it is “the application of the camcorder within the regime of “reality TV” that characterises the dominant face of its culture,” thus ever-marginalizing radical interventions using the technology. [67]

Cheap and cheerful the videos Undercurrents, Conscious Cinema and the anarchists of the 56a Infoshop produce may be, their quality is high enough to make them accessible, and their aesthetic and rhetoric retains the carnivalesque flair that characterises contemporary radical DIY culture.

Interestingly, despite the BBC’s refusal to recognise activist independent documentary producers and broadcast their work, the new Director of Television, Michael Jackson (a former producer of the Late Show, among others), recently reflected upon his role and the future of the BBC: “…it shouldn’t cut itself off from different ways of thinking about the world and different ways of making programmes, or people wandering off and doing things we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves.” He goes on to predict a new, more accessible broadcast culture in the face of the “threat” of Murdoch and digital TV: “…you can see how television is going to become – despite everything you read every day about Rupert Murdoch or whatever – much more available. The days of gated sanctuaries are over.” [68]

Over the past thirty years it has become increasingly apparent that it is important in any struggle to attempt to harness the power of television. However, this has invariably been very difficult to do, given that television access is limited and expensive. The Undercurrents videos are not “television” in the true sense of the word, they are not for broadcast but are sold as VHS cassettes for playing in a video cassette recorder. But they seek to imitate television, news and documentary television. By showing the “news they don’t want you to see” [italics mine] the Undercurrents videos are in some ways subversive of television, but since they are not broadcast, they have no access to the power that television has to invade the private space, no power to create “the sudden violent intrusion of the whole world into family and “private” life,” (to quote Lefevbre again). And it is precisely this power which makes television so unique, so fraught with danger yet so full of possibility.

Alternative Futures?

An “Information Culture?”

“Categorically, we need freedom, but a freedom based in our deepest spiritual needs, in our most severe and human desires of the flesh.” Henri Lefebvre [69]

“It is no mean feat to imprison liberty in the name of liberty” Raoul Vaneigem [70]

We are constantly being told that we live in a post-industrial age of information. An “information culture.” What kind of information? Useful information? Useless information? Does it lead to knowledge, which is the application of information? The plethora of useless “information” that constantly bombards us turns us away from knowledge, which we can only come by through critical judgement. We will soon grow tired of this novelty of “facts.” The old idea that “knowledge is power” has been drowned in a deluge of “information” which must be “processed.” Meaningless terms, but manipulative.

Some of this information is obviously surveillance: what you watch, what you buy, read, suffer from, believe – all quantified and stored so that you can become the specially-selected target of a marketing campaign. But for the rest, we’re promised all the information we could ever dream of, all the knowledge and understanding – we’ll know everything about everywhere; if we believe them, the promises of the information culture are such as to make us godlike: omniscience, omnipresence and, with “Choice”- being the key word, omnipotence.

It is true that new technology and the expansion of existing technology is making more stuff available to us than ever before. Cable and satellite channels, home video, home shopping, CD-ROM and so on have changed the way many of us use our “leisure” time and, following the existing post-war trend, have driven us further and further into the womblike privacy of the home.

None of these things are more than passive activities. Some promise to “save us time.” Time for what? For more passive entertainment? The illusion of choice is just that, an illusion. What is the point of sixty or a hundred television channels if most of them are showing the same programmes? What is the point of more and wider-reaching news if it means the information is condensed into shallow sound bites, with little analysis and a predictable point of view?

Television is still a powerful medium. The viewer still has the power to choose to switch on or off, and between stations. S/he can videotape programmes and thus cut out annoying advertisements. Basic television programming using video is easy and cheap to produce.

But the freedom offered in our neoliberal spectacular society is the freedom of deregulated monopoly disguised as private enterprise, and this applies especially to media freedom. So, in the United States, the four main sources of popular information, the four main television networks, are owned by four enormous companies: Disney, Murdoch, Westinghouse and General Electric. [71] Public broadcasting is dependent on grants from companies like Mobil and Shell, which explains why they are eager to buy British costume dramas rather than John Pilger’s documentary work. In Britain, we are promised an orgy of choice by Murdoch, while our government turns a blind eye to monopoly regulations, happily sees BBC services cut to the bone, and considers turning Channel Four into a completely private network. [72]

Given the domination of neo-liberalism, with its rhetoric of freedom, defence of liberty and choice, are the current structures flexible enough to allow the realisation of “alternative television?” In Britain, Channel Four’s idea of “alternative” appears to be “The Girlie Show,” and despite the shake-up of the television services there is no scheme to create local public-access television. A general State crackdown on all forms of alternative culture as part of an overall increasing of coercive power means that opportunities for pirate television are very remote. [73] In the United States, the radical far-right is far better funded than the radical left, and appears to dominate such alternative broadcast media production as does exist. For this reason, many are nervous to call for expanded opportunities in popular media production.

In this climate, we get the sort of information you would be likely to expect from such sources: bland, soporific paeans to the capitalist ethic. Celebrity “news” features prominently in all forms of the media: Debord called the celebrity “the spectacular representation of a living human being” who is famous for not being what s/he is. [74] He is “the enemy of the individual in himself as well as in others.” [75] They are “the admirable people in which the system personifies itself,” however briefly the may shine. And, in the system of planned obsolescence, their shelf-lives are not usually very long.

Digital Future

The new promise is “interactivity.” This term, as it is used by media pundits and salespeople, is a toy which will be given to us to play with so we think that we are making choices and rising from our passive couch potato sloth. While the structures could be put in place for local-access DIY television, but this is either disregarded or considered dated. Instead the Internet is proposed as an interactive media with popular accessibility. Up until now, the Internet has indeed been both interactive and accessible. It is not difficult to master, to search for material and to post bulletins and set up basic websites. and a single set-up can be used by any number of people. Until recently it has not been a medium enjoyed in the private home: access was generally confined to academic and other institutions, and “cybercafes.” Taking advantage of this, many radical groups have managed to get Internet access and set up websites. Examples include the Zapatista rebels in Mexico, Reclaim the Streets in Britain, and Earth First, as well as larger organisations like Amnesty International. Less “organised” forums for debate exist, so you can debate policy with anarchists and Situationists all over the world, or get the latest news on the McLibel campaign. Activist groups have discovered that the user-friendly nature of new technology of computer networks can help break through isolation and silence of mainstream media. The Internet promises the greatest tool of communication of alternative/ DIY culture for the immediate future – combining images and text, video and sound – combine the cheapness and immediacy of the newsletter/zine and the entertainment and graphics of photography, animation and video. And above all, it is not regulated – as yet. Undercurrents, for instance, hope that within the next year or two the technology will allow activist videos to be shown over the Internet, thus bypassing the broadcasting system, and allowing immediate e-mail feedback. [76]

Fear and Loathing

If we assume that attempts to regulate the Internet will fail, this is promising indeed. As with television, the Internet is accused of having a hand in the perceived corruption of society, with websites offering pornography and prostitution and the threat of paedophiles using the Internet. [77] Such sites do exist, as they would in a society that has pornography, prostitution and, regrettably, paedophiles. However, unlike television, the majority of households are not as yet linked up to the Internet. So why the outrage? Because there is fear of a medium which is accessible, popular, and unregulated. Fear of a media technology which allows people to express their ideas and tell their own stories and discuss globally ideas and practices for change. The fear comes from the spectacular coalition of governments, media corporations, military interests multinationals, companies with dubious business practices, and “moral” arbiters – who enlist in their ranks of civilian supporters people who are afraid of life, bitter that their own lives are so subjected, enslaved and curtailed by the spectacle that they will cry out to urge social control in the name of “society,” and repression in the name of liberty. To paraphrase Raoul Vaneigem, perhaps the suppression of memory of what they have lost is what chains them most firmly to the pillory of submission. [78]

If attempts to control the Internet by regulation fail, there are alternate ways to undermine it. Phillips is currently marketing “Web TV.” This allows you to “consume” the Internet at home, cheaply, using your television and a remote control. You can “surf” the Net to your heart’s desire, but you can’t put up a website, or e-mail anyone. The marketing blurb talks about accessibility and affordability, but if this venture is successful, it means that the Internet may go the way of radio: people at home with their receivers, waiting to be fed the next titbit of infotainment.

The hope though, is that video and computer technology can work toward creating a media that challenges the passivity of spectacular society. As one activist put it, “We want to create a “community of activism”- activism as a part of everyday life, a way of life, not of protest so much as of claiming what is rightfully ours. Not a “revolutionary” programme but a forum for people to tell each other their own stories, to join struggles and share pleasures.”

Media for a Spectacular Society?

Conclusion

Does the media create and feed our reality to us? Whether you are a post-modernist like Baudrillard who sees the collapse of reality and mimesis into hyper-reality, or a Marxist-Leninist who sees the media as an ideological state apparatus serving its master, or even just an old-fashioned cynic, we are all left with the uneasy suspicion that there is both more and less than what meets the eye in media representation of information. Can alternative culture subvert the status quo or does it preach to the converted? In the end, is Middle America and Middle England even interested in what the alternative culture has to say? On the face of it, no. But dig a little deeper and look past the media representations of Middle America and Middle England: journalist Studs Terkel’s interviews with ordinary people about how they survive in the system; the surprising numbers of people the BBC described – shocked – as “middle class” who turned out to fight the police over live animal shipments, the Newbury bypass and the Criminal Justice Bill; the dozens of local community centres who shelter groups like Groundswell (anti-Jobseeker’s Allowance); the outpouring of popular support for, and astonishing jury acquittal of, the Project Ploughshares women – and so on.

Does the power of the spectacle allow the fringe elements to produce their “alternative” commodities in order to contain them? Here we come to the problem of recuperation, as the Situationists called it: the commodification of criticism and dissent, in which all attempts to reach consciousness of the possibilities of structural change are thwarted at their inception. [79] Recuperation is not just co-option or integration of criticism, instead, in recuperation, the criticism is actually turned to the benefit of the structures and institutions it means to negate. Criticism of the spectacle is taken out of the hands of those who make it, repackaged and sold back in spectacular forms. The classic late 60′s pinup of Che Guevara is one example, the popularity of rap music (especially among white suburban kids) is another. Guevara was a freedom fighter willing to risk his life for his beliefs (unlike those who stuck his mug on the wall); rap was the expression of angry written-off black ghetto dwellers, which the spectacular representation of them make it easy to forget.

The Situationists saw that recuperation is one of the most – if not the most – powerful tools of capitalist relations. Capitalism requires the constant circulation of goods, and so will commodify anything. All experience, all dissatisfaction, will be brought into this alienation. Dissent is packaged and returned to those who experience it in the form of badges and T-shirts,” while at the intellectual level, it is confined to the “critical theory” and subordinated to the sterility of academia. [80] Detournement, the Situationist anti-venom to recuperation, is a first-strike measure of subversion, to turn the objects of the spectacle against themselves. [81] The “culture jamming” work of Kalle Lasn of the Media Foundation is in this vein. Lasn counts on the fact that media selling advertising are not going to look to closely or ask too many question about what they are dealing with. When his 30-second anti-automobile TV spot aired on the CBC during a popular motoring programme, he “could just feel a few hundred thousand people in Canada having their media consumer trance popped right out.” [82]

The alternative movement’s attempts to side-step the consumer condition by living as much as possible in an economy based on voluntary co-operative work (contrary to media reports, not all are not on DSS benefits), barter, free squats, free parties, exchange and recycling of goods, and other non-profit practices, is another example. In a consumption-driven culture, the act of valuing something that has no monetary value, like an old pair of boots or a vegan meal in a squat cafe, is subversive, as it interferes with the operation of spectacular consumption. If everybody simply gave away old boots to someone who needs a pair, or ate in a non-profit vegan squat cafe, who would buy the latest fashionable new boots or the delectable creations of Marco Pierre White?

But the post-modernists ask: isn’t the alternative just part of the spectacle? To Baudrillard, hyper-reality is such that it can comfortably and endlessly encompass both the vegan squat cafe and Marco Pierre White, and it is not a matter of an opposition between authenticity and illusion, or a dialectic of recuperation and detournement. If this is true, however, why do the institutions of power waste time and resources destroying traveller and squat communities? Why have television stations refused to sell Kalle Lasn advertising space?

In the end, to challenge the passivity that wrings its hands at, yet accepts, environmental pollution, exploitation, the alliance of government and big business in Third World oppression, structural unemployment and a carceral approach to social problems, we must create intellectual and psychological freedom. To do this, we must be able to discuss ideas, tactics and know what is being done, globally. We need media which will facilitate this. It is very difficult to evade recuperation into the arms of the spectacle. Do we, like, Baudrillard, melt into the passivity of post-modernism, or like Vaneigem, renew the call for action and a deliberate reassessment of how to really live?

footnotes

[1] Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life (Verso 1991) p. 180.

[2] Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life (2nd ed. Rebel Press, 1994) p.10.

[3] “Fordism.”

[4] Titoism was the most successful of these systems; notable exceptions include Hoxha’s Albania and Ceaucescu’s Romania.

[5] Playing devil’s advocate, one might argue that, at least the Soviets had the decency to invade Prague openly, unlike the American treatment of Cuba and the rest of Central America.

[6] And, of course, the tried and true device of the “Common Enemy” – in America these were the oil barons of the Middle East, who threatened to sanctity of the Big American Car; in Europe the immigrants, who threatened “the culture.”

[7] Antonio Gramsci, The Antonio Gramsci Reader, Selected Writings 1916 – 1935, ed. David Forgacs. (New York: Schocken, 1988) pp.222 – 225. Gramsci avoids the reductionism of liberalism, which wants to see civil society as one of individual freedom, entirely separate from the State, and the reductionism of the hard-line Left and philosophy of Althusser, which holds that everything in capitalist society belongs to the State and serves its interests, a view Gramsci would have recognised as also being that of fascists like Giovanni Gentile.

[8] “In the modern world, technical education, closely bound to industrial labour … must form the basis of the new type of intellectual.” p. 321.

[9] Theodore Adorno, Minima Moralia; reflections from damaged life. Trans. EFN Jephcott. (London: New Left Books, 1974.); Also “Adorno” in Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: from structuralism to postmodernity. John Lechte (London: Routledge, 1994) pp. 177 – 181.

[10] For the purposes of this paper I am using the term Situationist loosely and including all those who were involved with the group, or agreed at least in part with their approach.

[11] Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black and Red 1983) 1.

[12] ibid. 3

[13] Chtcheglov, “Formulary for a new urbanism” (October 1953) in Situationist International Anthology ed. and trans. Ken Knabb. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981. p.3. 14 This is the closing line of his major work, The Revolution of Everyday Life, also published in 1967.

[15] Kellner, Media Culture (London: Routledge, 1995) p. 338.

[16] See the January-February issue of the Utne Reader, a compilation magazine from the alternative press (also a website at www.utne.com) gleaned from around the English-speaking world: a section headed “How to Media-Proof Your Life.”

[17] Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1989) p. 180, pointing out that this rate is higher than that of the late 20th century USA.

[18] In Paris in the Revolutionary era, W. Scott Haine has found that the role of the cafe was significant in radical politics from 1789 through to at least the Second Empire. Cafe society, he finds, was about ideas, and was the most radical sphere of Parisian life, above the “low” milieu of the tavern, which revolved around drink, and the “high” milieu of the salon, which revolved around manners and presentation. W. Scott Haine. “Cafe Politics in Paris, 1789 – 1851″ Consortium 1988 305 – 20. This tradition seems to go on right through to the 1950s and 60s – Greil Marcus describes how the Lettrist International used to meet at Moineau’s Cafe on the Left Bank in the early 50′s (Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces, 376-382). 5 Alison Hutt, The Changing Newspaper. p.17.

[19] Iain MacCalman, Radical Underworld.

[20] Barbrook, “The Republic of Letters”, in Hypermedia Research Centre website, www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk.

[21] David Vincent, Bread, Knowledge and Freedom (London: Methuen, 1981) p.28.

[22] ibid. 153 – 154.

[23] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels The German Ideology in Collected Works, V, New York 1976.

[24] Weitling in Carl Wittke, The Utopian Communist: A Biography of Wilhelm Weitling (Baton Rouge, 1950) p. 57.

[25] Barbrook, op. cit, and “The Industrialisation of the Media,” HRC website.

[26] Vaneigem, op cit. p.68.

[27] Barbrook, “The Industrialisation of the Media,” HRC website.

[28] The very few exceptions we see prove the rule: most feature documentaries only ever appear theatrically at film festivals and we are most likely to see them on television anyway.

[31] “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Illuminations (London: Jonathan Cape, 170) p. 244.

[32] I write of my experience witnessing the war while in Canada, where it was universally unpopular. During the same period I visited the United States, where cynicism and disgust had not set in, and people were waving flags all over the place calling for the death of Saddam Hussein. In Canada, we relied on US television in the initial phase of the war, as Canadian television did not have the resources CNN and the US networks do. As the war progressed, however, some Canadian programmes were broadcast which were critical of the war and which challenged American versions of events. Douglas Kellner, Media Culture, pp. 198 – 228, describes the process of creating the Gulf War reportage for American television

[33] Norris, Christopher. Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War, London: Lawrence and Wishart 1992. Baudrillard is one of the main philosophical spokesmen for the “post-modern,” as he believes that the commodity system has taken on a life of its own, and the distinctions between reality and illusion, between society and spectacle, have imploded, leaving us only “hyperreality” to contend with. Baudrillard obviously owes a lot to Situationism for his analysis, but he wants to go further and deny the lurking existence of “authentic” everyday life, which Vaneigem and the others urged as essential to recapture. Baudrillard argued that the Situationist analysis, as a modernist analysis dependent upon notions of history, reality and interpretation, was obsolete in the face of simulation and hyperreality. Later, Debord, troubled by the problem of recuperation, and generally disillusioned, moved to a Baudrillardian position, but Raoul Vaneigem continues to maintain a modernist stance (Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, (London: Verso, 1990; Vaneigem’s 1991 introduction to the first paperback edition of The Revolution of Everyday Life) Steven Best, “The Commodification of Reality and the Reality of Commodification: Baudrillard, Debord and Postmodern Theory” in Baudrillard, A Critical Reader, ed. Douglas Kellner, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.

[34] Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, p. 41.

[35] Interview with George Gerbner in the Utne Reader, January-February 1997, p.80.

[36] Richard Barbrook, “The Revival of the Media Utopias” HRC website.

[37] These came, like hockey cards, with a stick of bubblegum. Saddam Hussein cards were especially prized.

[38] “Snodland News” Undercurrents 6.

[39] Gerbner, op. cit.

[40] Barbrook, “Infotainment” HRC website.

[41] This is not always the case. Labour activists’ views were routinely excluded form the airwaves, and press watchdogs have uncovered various forms of pro-Establishment bias on various programmes.

[42] In the event, a lack of any credible opposition candidate means that Chretien and his party are going to win the election, and the CBC’s audience will have to make do with fewer original programmes, more US buy-ins, more advertising.

[43] See, for example, Ferdinand Braudel’s study of early modern Europe, Civilisation and Capitalism. Jon Dovey says of McLuhan “his work stands in a similar relation as Baudrillard’s in our own period, powerfully resonant without being in the least use to anyone actually producing in the field. ( see below p.115)

[44] in Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1996)

[45] Vaneigem, p.85.

[46] Gerbner, p. 81.

[47] Barbrook, “The Re-regulation of the Media” HRC website.

[48] Quoted in Adorno, Prisms (Merlin Press, 1968) p.109.

[49] Dovey, p. 130.

[50] As with much of the material in this chapter, this assertion is based on interviews. Informal surveys conducted at the University of Westminster and at a squat centre in Hackney revealed that well over 90 per cent of the people questioned felt there was no point in voting, that all the parties/candidates were the same, and that nothing could change through the political system.

[51] Although Joanna Wilson of Ploughshares claims that it was John Pilger’s television documentary Death of a Nation, about East Timor, that influenced her decision to be an activist.

[52] Lotte Kronhild, quoted in “If I Had a Hammer” distributed on Undercurrents 6 (1996).

[53] See www.mcspotlight.org for all the details.

[54] Bakhtin, Rabelais (University of Indiana Press, 1984) p.39.

[55] Vaneigem, p. 8. From his 1991 preface.

[56] “Salvage Rider” Undercurrents 6.

[57] ibid.

[58] Vaneigem, p. 9.

[59] Interview by Cosmo, Undercurrents 6.

[60] The public response to the road protesters “Swampy” and “Animal” and the the others who tunnelled deep beneath the protest site could be read as a sea-change in attitudes to alternative culture activists. Even no less an Establishment figure as A.N. Wilson praised them from his Evening Standard pulpit.

[61] “McJob” – phrase coined by Doug Coupland in his brilliantly incisive novel Generation X, to describe a low-paid low-satisfaction service industry job usually held by a college graduate who was brought up with much higher expectations.

[62] Information about Undercurrents is based on interviews with Paul O’Connor.

[63] Broadcasting magazine, week of November 1.

[64] Guardian, Monday, December 5, 1994

[65] Vaneigem, p. 236.

[66] Crimewatch, You’ve Been Framed, Video Diaries, Emergency 999, Takeover TV, Caught on Camera – just a few examples of current camcorder-generated programming; In America the long-running series Hardcopy, A Current Affair and Inside Edition, which specialise in gossip and seediness, all use primarily camcorder footage.

[67] Jon Dovey, “The Revelation of Unguessed Worlds” Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996, p. 125.

[68] Guardian Friday November 29, 1996.

[69] a youthful cry, from “La revolution d’abord et toujours” in La Revolution surrealiste, no.5, 15 Oct. 1925. quoted in Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces, p. 190.

[70] p. 169.

[71] For the record, the latter two have military and arms-manufacturing interests.

[72] It must be recognised that there are potential benefits as well as dangers in mass media controlled by a few large cultural producers. Perhaps globalisation of culture can help to eradicate ethnic and nationalist hatred; it is true that the concentration of money in large organisations allows more research and development. And the propaganda put out by Murdoch and Disney is not the kind of propaganda put out by fascist regimes. But still, we have to weigh these benefits against the question of whether we want to have a voice in what kind of ideas and information we have access to, and if this kind of media allows us to do so.

[73] The combination of 1994 Criminal Justice Act and Michael Howard’s increase in prison facilities combine to create a climate of coercion, though the inefficiency of the system makes it less oppressive than it seems.

[74] Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 60.

[75] ibid, 61, also below.

[76] Already Reclaim the Streets includes some video in its web-site.

[77] E.g. “Adverts Selling Women Flood Onto The Internet” Guardian 13 November 1995.

[78] Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, p. 97.

[79] Sadie Plant, The Most Radical Gesture (London: Routledge, 1992) and “The Situationist International: A Case of Spectacular Neglect” in Radical Philosophy, summer 1990, p.3.

[80] Plant, “The Situationist International”, p 5.

[81] Vaneigem, “Basic Banalities” no.19, in The Situationist International Anthology, ed. Ken Knabb, p. 125.

[82] “Madison Avenue’s Worst Nightmare,” Utne Reader, p. 74. (An attempted interview with Lasn and the Media Foundation in Vancouver in December 1996 had to be cancelled due to heavy snow).

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MA Hypermedia Dissertation (Short) – Matt Eley 2005

Download a Microsoft Word version of this dissertation, including all illustrations and footnotes

Q – What does the growing consumer culture of videogame modification reveal about changes in the culture industry, and does this offer the possibility for a radical new artistic form?

Abstract

This paper offers a discussion of the modification of videogames in relation to the writings of the Situationist International and the Frankfurt School. Videogames are one of the few areas of contemporary popular culture that actively encourage a real involvement from consumers, a product that exists entirely as digital information, that requires active participation, and that can be directly reconfigured by consumer and producer alike. Such an interaction between consumers and producers offers a useful situation that both may exploit.

The issues discussed here are arranged around the broad distinction between artistic and fan made modifications and the blurring of boundaries between consumer and producer. Through the communities and gift economy of the Internet, modification has simultaneously become a major threat to the homogeneous structure of this particular culture industry and one of its best allies. This contradiction will be discussed through the theory of Adorno and Debord. Firstly Adorno and the Frankfurt School’s work on the ‘Culture Industry’ is used to understand the relationship between videogame hacking and its recent commodification into a consumer practice using commercially supplied modification software. Secondly, Debord and the writings of the Situationist International will be used to explore how modification can be understood in light of the notion of the Spectacle, its artistic détournement and the recuperation of such cultural negation.

Introduction
“The nineteenth-century dispute as to the artistic value of painting versus photography today seems devious and confused… Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question – whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art – was not raised. Soon the film theoreticians asked the same ill-considered question with regard to the film. But the difficulties which photography caused traditional aesthetics were mere child’s play as compared to those raised by the film�?, (Benjamin 1999 p220).

In a similar light, at the end of the 20th Century much had been made of the question of whether videogames might ever be understood as an art form. But just as Benjamin’s observations addressed what was overlooked in early debates around photography and film – the question of what this new mix of art and technology really meant for our experience of social and cultural life – so to does current discussion on videogames often overlooks Benjamin’s point; it must be recognised that games are a unique form of cultural commodity in which consumer-led customisation and modification is not only possible, but actively encouraged. Not only are issues of aesthetics complicated by this new cultural form, but so too are methods of production and consumption. In recent years, advances in digital technology have been utilised by both consumers and producers within the culture industry, this has redirected the production process away from the closed commodity relations of earlier mass culture and towards a supposedly more open dialogue between audience and author.

As a mainly digital commodity, videogames provide the key example of this reconfiguration of the producer-consumer relationship; this can be found most clearly in the recent expansion of the online videogame modification scene. Artistic and fan made modification and total conversions are all part of the popular practice of rewriting the code of a commercial videogame in order to change the way it looks or plays (see figures 1, 2 and 3). Changes range from minor visual and audio adjustments to the creation of completely new games. For the time being this commercialised practice is mainly restricted to FPS (First Person Shooter) PC games , and while modding was once achieved by forcibly hacking a game to access its code, it is more common today to use the commercial software development tools supplied.

The defining example for this process is Counter Strike, a modification of Valve Software’s classic game Half Life. A project originally initiated by 21 year old computer science student Minh Le, as a freely downloadable multiplayer modification for Half Life; it went on to be one of the most popular online games ever (Kline, Dyer-Witheford, de Puter 2003) . In fact “it became so popular that Valve began helping Le and his now-considerable band of collaborators to write code and later arranged for Sierra to publish the ‘mod’�? (2003: p252-3). In addition to being a freely available home-made upgrade, Counter Strike is now packaged and sold over multiple formats as a stand-alone game; this does appear a very real case of consumers having the means with which to produce media and distribute it on a mass scale.

Figures 1, 2 and 3: From left to right, Half Life 2, it’s most successful mod (Counter-Strike Source) and a recent student-led total conversion (Eclipse) all running on Valve Software’s Source engine.

In its earliest beta versions during the summer of 1999 the mod was technically similar to most fan led independent projects and far less sophisticated than many popular modifications at the time, but as Valve showed an interest in Counter-Strike’s potential for innovative gameplay, and so contributed funding and technical support, the project overtook all others . Valve’s positive attitude toward user led modification of its own intellectual property illustrates newly emerging economic practices within the videogame culture industry. For Dyer-Witheford “video and computer games are made in complex, transnational webs of paid and unpaid labor�? (2002), there are three collectivities within this web: the conventional programmers or knowledge workers who write the games, the new proletariat created by the exploitative outsourcing of hardware production to developing world countries, and a new kind of audience, the player who engages in consumer led production or ‘prosumerism’ (as coined by Toffler 1981 p261) with which this discussion is primarily concerned:

“Of particular importance is the encouragement of the player « modding » (modification) of games through shareware, open source and player editing capacities… This process is now widespread throughout the computer game side of the business, where it serves not only to renew interest in games, but also as a sort of voluntary training and recruitment arenas for future workers in the industry�?, (Dyer-Witheford 2002).

It seems then that both the consumer and the producer are benefiting from this situation in ways that fulfil their own particular aims. For example, despite Counter-Strike’s success and eventual commodification as a boxed retail edition, its developers continue to view themselves as the ‘CS-Team’, as consumer-producers and not a software company. Such an attitude underpins what Kline, Dyer-Witheford and de Puter (2003) have highlighted; that videogames today may offer a far more complex evolution of the consumer relationship with the culture industry than Adorno (2001) had observed in his analysis of the hierarchical worlds of popular music and film in the early 20th Century. The importance of such changes shall now be discussed.

Videogames in the consumer society
Marx lived in and wrote about an industrial capitalism of exploitative bourgeoisie owners and wage slave factory working proletariat, building upon Hegel’s philosophy and combining it with Smith’s economic analysis of processes of industrialisation, particularly the increasing division of labour (1976 p109-117). In his early writings Marx formed an image of humans as essentially productive beings; it was not simply the labour process that was alienating them in 19th Century industrial capitalism, but the sub-division of that labour process into a multitude of unfulfilling tasks. While ‘species being’ or human potential (Marx 1994 p74) , could be the outcome of a “society [that] regulates the general production and thus makes it possible… to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic�?, (Marx and Engels 1974 p54). As Guarneri (1991 p3-8) states, Marx and Engels classic image of communism borrows greatly from the American utopianism of Fourier, a society of free labour, an ideal without class antagonism but high in material wealth, art and culture.

Under capitalism, productive labour had become severed from this utopian image of humanity and returned to a state, where – like animals – people felt that they worked only to keep themselves alive and through the abstraction of exchanging money for time and labour power, had lost the satisfaction of any particular cultural of labour (see Marx 1994 p71-5 and Giddens 1971 p14-15). Since then there have been dramatic changes in capitalisms structure, into ‘post-Fordist’ or ‘post-Industrial information age’ (Bell 1999) of consumer capitalism. Today workers exchange their labour power (be it physical or mental) for money, not just to satisfy their basic needs for subsistence but in order to buy commodities most of which function as signs rather than material objects (Baudrillard 1998). However despite the changes of the 20th Century, the division of labour remains high and therefore still alienating in the way Marx described:

“Hence the rule of the capitalist over the worker is the rule of things over man, of dead labour over the living, of the product over the producer […] Thus at the level of the social – for that is what the process of production is – we find the same situation that we find in religion at the ideological level, namely the inversion of subject into object and vice versa […] This antagonistic stage cannot be avoided… [and]… what we are confronted by here is the alienation of man from his own labour�?, (Marx 1976 p990).

Yet with the rise of the digital technology and the Internet, more and more commodities are marketed with the claim to offer a capacity for creative productive labour in ones free time. This situation – easily identifiable in the case of Counter-Strike and many other videogame modifications as well as current claims for interactive media’s general authorless (see Barthes 1977, Manovich 2001 p61) – would seem on first observation to provide a realisation of non-alienated labour through cultural production. The non-alienated productive process and free online distribution of cultural artefacts in videogame modification stands in direct contrast to the traditional capitalist system. For which ‘alien labour’ is the outcome, an almost mechanical productive process that is geared towards producing commodities and further capital, neither of which the worker owns because during the productive process they no longer own their own labour power, for they have sold it in advance to their employer under contractual agreement (Marx 1976 p1016).

In contrast much has been made of the potential offered by post-Fordist intellectual property and the extent to which the online gift economy counters the strictly constructed divisions and contractual obligations, sharing what Marx described: “an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single labour force… The total product of our imagined association is a social product�?, (Marx 1976 p171). Information can appear in this way to be both the commodity and the means of production, distributed within an online videogame modification community. Yet the original source code and software development tools remain the means of production and are thus owned by the capitalist class even when distributed amongst those consumers who modify it, because as consumers of intellectual property they are automatically denied the usual rights of individual ownership. So while software like Flash is a tool, a means of production, purchased from its producer under a licence agreement that allows you to produce your own intellectual property. A game like Half Life remains a commodity, a consumer item, despite being packaged with production tools. Such games are not sold as a means of production because their licence agreement states that anything you produce cannot be sold without further permission. Openly modifiable games allow you to engage in productive activity, but only under the mutual understanding, control and guidance that unless permission is granted, modifications cannot be sold as commodities. Unless one purchases the actual game engine, the authorship of videogame modification does not extend fully into the realms of intellectual property rights in the way that authorship of a game does (see Lessig 1999 p133).

This means that most mods must remain free, a situation that is inherently positive for niche markets that once had to be specifically targeted and sold distinctly customized versions of otherwise standardised commodities (Ross and Nightingale 2003 p64). Today a niche or subculture can create its own commercial quality content using self-modified mass cultural products in a way that is not encouraged in other less directly changeable popular culture. Some might argue that this digital culture is completely intertwined with the relativism, plurality, pastiche and quotation of postmodern popular culture; “destabilizing the distinction between production, performance and reception�? (Gilbert and Pearson 1999 p126) within new cultural practices. Yet the ‘freedom of information’ that has become the hallmark of digital culture’s emphasis on free production and distribution, is at root an element of the hacker ethic (Levy 1984 p40), the deeply ingrained ideology within the very structure of contemporary digital communications since the mid 1960s. This digital culture, most clearly seen in the form of the Internet, has been built in the image of the world of scientists and academics (Barbrook 1998), a mixed economy of gifts and commodities. From this perspective, digital technology finally presents a workable solution to the achievement of Marxist hopes for non-alienated labour through acts of independent cultural production within capitalism.

However this situation sets up a contradiction, as “behind the label of the independent ‘self-employed’ worker, what we actually find is an intellectual proletarian, but who is recognised as such only by the employers who exploit him or her… [Simultaneously] in a sense, life becomes inseparable from work�?, (Lazzarato 2005 p3). Perhaps this is the reality of the videogame modification pastime of the bored Silicon Valley white-collar information worker , “lacking the free time of the hippies, work itself has become the main route to self-fulfillment for much of [this] ‘virtual class’�? (Barbrook and Cameron 1996). This ‘knowledge class’ (Bell 1999 p213) is just as alienated today as the workers Marx had written of because they do not directly own the means of production, or the outcome of their labour power, by definition they remain the proletariat:

“As long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood…�? (Marx and Engels 1974 p54).

Yet with however little free time they have, the ‘knowledge class’ in today’s digital consumer capitalism can purchase a commodity like Half Life, and then produce new cultural artefacts (extra levels or entirely new games) with others online, in their spare time, using the software provided them and a free exchange of ideas. There is no fixed division of labour, no exchange of labour power for money, this is non-alienated productive activity, roles are swapped between artist, level designer, programmer; and the work is distributed freely. In fact companies like id Software have gone one step further and released the actual source code of their games freely over the Net, for people to seemingly do with as they please, “in a way that the American founders would have instinctively understood, ‘free software’ or ‘open source software’… is itself a check on arbitrary power. A structural guarantee of constitutionalized liberty… like freedom of speech or the press, but its stand is more fundamental.�? (Lessig 1999 p7). But is that what this situation really presents? Is it not true that rather than living in a non-alienated society of productive labour, we must continue to work to purchase commodities that let us explore (in our own free time) the possibilities that common ownership might theoretically offer. Such a problem may be approached via Adorno’s critique of the culture industry.

Adorno and the videogame culture industry
“The prominence of player-devised game modifications [for] collective multiplayer games makes interactive play porous to infusions of creativity from below. Much of this only elaborates and intensifies preset genres and conventions. But it can create surprises�?, (Dyer-Witheford 2002).

In light of the somewhat romanticised issue of videogame modification, Dyer-Witheford’s observations may actually signal a new level to Adorno’s idea of pseudo-individualization. “By pseudo-individualization we mean endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or open market on the basis of standardisation itself�?, (Adorno 1990 p308). When consumers are treated as producers, often they are really presented with only a narrow set of choices that are directed by, and aim to, support the confines of the existing hegemonic structure of the culture industry. One example of this process is the Sony Net Yaroze, “a seven-hundred-and-fifty-dollar version of the Playstation that allows gamers to write their own code�? (Kline et al 2003 p204). Marketed as consumer liberation, a return to the golden age of the 1980s ‘bedroom coders’ , the ten thousand Yaroze sold can also be read as a consumerist exploitation of hopeful college graduates, an overly expensive consumer commodity, or as an extra unpaid arm in Sony’s worldwide R&D workforce. This is a new (more elaborate yet efficient) take on the older processes of the culture industry; where “the attitude of the audiences toward the natural language [of the commodity] is reinforced by standardised production, which institutionalises desiderata which originally might have come from the public“, (Adorno 1990 p307). Although the idea of DIY is attacked by Adorno as ‘pseudo-activity’ (2001 p194, 201) when it is packaged and sold as yet another commodity, there is the claim that:

“Today’s generation of gamers feels deprived, deceived and disillusioned by an industry fast conglomerating into fortified hives where little creed exists beyond the maintenance of power and profitability… As publishers tear the features from their faces to avoid scaring the money back into people’s pockets, so their audience increasingly chooses to draw a less bridled infusion of energy and spirit from the past. Homebrew software may be freely available, but it more importantly represents freedom – something of which there’s ever-decreasing evidence among commercial developers.�? (Edge: Sept 2005)

This scene is commonly noted to be driven by a passionate underground of independent producers, seemingly a-political despite tendencies towards illegal action such as bootlegging, unapproved emulation, cracking and hacking, simply done for the pleasure of it. While Adorno might observe this as another level of individualising false consumer consciousness, the common aspect that drives all independent cultural production is this idea of “being creative [which] remains… a sort of dream world or utopia�? (McRobbie 1999 p134). To be part of the culture industry, either as an artist (by overtly challenging conventions) or as an independent producer is what drives audience interaction, as McRobbie notes, in independent music:

“Here we have, with the growth of cultural capitalism, something similar to the scenario Marx himself looked forward to: cooking, looking after the children and doing the ironing in the morning, writing lyrics and composing tracks on the home computer in the afternoon, and playing them for money in the evening!�?, (1999 p135).

This is equally true of modification, where “emphasis on the skill rather than on stardom does not mean that the utopian dynamics of these new apprenticeships for the night-time economies of dance and club culture are denied“, (ibid p135). Both areas of independent production share the major draw of what Bourdeiu terms ‘cultural capital’ (1993), and as even Adorno (2001) noted, we can observe a dual consumer mindset gravitating towards self produced culture, because “what the culture industry presents people with in their free time… is indeed consumed and accepted, but with a kind of reservation�? (p196). Such reservations may grow stronger while commodified production replaces interaction as the consumer fantasy (Manovich 2001 p61, and Darley 2000 p194, Barthes 1977) of the digital culture industry – with the aim of making the consumer feel like an active producer – because “we do not require all music to move to ‘enhanced’ formats which require opening-out, to arrive raw or unmixed requiring that we reheat it prior to consumption�?, (Gilbert and Pearson 1999 p132). Clearly if you buy a modifiable commodity you are still consuming while you create, in the extreme it could be argued that such willing interaction with the media spectacle may just further absorb consumers into a Baudrillardian hyperreality (1983). This trend for consumer modification plays on the myths of authenticity that surround DIY cultural production in art, music and literature (Adorno 1990, 2001), which originated through dissatisfaction with the homogeneous produce of the culture industry, and it may still offer some small innovations through remixing these cultural commodities with an open attitude typical of the Hacker ethic (Levy 1984), but since id Software’s Doom its structure has become a new form of consumption.

Doom (the culture industry’s commodification of hacker ideology)
Doom is an important historical break in videogame modification; id Software’s release of a set of editing tools and the full source code of their classic game blurred the division between videogame producers and consumers . In the years since, and with the increasing sophistication of the web, the division has become radically distorted, as “id turned every player into a potential programmer�? (Kline et al 2003 p204), and these ‘potential programmers’ formed online social networks for the production and distribution of new content.

Id Software built a commercial model upon (and in the process assimilated) the existing underground culture of bedroom programmers, hackers and crackers that appeared alongside pre-web 8bit commercial microcomputers like the Sinclair, C64 and Amiga. A few key players like Jeff Minter may have managed to turn a subcultural interest successfully commercial but most remained underground in a way that mirrors McRobbie’s (1999) observations of the music and fashion industry. By the early 1990s with the introduction of the web and online gaming, this DIY attitude found a platform of communication that allowed its numbers to increase exponentially. The new structure, design and distribution methods of Doom provided the catalyst for “a virtual kustom kar kulture – a community based on shared, self-made chunks of the Doom universe called .wad files. Players became part of Doom’s world not just because they played the game, but also because they constructed bits of it�?, (Herz 1997 p90). Doom presented the moment at which industry recuperated videogame modification practices like hacking and cracking and sold them back to a mass audience as a commercial commodity.

The Origins of Videogame Modification
While the prosumerism originally encouraged by id Software provides the contemporary model for modification, modding’s roots are to be found within the same institutional situation as the Internet, the Cold War computer labs of ARPA funded academic institutions during the 1960s (Levy 1984). The Internet was however to remain for decades an elite network of military and academic users, before the online expansion that arrived with the web in the early 1990s (see Castells 2001, Giese 2003). In a complete contrast, videogaming rapidly moved from its earliest foundations in military applications, to more experimental forms in the university labs of the 1960s and finally to civilian popular culture in the arcade with Computer Space in 1970 and in a domestic setting with the Magnavox Odyssey in 1971 .

Despite such early commercial adoption, modification has always been at the centre of digital gaming culture, which “with its origin in the unauthorized play of military-industrial programmers, is a child of hacking�? (Dyer-Witheford 2002). The unofficial exploration of early computer architecture – making the hardware at the time do things beyond the military bureaucracy which it was designed to process – was common within institutions like MIT (Levy 1984) and quickly led to Spacewar (1962), officially labelled the first computer game, in a re-imagining of history that ignores any earlier and more serious military links, thus following the fantasy of the innovative individual typical of the Californian Ideology (Barbrook and Cameron 1996); after all the graphical user interface was the product of military research that occurred much earlier than the Xerox PARC desktop (see Levy 1984). There were in fact multiple experiments into making early computers perform game-like functions beyond their intended use. Examples range from Douglas’s 1952 EDSAC noughts and crosses and Higinbotham’s 1958 oscilloscope tennis game (see Edge: July 2005 p73), to Levy’s (1984 p26) description of a similar tennis game created at MIT in 1959 that shows an imaginative (mis)use of the coloured lights on the front of old IBM 704 mainframes.

With its early commercialisation, videogaming code – a spectacle sealed within arcade cabinets and plastic ROM cartridges – soon became entrenched in the clear and familiar circuits of the one-to-many consumer-producer relationship that typifies the mass culture industry. However with the Odyssey (the first TV game console), and the earliest arcade cabinets, the effect on the television set was to shift broadcastings existing cultural hegemony into new cultural circuits. Such manipulation of material technology occurred at the tail-end of the Fordist industrial society and the digital content that ran on these new systems came to prominence with the following movement into a post-industrial information society (Kline et al 2003). With the shift in platform architecture, to actual ‘computer games’ on the more customisable microcomputers in the mid 1980s boom driven by companies like Amiga, Sinclair, and Apple (Kline et al 2003 p94-5), the minority coding subculture of amateur experimental software producers – descendants of the MIT ARPA elite hackers – became “a huge underground culture [which] grew up, mostly in Europe, to craft and appreciate these demos, even holding parties to celebrate the art�?, (Burnham 2001 p290). Demos, hacks, modifications of existing software, these consumers were also active producers. As Willis’ ethnographic study noted at the time, the computer was beginning to offer a site for advanced symbolic creativity that rivalled other areas of cultural media for its productive uses (1990 p40-2).

In the last 15 years that promise has been met by the same hacker ideology that underpins open source or free software projects like Linux and Firefox, and also the growing online open source Flash development community that has recently given rise to freely distributed, yet both technically and politically sophisticated, zero-budget games. At the same time it seems that any political features of the hacker ideology that underpinned the basis of videogame modification have been recuperated into the circuits of the videogame culture industry. However in the light of recent political artistic activity in game modification, it may be possible to observe something comparable to a postmodern remixing of the Situationist strategy of détournement in re-politicising this manipulation of the videogame spectacle .

Debord and videogame modification, détournement and recuperation
“Détournement is the antithesis of quotation, of a theoretical authority invariably tainted if only because it has become quotable, because it is now a fragment torn away from its context�?, (Debord 1994 Thesis 208).

Ross and Nightingale argue (2003 p144) that consideration needs to be made of the context that any independent cultural product is made within. If the consumer is ever more so treated as an active producer then changes in the contemporary structure of capitalism and peoples reactions to such changes must influenced decisions to adopt more active and creative roles. It can in no way be said that modifiable software was the sole idea and beneficiary of the software producers as an Adorno-esque observation might assume. For instance in console gaming (which is centered on software purchases) the role of free homemade software, be it emulation, mod or a freeware game, is very different to that on the PC (where the consumer emphasis is on continual hardware upgrades). In light of Sony’s uncomfortable stance on the popularity of homemade games and emulation for its portable console, it is clear that the consumer-producer benefits far more than Sony does; “For the manufacturer, every PSP sold is money lost, with profit reliant upon the [commercial retail] games that homebrew does nothing to whisk from the shelves�?, (Edge: Sept 2005) . Thus the situation of modification may be a continuation of hacker ideology and a site for the struggle of cultural détournement against the constant commodification of independent media.

As Debord wrote, with the maturation of industrial capitalism in the mid to late 20th century the proletariat were suddenly treated “with a great show of solitude and politeness�? (1994 Thesis 43) as the bourgeoisie sought to attend to all aspects of their lives, their leisure and humanity, not just their labour power. Détournement – or the manipulation of the spectacle by negation of cultural commodities – can be seen as a practice of resistance to this commodification of all social life. Yet the process itself has lost much of its radical nature through its own recuperation and re-introduction into the cultural sphere, it is now just another factor used to treat late capitalism’s proletariat consumers as self-consciously knowing cultural producers.

Although not détournement in the political sense, new forms of cultural innovation have often been produced by free manipulation of the uses of existing technology already well integrated into hegemonic mass culture. In the 1960s this process of remixing became clear in relation to television art, and simultaneously the impacts upon TV and the related elements of popular culture that the introduction of Ralph Baer’s Magnavox Odyssey had. In the art world one such example of a similar process is the work of Nam June Paik, who’s flattening and subversion of the TV is comparable to Baer’s more commercial exploration of that same format. “By the 1960s, when [Paik’s] Zen for TV was produced, the broadcast model of television programming and the aesthetics that accompanied it were firmly entrenched as hegemonic uses of TV technology�? (Wilson 2004 p88-89). The resulting interaction between TV and art as discussed by Daniels (2005) also highlights a very similar set of conditions in videogaming. As he notes, the early TV art of Paik was completely reliant on the content produced by commercial broadcasting stations. Manipulating the image on the TV screen with magnets would be redundant without the actual broadcast content provided by the culture industry. Similarly artistic game modification relies on the pre-existence of commercial game engines. But while Daniels (2005) notes that video art (making original programs from scratch) has become the primary tele-visual art because of its distancing from the commercial broadcasts of TV; in contrast modification (rather than original programming) has become the primary artistic form of videogames. Perhaps because of their closeness to the original commercial commodity, modifications are provided a highly visible (mainstream) platform for exhibition that can also dramatically cut the costs of production. Yet this practice ignores the artistic problem of homogenisation which sees any radical culture recuperated in the drive for new content within the culture industry, a problem which video artists are very aware.

The aesthetic experiments of Paik’s TV art share a perspective to the artistic modifications of Jodi. In their works: Sod (a 1999 mod for Wolfenstein 3D) and Untitled Game (a 2002 mod for Quake), Jodi have (as Cannon 2003, Paul 2003 and Stallabrass 2003 all reiterate) deconstructed the game engines created by id Software to raise a number of important issues about software . Their minimalist and reductive interpretations of these classic games aims to make apparent the abstract nature of simulated perception and artificial physics inherent in game design. These mods highlight the entropic chaos of code, and the controls imposed upon it by player and designer alike. Despite all this rhetoric, the work of Jodi remains inherently influenced by the commercial technologies and designs produced by id. While for outsiders to the gaming community their work might seem radical and confrontational, a modern day cultural détournement of the commercial videogame spectacle, this practice has been a central cultural issue in gaming since the early 1980s, only recently becoming industry-led common practice (Kent 2001). After all, Jodi’s mods focus mainly on manipulation of the visual aspects of the original game, it must be questioned whether this counts as détournement if the militarised point and shoot first person adventure gameplay remains. As Baumgartel (2005) explains, the creators of Doom initially had concerns about opening up their games, and encouraging modification by hackers, (this was the first time such behaviour had been actively encouraged). But having seen the producerly reaction from both fans and artists and more importantly the way most mods remain faithful to the confines of the original gameplay format, it was clear that this new open source and shareware model of the digital economy offered a non-threatening expansion to this relatively new area of the culture industry. Game developers have, it seems, found a way of producing vast amounts of new content that prolong the use of their products, while also giving consumers all the content they could desire and the ability to play at being active producers, and all for very little extra cost .

While any radical possibility for détournement in videogame modification may well have been recuperated by the industry early on, it has also been argued that perhaps détournement is too strong a concept for contemporary activity such as artistic modification, like “culture jamming [which] is, at root, just a metaphor for stopping the flow of spectacle long enough to adjust your set.�? (Lasn 1999 p107), not quite reaching “the violence of détournement itself [which] mobilizes an action capable of disturbing or overthrowing any existing order�?, (Debord 1994 Thesis 209). Although quite a negative claim, it may well be far from suitable to label modifications like 9/11 Survivor, Waco Resurrection and Escape from Woomera (see figures 4, 5 and 6) as a violent revolution to gameplay, when their effects seem to offer a more gradual subversion of gaming themes .

Figures 4, 5 and 6: From left to right, scenes from Waco Resurrection, 9/11 Survivor and Escape from Woomera.

While early user-modification of source code, may have prompted developers to react to the technical innovations and social awareness of this small movement, today the videogaming culture industry has (by actively inviting modification and source code alteration via specially designed tools) managed to homogenise and subdue much of this negation and violence, repackaging and selling the process as another consumer item. This problem is of central importance to Net.Art, yet as Stallabrass notes in his discussion of ®™ark’ spoof websites and subversive consumer activism, perhaps such actions are “too straightforwardly oppositional to suit the Situationists’ requirements… but the cultural context of such interventions is very different now that détournement is a staple advertising technique�? (2003 notes p91). Similarly for artistic videogame mods, if the culture industry supports modification, and assimilates so much of it back into its circuits, can any mod, however politically aware, or culturally subversive, really be labelled detournement? A similar story is found within punk’s continuation of Situationist strategy:

“An attack on the established values and institutions of music, culture, and society, punk provided a vehicle for the growing disaffection of the post-sixties generation. It attacked royalty, the culture industry, and the political authorities, shocking the bourgeoisie and antagonising the establishment�?, (Plant 1991 p144).

Yet despite its initial power, much that was punk was soon engulfed by the rest of the culture industry. “Indeed, punk was accommodated so swiftly that the possibility was raised that it was in some sense already recuperated before it had begun�?, (ibid p144). This is certainly a case in point for the current wave of artistic videogame modifications, the political statements of these artists is often lost within the entrenched gameplay and thematic grammar of ‘militarised masculinity’ (see Kline et al 2003 p251-56, Herz 1997 p197-213) that has long homogenised videogames. As Stalker (2005) notes, despite the artists best ethnographical intentions, Escape from Woomera still plays very much like the point and shoot engine its built from (Half Life) and shares a close resemblance to the recent commercial game The Great Escape, it seems that artistic modifications are destined to remain part of the spectacle, as perhaps even “Political acts of violence can also sink to the level of pseudo-activity, resulting in mere theatre�?, (Adorno 2001 p201). They are the practical material outcome of the belief that individual acts of immediacy have the power to change society one step at a time. But “very little is needed to turn the resistance against repression repressively against those who – little as they might wish to glorify their state of being – do not desert the standpoint that they have come to occupy�?, (Adorno 2001 p199).

In punk this reversal took place in the quick adoption of the movements style and attitude by mass culture, a pamphlet circulated in the late 1970s called The End of Music suggested this recuperation of anything which at first seemed subversive of the spectacle is common to all elements of art and culture; “just as Dada anti-art hangs in galleries and surrealist dreams sell cars, the Situationists joined every other failed critique and abandoned their weapons on the battlefield where their slogans were captured for T-shirts�? (Plant 1991 p146). The message is clear, for the modern day consumer of commodified lifestyles, “Organised freedom is compulsory�? (Adorno 2001 p190). Even the promise of revolution, the power to challenge and reconfigure the systems of society, including the culture industry itself, is presented as yet another commodity, as Barbrook and Cameron put it, “over the last few decades, the pioneering work of the community media activists has been largely recuperated by the hi-tech and media industries�?, (1996).

In gaming this problematic situation of restriction from above being placed on the celebrated creativity from below (because of antagonistic or subversive works) is most clearly seen in Valve Software’s recent alterations to the Half-Life online gaming community using its new Steam distribution system . The once optional choice of becoming a part of any number of online PC gaming communities has been replaced with the forced membership to Valves own system called Steam. The game cannot be played without the extra Steam client software and an online account set up on its system, therefore all online activity based around Valves games is now mediated through the Steam network. The heightened control that Valve now has over consumer modification of its software is negating some freedoms of the hacker ethic, and this echo’s Manovich’s (2001) warnings that controlled alternatives do not always offer real choice. This system is good news for the developer, who can not only control piracy and increase profits by direct distribution methods that avoid retail, but can also continue to direct fan led modification projects with an even greater degree of control at the levels of production and distribution than were possible with the highly successful cases of Counter-Strike and Gunman Chronicles (Kline et al 2003 p251-53, see figures 7, 8 and 9).

Figures 7, 8 and 9: From left to right, the original Half Life and the two commercially successful mods, Counter Strike and Gunman Chronicles. Note the homology of visual style and gameplay.

While such mods actually went on to become full commercial commodities available for sale in high street shops, the pursuit of more artistic or political modifications are increasingly pushed into the margins. One case is Velvet Strike (see Paul 2003 p203, also see figures 10 and 11), a mod that allows players to spray ironic anti-war graffiti – for example ‘hostages of military fantasy’ – onto the walls of Counter-Strike’s online locations. Before the client authentication practices of the Steam network, this mod could easily be used to ‘hijack’ online games and enlighten general players usual unthinking acceptance of the militarised nature of gaming, but today many of this mods unsuspecting yet intended audience can no-longer be reached. However negative this seems, such marginalisation is also a positive occurrence; the deliberate distancing of hackivism styled artistic modification from the homogenising tendencies of the industry may allow game artists more freedom to explore the applications of this interactive technology, allowing for further exploration and a shelter from hegemonic mass culture, even if this means it has minimal direct effect on the aesthetics, interactions, or narratives of the mainstream gaming industry.

Figures 10 and 11: Scenes from Velvet Strike, note that despite looking and playing exactly the same as Counter Strike, it features custom made posters and graffiti that aims to question the military theme.

And so perhaps the Spectacle has changed – since the threats of the Situationist led mass culture détournement through punk – adopting a more shrewd postmodern form, which many identify in Baudrillard’s (1983) notions of hyperreality and simularcra. What remains is the possibility that online communities involved in major modification projects that touch on sensitive political or cultural issues, or deconstruct the standardisation of the gaming culture industry, may well producing a détournement-esque subversion of the spectacle, albeit in a way that is markedly different to Situationism of 30 years ago.

Conclusions, videogames and the ideal commodity
“Games are extensions, not of our private but of our social selves… they are media of communication�?, (McLuhan 1964 p266).

It would seem that the modifiable videogame has through its growing popularity among consumers led to the construction of a complex online relationship of social labour. Videogames have long been a media of many contradictions, they may be (in McLuhan’s sense) hot because of their audio-visual intensity or cool due to the requirement of a ‘player’. With the addition of modification tools it would seem that they are increasingly authorless (Barthes 1977), and therefore a commodity form typical of the move to a post-Fordist society. Yet while modification and customisation seems to present great freedom in the creation of an authorial consumer, such an emphasis on a ‘logic of selection’ and collage has, as Manovich notes become a central flaw of postmodern digital culture; “Although computer software does not directly prevent its users from creating from scratch, its design on every level makes it ‘natural’ to follow a different logic – that of selection�? (1999 p129). All potential for creative production disappears amidst a new false consciousness (Marx 1994 p75, Giddens 1974 p13), a consumer society that claims complete freedom, but only from within a hegemonic cultural cage where, “even the individual object which man confronts directly, either as producer or consumer, is distorted in its objectivity by its commodity character�?, (Lukacs 1988 p257). The problem concerns all independent production of popular cultural artefacts, from videogame modification, to independent pop music or film.

This illusion of freedom is for many writers, the greatest trick of postmodern popular culture, for as Baudrillard (1983) would argue; the individual is now trapped, paralysed within a never ending hyperreality of symbolic exchange. Within such a system, the videogame commodity offers the perfect example of a circuit of exchange between both producer and consumer, and among consumers themselves. As Martyn Lee has noted, it is the ideal post-Fordist commodity:

“Fordist commodities were governed by a ‘metalogic’ of massification, durability, solidity, structure, standardisation, fixity, longevity and utility. Post-Fordism’s ‘metalogic,’ in contrast, is one of intensification and innovation; its typical commodities are instantaneous, experiential, fluid, flexible, heterogeneous, customised, portable and permeated by a fashion with form and style�?, (Lee, quoted in Kline et al 2003 p74).

The way videogames are produced and consumed, reflect absolutely the ideals and the arrangement of the post-industrial capitalist system we inhabit today. In this system there may be no such thing as videogame ownership for the consumer; they are merely paying a fee to play a copy of the game, just as with CD’s and DVD’s (Lessig 1999 p127-35), remaining completely against the hacker ethic that information should be freely accessible (Levy 1984 p40), yet as authorship becomes blurred through modification gaming is being led back to its hacker origins. Here modding encounters the debate over claims of authorship for a work containing other artworks, a central issue of appropriation art (Irvin 2005 p123). If you cannot fully own the game you have purchased, can you own the modification of it that you have produced? This has been an ongoing issue for videogames since the early 1980s, as Ms Pac-Man – one of the most popular arcade games ever produced – did in fact start as an unapproved ‘enhancement board’ (created by two MIT students), to be applied to the original Pac-Man arcade cabinet. This was not a unique stand alone game; the students intentions were to sell the enhancement as their own work (which technically it was) however Atari threatened this with major legal action, but eventually settled for a development deal (Kent 2001 p167-173). While the music industry has battled with the effects of digitalisation, resisting sampling and re-distribution, even this early example illustrates how commercial gaming employs these processes to strengthen its cultural hegemony (ibid p170).

Yet perhaps because of the ephemeral form of software, if not controlled, unofficial enhancement could have had major repercussions for a commercial consumer industry. The outcomes of such action can be seen to be perfected in Valve Software’s online intervention in the user made mods for Half Life and its sequel. With this move, the diversity of modding now sits condensed under the banner of the ‘commercial prosumer’ (Kline et al 2003 p14), where:

“In production it demonstrates the foundation of a new industry built on the mobilization of an elite immaterial workforce, whose activities are supported by a penumbra of vital but un- or low paid activities conducted either by volunteer prosumers… At the level of production, they reveal the dependence of new media on forms of « dot.communist » activity, such as open source and freeware, and the implosion of the commodity form under the pressure of the escalating piracy inherent to networks. More generally, the digital socialization of youth through gaming discloses a subversive face in a proliferation of cyberactivist and hacktivist practices that both explode within game culture and overspill into more manifestly political spheres.�? (Dyer-Witheford 2002).

This is certainly true of the feminist Art-games that Holmes (2003) considers to be creating a new space for critique of contemporary society and culture. Just as industrial capitalism was defined by the class struggle at the site of the means of production, between capitalist owner and proletariat wage labourer, so to is post-industrial society defined by a similar struggle. This struggle is typical of a society of consumption, seen most clearly in the antagonism between the hegemony of the culture industry and the desires of its consumers. While alienated labour has largely remained, it is not revolution but productive consumption that has now become regarded as the road to a non-alienated common existence. And yet consumption alone does not produce anything:

“Only the real negation of culture can inherit culture’s meaning. Such negation can no longer remain cultural. It is what remains, in some manner, at the level of culture – but it has a quite different sense�?, (Debord 1994 Thesis 210).

However this radical negation may be found through customisation. For Benjamin (1990) access to art through mass reproductions held the ability to enlighten individuals in such a way that quickly and “to an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.�? (p218). Today we might argue that the once individually customised commodity has now become the commodity designed for customisation, not only that, in addition as new customisations appear they are increasingly created with one eye on being commoditised. The era of mass reproduction of art, of the mass of copies that lack the aura of their original, has now been replaced by the era of the customisable artistic commodity, each an individually authored original in its own way. Art available for the people has now become art by the people, or so the culture industry promises.

Following this, Barbrook’s observations on the way Net users interact within its mixed economy is even more appropriate in relation to those involved with the culture of videogame modification, where online-communism really is sponsored by corporate-capital and “without even consciously having to think about it, this person would have successively been a consumer in a market, a citizen of a state and an anarcho-communist within a gift economy�?, (1998 p5). The most striking feature within the duality of this situation is the corrosion of the boundry between alienated and non-alienated labour; for as Lazzarato notes, “Immaterial labour… makes immediately apparent something that material production had ‘hidden’, namely, that labour not only produces commodities, but first and foremost it produces the capital relation�?, (2005 p3). Yet modification crosses many times between the dual forms of immaterial labour, from social relation to capital relation and back again. Videogame commodities are produced and sold, then modified and distributed as gifts, and finally these gifts may be incorporated (with or without an exchange of capital) into future commodities; the contradictions here complicate existing classifications of alienated labour . So while videogames are but one aspect of today’s consumer society, modification represents a general trend of increasing complexity which:

“As Capitalism’s ever-intensifying implosion of alienation at all levels makes it increasingly hard for workers to recognise and name their own impoverishment… the revolutionary organisation must learn that it can no longer combat alienation by means of alienated forms of struggle�?, (Debord 1994: Thesis 122).

There are undeniable benefits and problems in the flattening of the lines of production and distribution into a many-to-many system where consumers can access tools for customisation; and for very little financial outlay distribute their re-workings to their peers digitally. If this sounds incredibly utopian then we must not forget that the freedom to innovate and explore within the homogenized borders of the culture industry is slight and narrowing rapidly with the ever increasing intervention of software producers channelling modification projects down the well walked paths of militarised gameplay so prevalent today. Even the most successful and sophisticated mods are often little more than a scenario change (be it Star Wars or the plights of asylum seekers) for a commercial shoot-em-up or tactical military war game. There is opportunity for development within videogame culture through modification, and the potential is greater than it has been for most past forms of tactical and community media because of digital gaming’s structural compatibility with the distribution and community strengths of the Internet. As a mainly de-politicised, consumer friendly, détournement-style practice, videogame modification is unlikely to generate any radical change, yet as Benjamin might have noted, its processes do illustrate the possibilities that customisable digital media offers for all art and popular culture.

Download a Microsoft Word version of this dissertation, including all illustrations and footnotes

HOW THE AMERICANS ARE SUPERSEDING CAPITALISM IN CYBERSPACE

‘…is the impact of the …information revolution on capitalism not the ultimate exemplification of… Marx’s thesis that: “at a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces come into conflict with the existing relations of production…”? …does the prospect of the… “global village” not signal the end of market relations… at least in the sphere of digitalised information?’ (Zizek 1998: 33-4)

Ghosts in the Machine

A spectre is haunting the Net: the spectre of communism. Reflecting the extravagance of the new media, this spectre takes two distinct forms: the theoretical appropriation of Stalinist communism and the everyday practice of cyber-communism. Whatever their professed political beliefs, all users of the Net enthusiastically participate in this left-wing revival. Whether in theory or practice, each of them desires the digital transcendence of capitalism. Yet, at the same time, even the most dedicated leftist can no longer truly believe in communism. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union, this ideology is completely discredited. The promises of social emancipation turned into the horrors of totalitarianism. The dreams of industrial modernity culminated in economic stagnation. Far from representing the future, communism seems like a relic from the past.

Above all, the Soviet Union was incapable of leading the information revolution. The political and economic structures of Stalinist communism were far too inflexible and secretive for the emergence of the new technological paradigm. How could the totalitarian party allow everyone to produce media without its supervision? How could the central planning agency permit producers to form collaborative networks without its authorisation? A much more open and spontaneous society was needed to develop the Net. Excited by the libertarian potential of further digital convergence, the proponents of almost every radical ideology have recently updated their positions. Yet, among the cyber-feminists, communication guerrillas, techno-nomads and digital anarchists, there is no new version of the once dominant current of Stalinist communism. Even its former acolytes admit that the Soviet Union exemplified the worst failures of Fordism: authoritarianism, conformity and environmental degradation. (Hall and Jacques: 1989)

The ideologues of American neo-liberalism have seized this opportunity to lay claim to the future. For almost thirty years, they have been predicting that new technologies were about to create a utopian civilisation: the information society. For instance, the Tofflers have long been convinced that the convergence of computing, telecommunications and the media would free individuals from the clutches of both big business and big government. (Toffler 1980) Similarly, Ithiel de Sola Pool prophesied that interactive television would allow everyone to make their own media and participate in political decision-making. (de Sola Pool 1983) Despite their radical rhetoric, these conservative pundits were primarily interested in proving that information technologies would force the privatisation and deregulation of all economic activity. Their post-Fordist future was the return to the liberal past. When the Net became popular, this free market fundamentalism was quickly adapted to fit the new situation. Most famously, Wired argues that the ‘New Paradigm’ of unregulated competition between cyber-entrepreneurs is extending individual freedom and encouraging technological innovation in the USA. (Barbrook and Cameron 1996) As the Net spreads across the world, the material and spiritual values of American neo-liberalism will eventually be imposed on the whole of humanity. As Louis Rossetto – the founding editor of Wired – explains:

‘This new world [of the Net] is characterised by a new global economy that is inherently anti-hierarchical and decentralist, and that disrespects national boundaries or the control of politicians and bureaucrats… and by a global, networked consciousness… that is turning… bankrupt electoral politics… into a dead end.’ (Hudson 1996: 30)

 

The Cult of the Digerati

The narcissism of the Californian ideology reflects the self-confidence of a triumphant nation. With the Cold War won, the USA no longer has any serious military or ideological competitors. Even its economic rivals in the EU and East Asia have been surpassed. According to most commentators, the renaissance of American hegemony is founded upon its lead in new information technologies. No country can match the ‘smart weapons’ of the US military. Few companies can compete against the ‘smart machines’ used by American corporations. Above all, the USA dominates the cutting-edge of technological innovation: the Net. Realising the American dream, a lucky few are making huge fortunes from floating their hi-tech companies on Wall Street. (Greenwald 1998) Mesmerised by the commercial potential of e-commerce, many others are speculating their savings on new media share issues.

‘Internet stocks… may be the hottest things since the Dutch tulip-bulb craze in the 1600s’. (Kadlec 1999: 1)

Despite all the wealth being generated by technological innovation, the division between rich and poor continues to widen in the USA. (Elliott 1999) In contrast with the European and East Asian forms of capitalism, American neo-liberalism can successfully combine economic progress with social immobility. Ever since the 1789 French revolution, conservatives have searched for this union of opposites: reactionary modernism. (Herf 1984) Although necessary for the survival of capitalism, the social implications of economic growth have always frightened the Right. Over the long-run, continual industrialisation slowly erodes class privileges. As their incomes rise, ordinary people can increasingly determine the political concerns and cultural attitudes of society. As a result, successive generations of conservatives have faced the dilemma of reconciling economic expansion with social stasis. Despite deep ideological differences, they have always proposed the same solution: the formation of a hi-tech aristocracy. (Nietzsche 1961; Ortega y Gasset 1932)

The earliest versions of this reactionary fantasy emphasised the hierarchical division of labour under Fordism. Although many skills were destroyed by the industrial system, new specialisms were simultaneously created. Within Fordism, engineers, bureaucrats, teachers and other professionals formed an intermediate layer between management and the shopfloor. (Elger 1979) Unlike most employees, this section of the working class received high incomes and escaped subordination to the assembly-line. Fearful of losing their limited privileges, some professionals became enthusiastic supporters of reactionary modernism. Instead of fighting for social equality, they dreamt of founding a new aristocracy: the technocracy.

‘Reason, science, and technology are not inert processes by which men [and women] discover, communicate, and apply facts disinterestedly and without passion, but means by which, through systems, some men [and women] organise and control the lives of other men [and women] according to their conceptions as to what is preferable.’ (Israel 1972: 2-3)

During the boom years of Fordism, the new ruling class was supposedly being formed by the managers and other professionals from large corporations and government departments. (Burnham 1945) However, when the economy went into crisis in the early-1970s, right-wing intellectuals were forced to look for supporters amongst other sections of the intermediate layer. Inspired by Marshall McLuhan, they soon discovered the growing number of people developing new information technologies. (McLuhan 1964) For almost three decades, conservative gurus have been predicting that the new ruling class would be composed of venture capitalists, innovative scientists, hacker geniuses, media stars and neo-liberal ideologues: the digerati. (Bell 1973; Toffler 1980; Kelly 1994) Seeking to popularise their prophecies, they always claim that every hi-tech professional has the opportunity to become a member of this new aristocracy. Within the convergent industries, skilled workers are essential for the development of original products, such as software programs and website designs. In common with many of their peers, most digital artisans suffer from the insecurity of contract employment. However, they also are better paid and have greater autonomy over their work. As in the past, this ambiguous social position can encourage gullibility towards reactionary modernism. Chasing the American dream, many hi-tech workers hope to make millions from founding their own company. Instead of identifying with their fellow employees, they aspire to join the digerati: the new technocracy of the Net. (Kroker and Weinstein 1994)

Unlike in earlier forms of conservatism, this desire for domination over others is no longer openly expressed in the Californian ideology. Instead, its gurus claim that the rule of the digerati will benefit everyone. For they are the inventors of sophisticated machines and the improvers of production methods. They are pioneering the hi-tech services which will eventually be enjoyed by the whole population. Over time, the digerati will transform the restrictions of Fordism into the freedoms of the information society. The compromises of representative democracy will be replaced by personal participation within the ‘electronic town hall’. The limits on personal creativity in the existing media will be overcome by interactive forms of aesthetic expression. Even the physical confines of the body will be transcended within cyberspace. In the Californian ideology, the autocracy of the few in the short-term is necessary for the liberation of the many in the long-term. (Toffler 1980; Kelly 1994; Hudson 1996; Dyson 1997)

‘Not haves and have-nots – [but have-nows and] have-laters.’ (Rossetto 1996)

 

The Liberating Minority

What is now expected from the digerati in the age of the Net was once predicted about other heroic elites in the times of steel and electricity. Ever since the late-nineteenth century, science fiction novelists have fantasised about a small group of scientists and philosophers inventing the technological fix for the problems of society. (Bellamy 1982; Wells 1913) Among political activists, this faith in the leading role of the enlightened minority has an even older pedigree. At the peak of the French revolution in the 1790s, the Jacobins decided that the democratic republic could only be created by a revolutionary dictatorship. Although their regime was fighting for political and cultural freedom, substantial sections of the population violently resisted the modernisation of French society. According to the Jacobins, the minds of these traditionalists had been corrupted by the aristocracy and the clergy. The revolutionary dictatorship was needed not only to crush armed rebellions, but also to popularise the principles of republican democracy. For only once everyone had been educated could all citizens participate in political decision-making. The tyranny of the minority in the short-term would lead to democracy for the majority in the long-term. (Brinton 1961; Barbrook 1995: 19-37)

Although the Jacobins only held power for a few years, their example has inspired revolutionary movements for generations. In many countries, radical groups have faced the identical problem of transforming traditional communities into industrial societies. Whatever their ideological differences, every revolutionary minority had the same mission: leading the masses towards modernity. By the mid-nineteenth century, the European Left had realised that this goal of political and cultural emancipation could only be achieved through economic progress. Henri de Saint-Simon had explained that the power of the aristocracy and clergy was founded upon agriculture. If the economy could be modernised, wealth and power would inevitably transfer to members of the new industrial professions: entrepreneurs, workers, politicians, artists and scientists. Like the Jacobins, Saint-Simon argued that this new elite shouldn’t just look after its own interests. For these modernisers also had the historical task of liberating their less-fortunate fellow citizens from poverty and ignorance. By creating economic abundance, the enlightened minority would enable everyone to enjoy happy and productive lives.

‘Politics should now be nothing more than the science of providing people with as many material goods and as much moral satisfaction as possible.’ (Saint-Simon and Halévy 1975: 280)

Inspired by Saint-Simon, early socialists believed that economic growth would inevitably lead to political and cultural emancipation. Under capitalism, there had to be continual improvements in the methods and machinery used to make goods and services: the forces of production. Over time, these advances were slowly undermining the private ownership of business: the relations of production. According to this version of Saint-Simon, the increasing interdependence of the modern economy would eventually force the adoption of more collective forms of social organisation. Whatever their current difficulties, the parliamentary parties of the European Left were confident of eventual victory. Sooner or later, the development of the forces of production would democratise the relations of production. (Marx 1970: 20-21; Engels 1975: 74-101)

By the mid-twentieth century, this Marxist remix of Saint-Simon had also been appropriated by apologists of totalitarianism. Even before seizing power, V.I. Lenin had argued that revolutionary intellectuals should form a prototype of the Jacobin dictatorship: the vanguard party. (Lenin 1975) Under the old order, the minds of most people were filled with incorrect ideologies from right-wing newspapers, churches and other cultural institutions. The enlightened minority had the historical duty of leading these ignorant masses towards the utopian future. After the 1917 Russian revolution, Lenin and his followers were able to create a modernising dictatorship. Like its predecessor in 1790s France, this new regime was committed to fighting against reactionary forces and to educating the whole population. (Lenin 1975a) In addition, the revolutionary dictatorship had acquired an even more important task: the industrialisation of the Russian economy. Appropriating the analysis of Saint-Simon and his Marxist interpreters, Lenin claimed that economic modernisation would eventually lead to political and cultural liberation. By imposing authoritarian rule in the short-term, the Russian revolutionaries hoped to construct participatory democracy in the long-run. (Lenin 1932; Bukharin 1971)

This determination to modernise the economy soon led to the removal of all political and cultural freedoms. The promise of eventual emancipation justified the murder and imprisonment of millions. The creativity of artists was reduced to making propaganda for the totalitarian party. The modernising dictatorship had even lost interest in improving the living conditions of the masses. (Ciliga 1979: 261-291) Instead, the Soviet leadership became obsessed with the introduction of new technologies: the mechanical proof of increasing productive forces. By the early-1930s, Josef Stalin – the successor of Lenin – was measuring progress towards the utopian future by rises in the output of industrial goods: steel, cars, tractors and machine-tools. (Stalin 1954: 512-520) Economic development had become an end in itself.

‘The results of the Five-Year Plan [of industrialisation] have shown that the capitalist system… has become obsolete and must give way to another, higher, Soviet, socialist system…’ (Stalin 1954: 541-542)

Back in the nineteenth century, there had been no clear definition of communism. While Mikhail Bakunin had found its antecedents within peasant communities, Karl Marx believed that the new system was prefigured by industrial co-operatives. (Bakunin 1973: 182-194; Marx 1959: 435-441) But, after the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, there could no longer be any doubt about the correct interpretation of communism. Across the world, almost every revolutionary movement embraced some variant of the Stalinist creed. The radical intellectuals must form a vanguard party to overthrow the existing order. Once in power, this revolutionary minority had to set up the modernising dictatorship. As well as providing security and education, the totalitarian state would organise the rapid development of the economy. (Djilas 1966) Almost all radicals believed that this Stalinist version of communism had been proved both in the factory and on the battlefield. Once the Cold War started, any other interpretations were marginalised. For nearly fifty years, the imperial rivalry between the two superpowers was expressed as a fierce ideological conflict: Russian communism versus American capitalism.

Stalin in Silicon Valley

During the Cold War, each side claimed that its particular socio-economic structures represented the future of all humanity. Despite championing rival systems, the apologists of both superpowers still shared a common – and unacknowledged – theoretical source: Saint-Simon. Ever since the 1917 revolution, the Russian state had been using his futurist prophecies to justify its actions. Learning from its Cold War opponent, the US government began making similar claims about its policies. Although promoting liberal capitalism, American propagandists enthusiastically mimicked the theoretical rhetoric of Stalinist communism. The power of the minority of capitalists was in the long-term interests of the majority of the population. Any flaws in American society would be soon solved by further economic growth. Above all, the utopian potential of the USA was proved by continual introduction of new technologies: the symbol of increasing productive forces. (Rostow 1971) Alongside their military-political contest over ‘spheres of influence’, the two superpowers also competed over who represented the future.

The collapse of the Soviet Union didn’t end the theoretical influence of Stalinist communism over right-wing American intellectuals. On the contrary, the global mission of the USA had been confirmed by victory over its totalitarian rival. According to one apologist, American neo-liberalism is now the realisation of the Hegelian ‘end of history’. Although wars and conflicts will continue, there is no longer any alternative form of socio-economic system. (Fukuyama 1992) For the proponents of the Californian ideology, this narcissistic assumption is proved by American dominance over the cutting-edge of economic modernity: the Net. If other countries also want to enter the information age, they will have to imitate the peculiar social system of the USA. Like its Cold War predecessors, this contemporary celebration of American neo-liberalism appropriates many theoretical assumptions from Stalinist communism. Once again, the enlightened minority is leading the ignorant masses towards a utopian civilisation. Any suffering caused by the introduction of information technologies is justified by the promise of future liberation. (Hudson 1996: 33) Echoing the Russian tyrant, the digerati even measure progress towards utopia by increasing ownership of modern artefacts: home computers, beepers, mobile phones and laptops. (Katz 1997: 71-72) Although the Soviet Union has long disappeared, the proponents of the Californian ideology are still appropriating the theoretical legacy of Stalinist communism:

vanguard party	digerati
The Five-Year Plan	The New Paradigm
boy-meets-tractor	nerd-meets-Net
Third International	Third Wave
Moscow	Silicon Valley
Pravda	Wired
party line	unique thought
Soviet democracy	electronic town halls
Lysenkoism	memetics
society-as-factory	society-as-hive
New Soviet Man	post-humans
Stakhanovite norm-busting	overworked contract labour
purges	downsizing
Russian nationalism	Californian chauvinism

 

The Revenge of Saint-Simon

Across the industrialised world, this conservative appropriation of Stalinism now dominates discussions about the Net. Every guru celebrates the emergence of the new technocracy: the digerati. Every pundit claims that these pioneers of the Net are building a new utopia: the information society. Yet, like their Soviet predecessors, contemporary right-wing intellectuals can only produce corrupted versions of Saint-Simon’s prophecy. While this socialist philosopher wanted economic progress to liberate everyone, these proponents of reactionary modernism exclude the majority of the population from their hi-tech future. For the privileges of the digerati depend upon the subordination of the unenlightened masses. In the Californian ideology, permanent technological revolution is always identified with unchanging social hierarchy. However, without the promise of eventual redemption, economic modernisation becomes an end in itself. Once again, conservative philosophers are promising an imaginary future to dissuade people from improving their lived present.

Although always imminent, the arrival of the information society must be perpetually postponed. As in the former Soviet Union, the prophecy of Saint-Simon is never supposed to be actually realised within the USA. On the contrary, the development of the forces of production is designed to reinforce the existing relations of production. For both public and private institutions only introduce new information technologies to advance their own interests. Back in the 1960s, the US military funded the invention of the Net to fight nuclear wars. Ever since the 1970s, financial markets have used computer networks to impose their hegemony over the entire world. During the last few years, both capitalist companies and government departments have adopted the Net to improve communications with their employees, contractors and clients. At the moment, every speculator on Wall Street is looking for the cyber-entrepreneur who is building the next Microsoft. Despite all the utopian predictions of the digerati, there appears to be nothing inherently emancipatory in the convergence of computing, telecommunications and the media. Like earlier forms of capitalism, the information society remains dominated by the hierarchies of the market and the state. (Schiller 1995; Winston 1998: 321-336)

At the beginning of the new millennium, American neo-liberalism seems to have successfully achieved the contradictory aims of reactionary modernism: economic progress and social immobility. Because the long-term goal of liberating everyone will never be reached, the short-term rule of the digerati can last forever. Yet, as in the former Soviet Union, this dialectic of development and stasis is inherently unstable. By modernising agricultural societies, the ruling parties of Stalinist communism slowly destroyed the foundations of their own power. Over time, the relations of production formed by totalitarianism became incompatible with the continual expansion of the forces of production. At this historical moment, Saint-Simon finally had his revenge on his false disciples.

‘The [Stalinist] communist revolution… has brought about a measure of industrial civilisation to vast areas of Europe and Asia. In this way, material bases have actually been created for a future freer society. Thus, while bringing about the most complete despotism, the [Stalinist] communist revolution has also created the basis for the abolition of despotism.’ (Djilas 1966: 41-42)

Like its erstwhile opponent, American neo-liberalism is now also being undermined by the development of the forces of production. As predicted by Saint-Simon, the full potential of recent technological and social advances cannot be realised within the traditional hierarchies of capitalism. According to the proponents of the Californian ideology, the Net is founded upon the buying and selling of information goods and services. Only through market competition can individual desires be satisfied. Yet, when they go on-line, Net users are primarily engaged in giving and receiving information as gifts. Quite spontaneously, people are adopting more democratic methods of working together within cyberspace.

Fulfilling the prophecy of Saint-Simon, these new relations of production have emerged at the cutting-edge of economic progress: the Net. Not surprisingly, they are being pioneered by a privileged minority of the world’s population: people with access to computer-mediated communications technologies. As a result, these new ways of working are most widespread within the leading capitalist nation: the USA. The technological and social preconditions for the realisation of Saint-Simon’s prophecy are now present. While conservative ideologues remain entranced by the theoretical legacy of Stalinist communism, their fellow Americans are discovering the practical benefits of a new version of this concept: cyber-communism.

‘Gift cultures are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in populations that do not have significant material-scarcity problems with survival goods.’ (Raymond 1998: 9)

The gift economy of the Net emerges from the technological and social advances catalysed by capitalist modernisation. Over the last three hundred years, the reproduction, distribution and manipulation of information has become slowly easier through a long process of mechanisation. A manually-operated press produced copies which were relatively expensive, limited in numbers and impossible to alter without recopying. After generations of technological improvements, the same quantity of text on the Net is easily circulated, copied and remixed. However, individuals need money and time to access this advanced communications system. While most of the world’s population still live in poverty, the inhabitants of the industrialised countries have reduced their hours of employment and increased their wealth over two centuries of economic growth. Ever since the advent of Fordism, mass production has depended upon workers having enough resources and leisure for mass consumption. (Negri 1988) Having disposable income and spare time, many workers within the metropolitan countries are now able to work on their own projects. (Gorz 1989) Only at this particular historical moment have the technical and social conditions developed sufficiently for the emergence of cyber-communism.

‘Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production.’ (Marx 1973: 700)

 

The Academic Gift Economy

The invention of the Net was the greatest irony of the Cold War. At the height of the struggle against Stalinist communism, the US military unwittingly bankrolled the creation of cyber-communism. Faced with the threat of nuclear attack on command and control structures, research money was given to scientists for experiments in computer-mediated communications. Although initially developed for the military, its inventors soon started using the Net for their own purposes. Crucially, scientists simply assumed that all information should be distributed for free over their new communications system. Unlike most other sectors of production, the gift economy has long been the primary method of socialising labour within universities. Funded by the state or by donations, scientists don’t have to turn their intellectual work directly into marketable commodities. Instead, research results are publicised by ‘giving a paper’ at specialist conferences and by ‘contributing an article’ to academic journals. By being quoted, scientists acquire personal recognition which enhances their career prospects within the university system. Despite increasing commercialisation, the giving away of findings remains the most efficient method of solving common problems within a particular scientific discipline.

‘The rationality of professional services is not the same as the rationality of the market… In the professions, and especially in science, the abdication of moral control would disrupt the system. The producer of professional services must be… responsible for his products, and it is fitting that he not be alienated from them.’ (Hagstrom 1982: 29)

Because of these pioneers, the gift economy became firmly embedded within the social mores of the Net. Over time, the charmed circle of its users has slowly grown from scientists through hobbyists to the general public. Each new member doesn’t just have to observe the technical rules of the system, but also adheres to certain social conventions. Without even thinking about it, people continually circulate information between each other for free. Although the Net has expanded far beyond the university, its users still prefer to co-operate together without the direct mediation of money.

There are even selfish reasons for adopting cyber-communism. By adding their own presence, every user is contributing something to the collective knowledge accessible to those already on-line. In return for this gift, each individual obtains potential access to all the information provided on the Net by others. Within a market economy, buyers and sellers tend to exchange commodities of equivalent worth. Yet, within the hi-tech gift economy, everyone receives far more from their fellow users than any individual could ever give away. (Ghosh 1998: 10) Not surprisingly, there is no popular clamour for imposing the equal exchange of the marketplace on the Net. Even the most dogmatic neo-liberals are happily participating within cyber-communism.

From the beginning, these gift relations of production were hardwired into the technological structure of the Net. Although funded by the military, scientists developed computer-mediated communications to facilitate the distribution and manipulation of their own research data. Working at universities, they never conceived of this information as a commodity. On the contrary, these academics were advancing their careers by giving away the results of their labour. Creating a communications system for their own use, they incorporated these working methods inside the technologies of the Net. (Geise 1996: 126-132) Above all, their invention depends upon the continual and unhindered reproduction of information. When on-line, every connection involves copying material from one computer to another. Once the first copy of a piece of information is placed on the Net, the cost of making each extra copy becomes almost zero. The architecture of the system presupposes that multiple copies of documents can easily be cached around the network. Although most of its users are now from outside the academy, the technical design of the Net still assumes that all information is a gift.

‘In an information space, we can consider the authorship of materials, and their perception; but… there is a need for the underlying infrastructure to be able to make copies simply for reasons of efficiency and reliability. The concept of “copyright” as expressed in terms of copies made makes little sense.’ (Berners-Lee 1996: 11)

 

The Eclipse of Copyright

Despite its huge popularity, the gift economy of the Net appears to be an aberration. Mesmerised by the Californian ideology, almost all politicians, executives and pundits are convinced that computer-mediated communications can only be developed through market competition between private enterprises. Like other products, information must be bought and sold as a commodity. This faith in market forces comes from historical experience. During the past three centuries, the mediation of commodity exchange has dramatically increased the productivity of labour. Responding to changes in prices, workers and resources are distributed towards the most efficient sectors of the economy. Competing against rival firms, entrepreneurs must continually improve the methods and means of production. When disciplined by the market, the self-interest of individuals can be directed towards increasing the wealth of the whole nation. (Smith 1970; Ricardo 1973)

The founding fathers of liberal economics discovered the central paradox of capitalism: individual property is the precondition of collective labour. In pre-modern societies, the aristocracy and clergy’s control over their lands was circumscribed by feudal rights and duties. The work of the peasantry was organised through the particular set of customs found in each domain. In contrast, the pioneers of capitalism transformed land into a tradable commodity: the enclosures. Once feudal bonds were removed, work of different types and in various locations could be regulated by a single mechanism: the marketplace. (Marx 1976: 873-930) Over the last few centuries, this modern form of collective labour has become ubiquitous. For the disciplines of market competition not only raised productivity within traditional trades, but also encouraged the development of new industries. Within the metropolitan countries, ordinary people are now using goods and services which were unavailable even to kings and popes in earlier times. However, each of these technological wonders has been shaped by the peculiar production relations of capitalism. As well as satisfying a human desire, every new product must also be sold as a commodity. Within a market economy, the enclosure of collective labour is perpetual. (Midnight Notes Collective 1990)

Under capitalism, most goods and services are produced as commodities. If they’re tangible objects or temporary actions, this social transformation is usually unproblematic. However, the commodification of intellectual labour has always been more difficult. While teaching and entertaining are like other services, publications are very different from other goods. Most of work to create an information product is expended in making the first copy. Even with the earliest printing presses, the cost of producing each subsequent copy is always much cheaper. In an open market, publishers would be encouraged to plagiarise existing works rather than paying for new material. The first capitalist nations quickly discovered a pragmatic solution to this economic problem: copyright. Although everyone could buy cultural artefacts, the right to reproduce them was limited by law. Like every other form of work, intellectual labour could now be enclosed into a commodity. (May 1998: 68-73)

‘Milton produced Paradise Lost as a silkworm produces silk, as the activation of his own nature. He later sold his product for £5 and thus became a merchant.’ (Marx 1976: 1044)

At the end of the twentieth century, copyright continues to provide the legal framework for information production. Many forms of intellectual labour are sold as commodities: books, music, films, games and software. The publishers of copyright-protected artefacts have become major industries: the multi-media multinationals. The international legal agreements protecting intellectual property are continually tightened: Berne, the WTO, TRIPS. Not surprisingly, most politicians, executives and pundits assume that the Net will inevitably be commercialised. Like radio broadcasting and cable television in earlier times, the moment of the gift economy can only be temporary. As in other cultural industries, intellectual labour within cyberspace has to be enclosed into information commodities. (May 1998a; Frow 1996, Porter 1995)

Anticipating this obsession, some pioneers did try to incorporate copyright protection within computer-mediated communications. For instance, Ted Nelson’s Xanadu project contained a sophisticated tracking and payment system for enforcing intellectual property. Using this software, individuals could work together by trading information commodities with each other. Yet, despite its technical brilliance, the Xanadu scheme failed for entirely social reasons. (Wolf 1995) Instead of encouraging participation, copyright protection proved to be a major obstacle to on-line collaboration. For most people benefit more from circulating information without payment than trading cultural commodities. By giving away their own personal efforts, Net users always receive the results of much greater amounts of labour in return from others. The scarcity of copyright cannot compete against the abundance of gifts. Far from intensifying commodification, the Net is the practical vindication of the old hacker slogan: “information wants to be free”. (Lang 1998; Ghosh 1998)

At the cutting-edge of modernity, the exchange of commodities now plays a secondary role to the circulation of gifts. The enclosure of intellectual labour is challenged by a more efficient method of working: disclosure. Within universities, scientists have long solved problems within their specialisms by pooling their findings. As the Net grows, more and more people are discovering the benefits of the gift economy. For they are not only have the opportunity to contribute their own information, but also gain access to the knowledge of many others. Everyday, the users of the Net are sending emails, taking part in listservers, making websites, contributing to newsgroups and participating within on-line conferences. No longer enclosed in the commodity, intellectual labour is continually disclosed as a gift. The passive consumption of fixed information products is transforming into a fluid process of ‘interactive creativity’. (Berners-Lee 1998: 5)

‘The logic of digital technology leads us in a new direction. Objects, as well as ideas, are no longer fixed, no longer tangible. In cyberspace, there is no weight, no dimensions; structure is dynamic and changing; size is both infinite and immaterial. In this space, stories are written that change with each new reader; new material can be added, and old material can be deleted. Nothing is permanent.’ (Kleinman 1996: 76)

The types of ‘interactive creativity’ between Net users are very varied. While some on-line encounters are only temporary, others evolve into long-lasting collaborations. Although many users only talk to close friends and family, some are building relationships which solely exist on the Net. If most on-line conversations are frivolous, other groups are meeting to talk about serious issues. Out of all these different types of ‘interactive creativity’, Net users have developed their own distinctive form of social organisation: the network community. (Rheingold 1994; Hamman 1999) By circulating gifts between each other, individuals are able to work together on common projects. For, as well as having fun, the members of network communities are engaged in a continuous process of collective labour. Everyone can send out gifts of texts, visuals, animations, music, games and other software to their on-line colleagues. In return, they will receive lots of virtual presents from their fellow community members. By contributing their own work, each individual potentially possesses the creative efforts of the whole network community. (Ghosh 1998; Kollock 1999)

The pleasure of giving and receiving gifts can radically change the personal experience of collective labour. Within the marketplace, individuals primarily collaborate through the impersonal exchange of commodities. The buyers and sellers should remain unconcerned about each other’s fate. In contrast, the circulation of gifts encourages friendships between its participants. The construction of a successful network community is always a labour of love. Working within cyber-communism can be not only more productive, but also more enjoyable than digital capitalism. According to Howard Rheingold, these social benefits of the hi-tech gift economy are not confined to the Net. Despite all their wealth, many Americans are suffering from the isolation and alienation imposed by market competition. Luckily, some can now find friendship and intimacy within network communities. Since there is no necessity for the enclosure of collective labour within cyberspace, Americans can compensate for the damage caused by their nation’s ‘…loss of a sense of a social commons.’ (Rheingold 1994: 12)

The results of ‘interactive creativity’ within network communities are often trivial and mundane. Yet, at the same time, some on-line collaborations are creating very sophisticated products. Among the most celebrated are the network communities working on free software. From the beginning, scientists developed the core programs of the Net as gifts. The exponential expansion of the system was only made possible by the absence of proprietary barriers. For instance, although the Xanadu project contained most of the technical capabilities of the Web, this prototype of computer-mediated communications lacked the ‘killer app’ of Tim Berners-Lee’s invention: the absence of copyright. Neither the program nor its products were designed to be commodities. (Berners-Lee 1996)

In recent years, the rapid growth of the Net has catalysed a exuberant revival of the hacker ethic. Increasingly frustrated with commercial products, techies have come together to write their own software. When enclosed by copyright, a program’s capabilities are frozen until the next version is made available. Even its bugs cannot be fixed. In contrast, when disclosed as a gift, this virtual machine can be continually modified, amended and improved by anyone with the appropriate programming skills. The product has become a process. Above all, each member of the network community developing a program potentially has access to the skills of all their colleagues. If one person can’t solve a software problem, others within the group will help find the solution. (Leonard 1998a) By participating within such ‘interactive creativity’, formerly isolated techies are now making friends across the world. Like other network communities, collective labour within free software development can be not only more efficient, but also more enjoyable than working on commercial projects. As technological convergence intensifies, this gift economy of the Net is now encroaching further into the market economy of computing. (Porterfield 1998) Starting from a prototype by Linus Torvalds, a network community of developers is building their own non-proprietary operating system: Linux. (Linux Online 1999) For the first time, Microsoft has a serious competitor for Windows. Enclosed by a capitalist monopoly, many American techies are working hard to perfect its pragmatic alternative: software cyber-communism.

‘…you assume that bugs are generally shallow phenomena – or, at least, that they turn pretty shallow when exposed to a thousand eager co-developers pounding on every single new release.’ (Raymond 1998a: 7)

The convergence of many different technologies around digital formats is also reinforcing the gift economies found in other areas of cultural production. According to the multi-media multinationals, the Net will soon have to adopt the methods of the marketplace. Protected by encryption and passwords, digital information will be traded as a commodity. However, these aspiring enclosers of the Net are already confronted by the partial decommodisation of their own cultural industries. For instance, the home-taping of music has existed for many decades. The continual advances in digital reproduction and the rapid spread of the Net are making this piracy of copyright material ever easier. (Chesterman and Lipman 1988: 36-45; Leonard 1998) Crucially, the most innovative forms of popular music now emerge from the creative appropriation of other people’s intellectual property: house, hip-hop, drum & bass. Instead of remaining frozen in a single recording, tunes and breaks can be repeatedly sampled, mixed and remixed. If someone has a good idea, many other musicians will try to refine the concept. Like the Net, contemporary DJ culture is also ‘interactive creativity’. (Garratt 1998; James 1997)

For years, the most popular word entered into search engines was quite predictable: ‘sex’. Yet, in 1999, the top request became the music format of the Net: ‘MP3′. (Wice 1999) For the commercial music industry, the minor problem of home-taping is amplifying into a major crisis. Since copying and distributing is now so easy, many people are giving away digital recordings not only to their friends, but also to complete strangers. As music is integrated within the Net, the scarcity of commodities is spontaneously transforming into the abundance of gifts. (Leonard 1998) As well as facilitating the piracy of existing recordings, technological convergence also deepens musical ‘interactive creativity’. Like many other people, musicians are working together, making friends and inspiring each other within network communities. By publishing their own material, they can offer their music as gifts to Net users across the world. From these on-line collaborations, they are inventing new forms of rhythmic expression: midi-jamming, interactive music, cyber-trance.

As other media technologies converge into the Net, all forms of cultural production are slowly integrating into the hi-tech gift economy. Even television and film-making will soon be transformed by the possibilities of ‘interactive creativity’. Despite their power and wealth, the multi-media multinationals can only inhibit this economic transformation. Quite spontaneously, the users of the Net are adopting more efficient and enjoyable ways of working together. At the dawn of the new millennium, many Americans are now experiencing the practical benefits of cyber-communism:

commodity	gift
enclosure	disclosure
copyright	piracy
fixed	fluid
product	process
proprietary	open source
digital encryption	free download
original recording	latest remix
scarcity	abundance
alienation	friendship
New Soviet Man	post-humans
market competition	network communities
e-commerce	cyber-communism

 

The Market on the Commons

Compared with the rest of humanity, the inhabitants of the USA are already very privileged. Although still denied adequate welfare provision, most Americans not only consume more goods and services, but also enjoy greater democratic liberties than the majority of the world’s population. Over the past two hundred years, the continual expansion and intensification of commodity exchange has massively raised the productivity of collective labour in the USA. Regulated by the federal government and local states, rival entrepreneurs have competed to build an increasingly complex and interdependent economic system. According to almost all American politicians, executives and pundits, the next stage of the marketisation of society is being pioneered at the cutting-edge of technology: the Net. As in the past, the enclosure of new types of collective labour will inevitably raise living standards and extend personal freedoms within the USA. There is no alternative to the organising principle of the existing relations of production: work-as-commodity.

Ironically, the revenge of Saint-Simon is now being visited upon his American false disciples. As in the former Soviet Union, constant increases in the forces of production are threatening the dominant relations of production. Far from being the apotheosis of commodity exchange, the social and technical structures of computer-mediated communications embody an alternative form of collective labour: the gift economy. If individuals were forced to collaborate primarily through e-commerce, their opportunities to participate within ‘interactive creativity’ would be very limited. The full potential of the productive forces of the Net can only be realised by adopting the most advanced relations of production: cyber-communism.

At such historical moments, the proponents of reactionary modernism are thrown into an existential crisis. Despite their deep ideological differences, almost all right-wing intellectuals have the same goal: economic development without social progress. Sometimes for decades, ruling elites can successfully combine these contradictory aims of reactionary modernism. However, the continual growth of the forces of production will eventually undermine the existing relations of production. Sooner or later, the supporters of reactionary modernism are forced to make a hard choice: economic growth or social stasis. For instance, the followers of Stalinist communism were confronted by this dilemma at the end of the 1980s. Wanting to catch up with their Western neighbours, most Eastern European politicians, executives and intellectuals accepted the demise of the totalitarian state which provided their livelihoods. In contrast, the Serbian ruling elite decided to choose another option: destroying the forces of production. Fearful of losing their wealth and power, they launched wars and ‘ethnic cleansings’ to block any further social and economic progress. Instead of moving towards the utopian future, their totalitarian state headed in another direction: ‘the flight from modernity’. (Perovic 1999)

Within the USA, there are also powerful groups championing reactionary anti-modernism: religious fundamentalists, white supremacists and the gun lobby. As in Serbia, some influential people are willing to sacrifice economic growth to maintain the existing social order. However, most of those with power and wealth would like to avoid to making this choice. Instead, they want to update reactionary modernism for the age of the Net. Within right-wing American politics, hi-tech neo-liberalism has long been the optimistic alternative to traditional conservatism. Far from fearing the future, its prophets confidently predict that economic progress will eventually liberate humanity. Unable to use the ‘L-word’ for peculiar historical reasons, American neo-liberals even describe themselves as ‘libertarians’: a moniker taken from revolutionary left-wing anarchists.

This optimistic form of conservatism is easily adapted for right-wing analyses of the Net. For instance, the proponents of the Californian ideology still believe that constant technological change can be reconciled with the preservation of social hierarchy. (Barbrook and Cameron 1996) Like their conservative forebears, these gurus often claim that their contradictory aims will be realised by mystical means: the Gaia mind, post-humans and memetics. More importantly, they also advocate a practical method for perpetuating reactionary modernism: the hybridisation of the commodity and the gift.

Like pioneers in the Wild West, cyber-entrepreneurs are seizing all opportunities to enclose the newly-opened electronic frontier. At the cutting-edge of convergence, the profits of commercial companies now depend upon the rapid expansion of the hi-tech gift economy. (Kelly 1997) The hardware and software for accessing the Net can be sold as commodities by large companies: IBM, Sun, Microsoft. The circulation of free information among users can be enclosed within commercial sites: AOL, Yahoo!, GeoCities. Instead of resisting all changes, the digerati must embrace some social advances to reap the material benefits of technological progress. The lucky few have discovered a new way of achieving the American dream: the enclosure of cyber-communist labour into digital capitalist property. (Leonard 1999) Most famously, this bizarre union of opposites underpins the frenzied speculation in Net stocks. Each moment of ‘interactive creativity’ is a potential source of profits. If the correct hybrid of gift and commodity could be found, collective labour would immediately transmute into individual wealth. Excited by the riches of some cyber-entrepreneurs, many Americans are now speculating on the same assumption about the Net: ‘…communism is… a generalisation and consummation of… private property.’ (Marx 1961: 99)

For nearly thirty years, the prophets of hi-tech neo-liberalism have identified economic growth with social stasis. In many sectors, they have advocated old-fashioned methods for raising profits: extending hours, reducing wages, speeding-up production, cutting welfare and increasing pollution. Yet, within the Net, these gurus champion the synthesis of both technological innovation and social progress. For the commodification of cyberspace is impossible without some accommodation with the gift economy. Even the increasing importance of e-commerce is facilitated by the non-commercial structure of the Net. The ‘cost of entry’ into the digital marketplace is so low due to the absence of proprietary barriers. Small companies now have access to computer-mediated-communications once only available to government agencies, financial institutions and multinational corporations. Cutting-out the middlemen, many providers of goods and services can increase their profits by dealing directly with suppliers and customers over the Net. Excited by these developments, the proponents of the Californian ideology believe that the freest of all free markets is now being held on the commons of cyberspace. (Kelly 1994; Hudson 1996; Dyson 1997)

 

The Purity of the Gift

Opposed to this invasion by commercial interests, some left-wing activists are reviving a purist vision of the gift. The enclosure of the Net will be prevented by refusing any compromise with the commodity. (Critical Art Ensemble 1996) This revolutionary position takes its inspiration from 1960s hippie radicalism. Over thirty years ago, many young people rebelled against the socio-economic systems of both the USA and the Soviet Union. The material benefits of modernity no longer compensated for the political authoritarianism and cultural conformity imposed by industrialism. Disillusioned with the hi-tech future, these hippies sought inspiration from the tribal past. While many were simply lifestyle tourists, others were looking for a revolutionary alternative to modernity. Crucially, some left-wing intellectuals believed that this utopia could be found in the gift economy of Polynesian tribes: the potlatch. (Mauss 1990)

For radical hippies, this gift economy was the complete antithesis of capitalism. Instead of accumulating surpluses, individuals in these primitive societies gained prestige by giving away their wealth at public celebrations. If market competition required alienating work to produce ever more goods and services, the potlatch involved the pleasurable destruction of excess resources. While the modern commodity imposed hierarchy and utilitarianism, the primitive gift encouraged equality and hedonism. Rejecting work-as-commodity, left-wing hippies proclaimed a new organising principle for their utopian society: waste-as-gift. (Situationist International 1981; Baudrillard 1975; Negri 1979)

Many years later, this revolutionary anti-modernism still influences left-wing analyses of computer-mediated communications. Although emerging at the cutting-edge of technology, the gift economy of the Net can easily be confused with the potlatch of primitive societies. These tribal attitudes are also be found within dance music, free parties, protest movements and other forms of ‘DIY culture’. (Brass, Koziell and Searle 1997; McKay 1998) Imitating their hippie elders, left-wing Net activists emphasise the autonomy of these gift relationships from the corruption of commodity exchange. Rejecting any hybridisation, they champion the destruction of private property through the piracy of copyright material: waste-as-gift. Instead of being bought and sold, information will become freely available to everyone participating within the on-line potlatch.

Unfortunately, this revival of revolutionary anti-modernism also has reactionary implications. As in earlier times, left-wing intellectuals are tempted to see themselves as a vanguard leading the unenlightened masses. Drawn from the intermediate layer, they champion the ‘refusal of work’ to symbolise their superiority over the rest of the working class. Although deprived of the Soviet Union, some members of the revolutionary minority will still apologise for foreign dictatorships which resist American hegemony. Despite the advent of new information technologies, old political habits are difficult to discard. The revolutionary rhetoric of hippie communism is haunted by the reactionary practice of Stalinist communism. (Barbrook 1998)

 

The American Road to Communism

Within the USA, this left-wing vision of the pure gift remains marginalised. Ever since independence, a fervent belief in private enterprise has defined American ‘exceptionalism’. During the Cold War, no patriot could support the revolutionary ideology of the national enemy. Even today, many people still virulently oppose the public provision of welfare services considered indispensable in other developed countries. (Lipset 1996) Yet, these same right-wing Americans are happily participating in the construction of cyber-communism. Quite spontaneously, they adopt the working methods which are most beneficial to their own interests. Sometimes, they want to engage in e-commerce. At other times, they prefer to collaborate within the hi-tech gift economy. Like everyone else, conservative Americans choose cyber-communism for pragmatic reasons.

Despite their addiction to free market nostrums, Americans have long preferred practical solutions over ideological correctness. Sceptical about the theoretical obsessions of Europeans, they have always been proud of their ‘Yankee pragmatism’. (de Tocqueville 1975: 3-20) Updating this tradition for the Net, most Americans simply ignore the widening discrepancy between their political beliefs and their everyday activities. Although forced to talk like neo-liberals, they often choose to act like communists within cyberspace. For the literal application of the Californian ideology would immediately remove many of the benefits of the Net. Not surprisingly, few Americans will openly admit to their pleasure in sinning against the national myth. While the reformist demand for a public health system remains obviously left-wing, the subversive implications of circulating information as gifts are literally unthinkable. Without any self-doubt, Eric Raymond can be simultaneously a passionate advocate of the decommodisation of software and ‘…a self-described neo-pagan [right-wing] libertarian who enjoys shooting semi-automatic weapons…’ (Leonard: 1998a: 2).

Among Americans, cyber-communism is the love that dares not speak its name. No one talks about what everyone is doing. Above all, the historical significance of their collective behaviour on the Net can never be discussed. Within everyday life, people have always given gifts to each other. Many social activities are already organised by voluntary labour and with donated resources. The DIY culture is the celebration of doing-things-for-yourself in all aspects of life from politics to music. (Hyde 1999; Brass, Koziell and Searle 1997) Now, with the advent of the Net, this gift economy is challenging market competition at the cutting-edge of modernity. For only these new relations of production can fully realise the social and technical potential of its advanced productive forces. When digital gifts are freely circulated, people are able to participate within ‘interactive creativity’. As information is incessantly reproduced, the quantity of collective labour embodied in each copy is soon reduced to almost nothing. Under these social and technical conditions, circulating information as gifts can be not only more enjoyable, but also more efficient than commodity exchange. Although appreciating the benefits of e-commerce, Americans are enthusiastically participating within an alternative form of collective labour: cyber-communism.

In earlier times, the abolition of capitalism was envisaged in apocalyptic terms: revolutionary uprisings, mass mobilisations and modernising dictatorships. In contrast, cyber-communism is now an unremarkable everyday experience within the USA. The users of the Net are spontaneously adopting more enjoyable and efficient ways of working together. Instead of destroying the market economy, Americans are engaged in the slow process of superseding capitalism. (Hegel 1873: 141-142; Marx 1961: 98-114) In this dialectical movement, hi-tech neo-liberals perfect the existing relations of production by developing e-commerce: work-as-commodity. Reacting against this enclosure of cyberspace, left-wing activists destroy information property within the on-line potlatch: waste-as-gift. For those nostalgic for ideological certainty, there can be no compromise between these contradictory visions of the Net.

Yet, the synthesis of these dialectical opposites must happen for pragmatic reasons. Often Net users benefit more from working together through circulating gifts than from taking part in e-commerce. Living within a prosperous society, many Americans are no longer solely motivated by monetary rewards. With sufficient time and money, they will also work to gain the respect of their peers for their efforts. Increasing numbers of people are now satisfying this desire for recognition within network communities. Individuals receive praise and friendship from their fellow-members by making excellent contributions to collective projects. Within the Net, the rise in the productive forces encourages a more advanced form of collective labour: work-as-gift. (Kohn 1998; Leonard: 1998a)

‘…Work is born from the Desire for Recognition… and it preserves itself and evolves in relation to this same Desire.’ (Kojève 1969: 230)

The dialectical process of superseding capitalism is marked by the evolving syntheses of gift and commodity within the Net. During this transition, neither the disclosure nor the enclosure of collective labour can be assumed. If the correct hybrid isn’t found, individuals working on a collective project can quickly disappear to more agreeable locations within cyberspace. Sometimes, they will look for monetary rewards. On many occasions, they will prefer the freedom of autonomous labour. Depending upon circumstances, both these desires need to be partially realised in a successful hybrid of gift and commodity. During the last two hundred years, the intimate bonds of kinship and friendship have simultaneously inhibited and underpinned the impersonal relationships needed for rapid economic growth. The modern has always co-existed with the traditional. Now, in the age of the Net, the exchange of commodities is being both intensified and prevented by the circulation of gifts. The modern must synthesise with the hyper-modern.

The gurus of the Californian ideology emphasise the survival of social hierarchy within these hybrid productive relations of the Net. Already, successful cyber-entrepreneurs begin their careers by giving away their most desirable products. If their brand is widely adopted, they hope to make money by providing supporting services and products to its users. A lucky few digerati can become very wealthy by selling shares to Wall Street speculators. (Cusumano and Yoffie 1998; Leonard 1999) Yet, even in this conservative synthesis of gift and commodity, copyright has ceased to be the precondition of information production. Every consumer is now won with promotional items. Unable to resist the technical possibilities of digital convergence, some neo-liberal ideologues accept the eventual disappearance of copyright. (Barlow 1994) Since plagiarism will soon become ubiquitous, cyber-entrepreneurs must adopt other ways of commodifying the Net: real-time services, advertising, merchandising. The hi-tech aristocracy can only protect their privileges by continually making gifts to the masses.

This hybridisation of productive relations is prevalent across the hi-tech industries. For instance, many people gain employment only after serving an apprenticeship within network communities. If their work is respected among their peers, they can join the emerging intermediate layer employed by e-commerce companies: the digital artisans. Although operating outside the academy, the gift of information still facilitates the sale of labour. According to the prophecies of Saint-Simon, innovative workers in advanced industries should be pioneering the economic and cultural conditions for social emancipation. The intermediate layer is the vanguard of modernity. Faithful to this role, digital artisans are making many technological and aesthetic advances. Despite having to sell their creativity for money, their ways of working are often egalitarian and collaborative. Once again, the intermediate layer is inventing the future.

Yet, even this synthesis is already being superseded at the cutting-edge of modernity. The heroic minority is no longer alone. After two centuries of economic growth, ordinary people are also able to adopt advanced productive relations. Within the Net, working together by circulating gifts is now a daily experience for millions of people. As well as in their jobs, individuals also collaborate on collective projects in their free time. Freed from the immediate disciplines of the marketplace, work can increasingly become a gift. The enlightened few are no longer needed to lead the masses towards the future. For the majority of Net users are already participating within the productive relations of cyber-communism. Everyday, they are sending emails, taking part in listservers, making websites, contributing to newsgroups and participating within on-line conferences. Having no need to sell information as commodities, they spontaneously work together by circulating gifts. All across the world, politicians, executives and pundits are inspired by the rapid expansion of e-commerce in the USA. Mesmerised by neo-liberal ideology, they fail to notice that most information is already circulating as gifts within the Net. Engaged in superseding capitalism, Americans are successfully constructing the utopian future in the present: cyber-communism.

‘No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. …The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – …an antagonism that emanates from the individuals’ social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of humanity accordingly closes with this social formation.’ (Marx 1970: 21-22)

The Positive:	The Negation:	The Negation of the Negation:
work-as-commodity	waste-as-gift	work-as-gift
e-commerce	potlatch	network communities
reactionary modernism	revolutionary anti-modernism	revolutionary modernism

 

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This article is dedicated to the USAF pilots who risked their lives in the 1999 Kosovar national independence struggle.

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Response

Ted Byfield, ‘THE GIF ECONOMY: How Several Layers of Lossy Images Are Synthesized into a Moving Image that Will Animate the Masses and Inspire Them to Do What They’re Doing Anyway, Namely, Clicking Their Way to Liberation; Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Californian Ideology’, nettime, 6th October 1999.

“Not to lie about the future is impossible and
one can lie about it at will” – Naum Gabo [1]

As the Dam Bursts…

At the end of the twentieth century, the long predicted convergence of the media, computing and telecommunications into hypermedia is finally happening.[2] Once again, capitalism’s relentless drive to diversify and intensify the creative powers of human labour is on the verge of qualitatively transforming the way in which we work, play and live together. By integrating different technologies around common protocols, something is being created which is more than the sum of its parts. When the ability to produce and receive unlimited amounts of information in any form is combined with the reach of the global telephone networks, existing forms of work and leisure can be fundamentally transformed. New industries will be born and current stock market favourites will swept away. At such moments of profound social change, anyone who can offer a simple explanation of what is happening will be listened to with great interest. At this crucial juncture, a loose alliance of writers, hackers, capitalists and artists from the West Coast of the USA have succeeded in defining a heterogeneous orthodoxy for the coming information age: the Californian Ideology.

This new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley. Promoted in magazines, books, TV programmes, websites, newsgroups and Net conferences, the Californian Ideology promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies. This amalgamation of opposites has been achieved through a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies. In the digital utopia, everybody will be both hip and rich. Not surprisingly, this optimistic vision of the future has been enthusiastically embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, innovative capitalists, social activists, trendy academics, futurist bureaucrats and opportunistic politicians across the USA. As usual, Europeans have not been slow in copying the latest fad from America. While a recent EU Commission report recommends following the Californian free market model for building the information superhighway, cutting-edge artists and academics eagerly imitate the post human philosophers of the West Coast’s Extropian cult.[3] With no obvious rivals, the triumph of the Californian Ideology appears to be complete.

The widespread appeal of these West Coast ideologues isn’t simply the result of their infectious optimism. Above all, they are passionate advocates of what appears to be an impeccably libertarian form of politics – they want information technologies to be used to create a new ‘Jeffersonian democracy’ where all individuals will be able to express themselves freely within cyberspace.[4] However, by championing this seemingly admirable ideal, these techno-boosters are at the same time reproducing some of the most atavistic features of American society, especially those derived from the bitter legacy of slavery. Their utopian vision of California depends upon a wilful blindness towards the other – much less positive – features of life on the West Coast: racism, poverty and environmental degradation.[5] Ironically, in the not too distant past, the intellectuals and artists of the Bay Area were passionately concerned about these issues.

Ronald Reagan v. the Hippies

On 15th May 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan ordered armed police to carry out a dawn raid against hippie protesters who had occupied People’s Park near the Berkeley campus of the University of California. During the subsequent battle, one man was shot dead and 128 other people needed hospital treatment.[6] On that day, the straight world and the counter-culture appeared to be implacably opposed. On one side of the barricades, Governor Reagan and his followers advocated unfettered private enterprise and supported the invasion of Vietnam. On the other side, the hippies championed a social revolution at home and opposed imperial expansion abroad. In the year of the raid on People’s Park, it seemed that the historical choice between these two opposing visions of America’s future could only be settled through violent conflict. As Jerry Rubin, one of the Yippie leaders, said at the time: ‘Our search for adventure and heroism takes us outside America, to a life of self-creation and rebellion. In response, America is ready to destroy us…’[7]

During in the 1960s, radicals from the Bay Area pioneered the political outlook and cultural style of New Left movements across the world. Breaking with the narrow politics of the post-war era, they launched campaigns against militarism, racism, sexual discrimination, homophobia, mindless consumerism and pollution. In place of the traditional left’s rigid hierarchies, they created collective and democratic structures which supposedly prefigured the libertarian society of the future. Above all, the Californian New Left combined political struggle with cultural rebellion. Unlike their parents, the hippies refused to conform to the rigid social conventions imposed on ‘organisation man’ by the military, the universities, the corporations and even left-wing political parties. Instead they openly declared their rejection of the straight world through their casual dress, sexual promiscuity, loud music and recreational drugs.[8]

The radical hippies were liberals in the social sense of the word. They championed universalist, rational and progressive ideals, such as democracy, tolerance, self-fulfillment and social justice. Emboldened by over twenty years of economic growth, they believed that history was on their side. In sci-fi novels, they dreamt of ‘ecotopia’: a future California where cars had disappeared, industrial production was ecologically viable, sexual relationships were egalitarian and daily life was lived in community groups.[9] For some hippies, this vision could only be realised by rejecting scientific progress as a false God and returning to nature. Others, in contrast, believed that technological progress would inevitably turn their libertarian principles into social fact. Crucially, influenced by the theories of Marshall McLuhan, these technophiliacs thought that the convergence of media, computing and telecommunications would inevitably create the electronic agora – a virtual place where everyone would be able to express their opinions without fear of censorship.[10] Despite being a middle aged English professor, McLuhan preached the radical message that the power of big business and big government would be imminently overthrown by the intrinsically empowering effects of new technology on individuals.

‘Electronic media…abolish the spatial dimension… By electricity, we everywhere resume person-to-person relations as if on the smallest village scale. It is a relation in depth, and without delegation of functions or powers… Dialogue supersedes the lecture.’[11]

Encouraged by McLuhan’s predictions, West Coast radicals became involved in developing new information technologies for the alternative press, community radio stations, home-brew computer clubs and video collectives. These community media activists believed that they were in the forefront of the fight to build a new America. The creation of the electronic agora was the first step towards the implementation of direct democracy within all social institutions.[12] The struggle might be hard, but ‘ecotopia’ was almost at hand.

The Rise of the Virtual Class

Who would have predicted that, in less than 30 years after the battle for People’s Park, squares and hippies would together create the Californian Ideology? Who would have thought that such a contradictory mix of technological determinism and libertarian individualism would becoming the hybrid orthodoxy of the information age? And who would have suspected that as technology and freedom were worshipped more and more, it would become less and less possible to say anything sensible about the society in which they were applied?

The Californian Ideology derives its popularity from the very ambiguity of its precepts. Over the last few decades, the pioneering work of the community media activists has been largely recuperated by the hi-tech and media industries. Although companies in these sectors can mechanise and sub-contract much of their labour needs, they remain dependent on key people who can research and create original products, from software programs and computer chips to books and TV programmes. Along with some hi-tech entrepreneurs, these digital artisans form the so-called ‘virtual class’: ‘…the techno-intelligentsia of cognitive scientists, engineers, computer scientists, video-game developers, and all the other communications specialists…’[13] Unable to subject them to the discipline of the assembly-line or replace them by machines, managers have organised such skilled workers through fixed-term contracts. Like the labour aristocracy of the last century, core personnel in the media, computing and telecoms industries experience the rewards and insecurities of the marketplace. On the one hand, these digital artisans not only tend to be well-paid, but also have considerable autonomy over their pace of work and place of employment. As a result, the cultural divide between the hippie and the organisation man has now become rather fuzzy. Yet, on the other hand, these skilled workers are tied by the terms of their contracts and have no guarantee of continued employment. Lacking the free time of the hippies, work itself has become the main route to self-fulfilment for much of the virtual class.[14]

The Californian Ideology offers a way of understanding the lived reality of these digital artisans. On the one hand, these core workers are a privileged part of the labour force. On the other hand, they are the heirs of the radical ideas of the community media activists. The Californian Ideology, therefore, simultaneously reflects the disciplines of market economics and the freedoms of hippie artisanship. This bizarre hybrid is only made possible through a nearly universal belief in technological determinism. Ever since the 1960s, liberals – in the social sense of the word – have hoped that the new information technologies would realise their ideals. Responding to the challenge of the New Left, the New Right has resurrected an older form of liberalism: economic liberalism.[15] In place of the collective freedom sought by the hippie radicals, they have championed the liberty of individuals within the marketplace. Yet even these conservatives couldn’t resist the romance of the new information technologies. Back in the 1960s, McLuhan’s predictions were reinterpreted as an advertisement for new forms of media, computing and telecommunications being developed by the private sector. From the 1970s onwards, Alvin Toffler, Ithiel de Sola Pool and other gurus attempted to prove that the advent of hypermedia would paradoxically involve a return to the economic liberalism of the past.[16] This retro-utopia echoed the predictions of Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and other macho sci-fi novelists whose future worlds were always filled with space traders, superslick salesmen, genius scientists, pirate captains and other rugged individualists.[17] The path of technological progress didn’t always lead to ecotopia – it could instead lead back to the America of the Founding Fathers.

Electronic Agora or Electronic Marketplace?

The ambiguity of the Californian Ideology is most pronounced in its contradictory visions of the digital future. The development of hypermedia is a key component of the next stage of capitalism. As Soshana Zuboff points out, the introduction of media, computing and telecommunications technologies into the factory and the office is the culmination of a long process of separation of the workforce from direct involvement in production.[18] If only for competitive reasons, all major industrial economies will eventually be forced to wire up their populations to obtain the productivity gains of digital working. What is unknown is the social and cultural impact of allowing people to produce and exchange almost unlimited quantities of information on a global scale. Above all, will the advent of hypermedia will realise the utopias of either the New Left or the New Right? As a hybrid faith, the Californian Ideology happily answers this conundrum by believing in both visions at the same time – and by not criticising either of them.

On the one hand, the anti-corporate purity of the New Left has been preserved by the advocates of the ‘virtual community’. According to their guru, Howard Rheingold, the values of the counter culture baby boomers are shaping the development of new information technologies. As a consequence, community activists will be able to use hypermedia to replace corporate capitalism and big government with a hi-tech gift economy. Already bulletin board systems, Net real-time conferences and chat facilities rely on the voluntary exchange of information and knowledge between their participants. In Rheingold’s view, the members of the virtual class are still in the forefront of the struggle for social liberation. Despite the frenzied commercial and political involvement in building the information superhighway, the electronic agora will inevitably triumph over its corporate and bureaucratic enemies.[19]

On the other hand, other West Coast ideologues have embraced the laissez-faire ideology of their erstwhile conservative enemy. For example, Wired – the monthly bible of the virtual class – has uncritically reproduced the views of Newt Gingrich, the extreme-right Republican leader of the House of Representatives, and the Tofflers, who are his close advisors.[20] Ignoring their policies for welfare cutbacks, the magazine is instead mesmerised by their enthusiasm for the libertarian possibilities offered by new information technologies. However, although they borrow McLuhan’s technological determinism, Gingrich and the Tofflers aren’t advocates of the electronic agora. On the contrary, they claim that the convergence of the media, computing and telecommunications will produce an electronic marketplace: ‘In cyberspace… market after market is being transformed by technological progress from a “natural monopoly” to one in which competition is the rule.’[21]

In this version of the Californian Ideology, each member of the virtual class is promised the opportunity to become a successful hi-tech entrepreneur. Information technologies, so the argument goes, empower the individual, enhance personal freedom, and radically reduce the power of the nation state. Existing social, political and legal power structures will wither away to be replaced by unfettered interactions between autonomous individuals and their software. These restyled McLuhanites vigorously argue that big government should stay off the backs of resourceful entrepreneurs who are the only people cool and courageous enough to take risks. In place of counter productive regulations, visionary engineers are inventing the tools needed to create a free market within cyberspace, such as encryption, digital money and verification procedures. Indeed, attempts to interfere with the emergent properties of these technological and economic forces, particularly by the government, merely rebound on those who are foolish enough to defy the primary laws of nature. According to the executive editor of Wired, the invisible hand of the marketplace and the blind forces of Darwinian evolution are actually one and the same thing.[22] As in Heinlein’s and Asimov’s sci-fi novels, the path forwards to the future seems to lead back to the past. The twenty-first century information age will be the realisation of the eighteenth century liberal ideals of Thomas Jefferson: ‘…the…creation of a new civilisation, founded in the eternal truths of the American Idea.’[23]

The Myth of the ‘Free Market’

Following the victory of Gingrich’s party in the 1994 legislative elections, this right-wing version of the Californian Ideology is now in the ascendant. Yet, the sacred tenets of economic liberalism are contradicted by the actual history of hypermedia. For instance, the iconic technologies of the computer and the Net could only have been invented with the aid of massive state subsidies and the enthusiastic involvement of amateurs. Private enterprise has played an important role, but only as one part of a mixed economy.

For example, the first computer – the Difference Engine – was designed and built by private companies, but its development was only made possible through a British Government grant of £17,470, which was a small fortune in 1834.[24] From Colossus to EDVAC, from flight simulators to virtual reality, the development of computing has depended at key moments on public research handouts or fat contracts with public agencies. The IBM corporation only built the first programmable digital computer after it was requested to do so by the US Defense Department during the Korean War. Ever since, the development of successive generations of computers has been directly or indirectly subsidised by the American military budget.[25] As well as state aid, the evolution of computing has also depended upon the involvement of DIY culture. For instance, the personal computer was invented by amateur techies who wanted to construct their own cheap machines. The existence of a gift economy amongst hobbyists was a necessary precondition for the subsequent success of products made by Apple and Microsoft. Even now, open source programs still play a vital role in advancing software design.

The history of the Internet also contradicts the tenets of the free market ideologues. For the first twenty years of its existence, the Net’s development was almost completely dependent on the much reviled American federal government. Whether via the US military or through the universities, large amounts of tax payers’ dollars went into building the Net infrastructure and subsidising the cost of using its services. At the same time, many of the key Net programs and applications were invented either by hobbyists or by professionals working in their spare-time. For instance, the MUD program which allows real-time Net conferencing was invented by a group of students who wanted to play fantasy games over a computer network.[26]

One of the weirdest things about the rightwards drift of the Californian Ideology is that the West Coast itself is a creation of the mixed economy. Government dollars were used to build the irrigation systems, highways, schools, universities and other infrastructural projects which makes the good life possible in California. On top of these public subsidies, the West Coast hi tech industrial complex has been feasting off the fattest pork barrel in history for decades. The US government has poured billions of tax dollars into buying planes, missiles, electronics and nuclear bombs from Californian companies. For those not blinded by laissez-faire dogmas, it was obvious that the Americans have always had state planning: only they call it the defence budget.[27] At the same time, key elements of the West Coast’s lifestyle come from its long tradition of cultural bohemianism. Although they were later commercialised, community media, new age spiritualism, surfing, lesbian & gay liberation, health food, recreational drugs, pop music and many other forms of cultural heterodoxy all emerged from the decidedly non-commercial scenes based around university campuses, artists’ communities and rural communes. Without its DIY culture, California’s myths wouldn’t have the global resonance which they have today.[28]

All of this public funding and community involvement has had an enormously beneficial albeit unacknowledged and uncosted effect on the development of Silicon Valley and other hi tech industries. Capitalist entrepreneurs often have an inflated sense of their own resourcefulness in developing new ideas and give little recognition to the contributions made by either the state, their own labour force or the wider community. All technological progress is cumulative it depends on the results of a collective historical process and must be counted, at least in part, as a collective achievement. Hence, as in every other industrialised country, American entrepreneurs have inevitably relied on state intervention and DIY initiatives to nurture and develop their industries. When Japanese companies threatened to take over the American microchip market, the libertarian computer capitalists of California had no ideological qualms about joining a state sponsored cartel organised to fight off the invaders from the East. Until the Net programs allowing community participation within cyberspace could be included, Bill Gates believed that Microsoft had no choice but to delay the launch of Windows ’95.[29] As in other sectors of the modern economy, the question facing the emerging hypermedia industry isn’t whether or not it will be organised as a mixed economy, but what sort of mixed economy it will be.

Freedom is Slavery

If its holy precepts are refuted by profane history, why have the myths of the free market so influenced the proponents of the Californian Ideology? Living within a contract culture, the digital artisans lead a schizophrenic existence. On the one hand, they cannot challenge the primacy of the marketplace over their lives. On the other hand, they resent attempts by those in authority to encroach on their individual autonomy. By mixing New Left and New Right, the Californian Ideology provides a mystical resolution of the contradictory attitudes held by members of the virtual class. Crucially, anti-statism provides the means to reconcile radical and reactionary ideas about technological progress. While the New Left resents the government for funding the military-industrial complex, the New Right attacks the state for interfering with the spontaneous dissemination of new technologies by market competition. Despite the central role played by public intervention in developing hypermedia, the Californian ideologues preach an anti-statist gospel of cybernetic libertarianism: a bizarre mish-mash of hippie anarchism and economic liberalism beefed up with lots of technological determinism. Rather than comprehend really existing capitalism, gurus from both New Left and New Right much prefer to advocate rival versions of a digital Jeffersonian democracy. For instance, Howard Rheingold on the New Left believes that the electronic agora will allow individuals to exercise the sort of media freedom advocated by the Founding Fathers. Similarly, the New Right claim that the removal of all regulatory curbs on the private enterprise will create a marketplace of ideas worthy of a Jeffersonian democracy.[30]

The triumph of this retro-futurism is a result of the failure of renewal in the USA during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Following the confrontation at People’s Park, the struggle between the American establishment and the counter culture entered into a spiral of violent confrontation. While the Vietnamese at the cost of enormous human suffering were able to expel the American invaders from their country, the hippies and their allies in the black civil rights movement were eventually crushed by a combination of state repression and cultural co-option.

The Californian Ideology perfectly encapsulates the consequences of this defeat for members of the virtual class. Although they enjoy cultural freedoms won by the hippies, most of them are no longer actively involved in the struggle to build ecotopia. Instead of openly rebelling against the system, these digital artisans now accept that individual freedom can only be achieved by working within the constraints of technological progress and the free market. In many cyberpunk novels, this autistic libertarianism is personified by the central character of the hacker, who is a lone individual fighting for survival within the virtual world of information.[31]

The drift towards the right by the Californian ideologues is the helped by their unquestioning acceptance of the liberal ideal of the self-sufficient individual. In American folklore, the nation was built out of a wilderness by free booting individuals the trappers, cowboys, preachers, and settlers of the frontier. The American revolution itself was fought to protect the freedoms and property of individuals against oppressive laws and unjust taxes imposed by a foreign monarch. For both the New Left and the New Right, the early years of the American republic provide a potent model for their rival versions of individual freedom. Yet there is a profound contradiction at the centre of this primordial American dream: individuals in this period only prospered through the suffering of others. Nowhere is this clearer than in the life of Thomas Jefferson – the chief icon of the Californian Ideology.

Thomas Jefferson was the man who wrote the inspiring call for democracy and liberty in the USA’s Declaration of Independence and – at the same time – owned nearly 200 human beings as slaves. As a politician, he championed the right of American farmers and artisans to determine their own destinies without being subject to the restrictions of feudal Europe. Like other liberals of the period, he thought that political liberties could be protected from authoritarian governments only by the widespread ownership of individual private property. The rights of citizens were derived from this fundamental natural right. In order to encourage self-sufficiency, he proposed that every American should be given at least 50 acres of land to guarantee their economic independence. Yet, while idealising the small farmers and businessmen of the frontier, Jefferson was actually a Virginian plantation-owner living off the forced labour of his slaves. Although the South’s ‘peculiar institution’ troubled his conscience, he still believed that the natural rights of man included the right to own human beings as private property. In Jeffersonian democracy, freedom for white folks was based upon slavery for black people.[32]

Forward Into the Past

Despite the eventual emancipation of the slaves and the victories of the civil rights movement, racial segregation still lies at the centre of American politics especially on the West Coast. In the 1994 election for governor in California, Pete Wilson, the Republican candidate, won through a vicious anti immigrant campaign. Nationally, the triumph of Gingrich’s Republican party in the legislative elections was based on the mobilisation of ‘angry white males’ against the supposed threat from black welfare scroungers, immigrants from Mexico and other uppity minorities. These politicians have reaped the electoral benefits of the increasing polarisation between the mainly white, affluent suburbanites – most of whom vote – and the largely non-white, poorer inner city dwellers – most of whom don’t vote.[33] Although they retain some hippie ideals, many Californian ideologues have found it impossible to take a clear stand against the divisive policies of the Republicans. This is because the hi tech and media industries are a key element of the New Right electoral coalition. In part, both capitalists and well-paid workers fear that the open acknowledgement of public funding of their companies would justify tax rises to pay for desperately needed spending on health care, environmental protection, housing, public transport and education. More importantly, many members of the virtual class want to be seduced by the libertarian rhetoric and technological enthusiasm of the New Right. Working for hi-tech and media companies, they would like to believe that the electronic marketplace can somehow solve America’s pressing social and economic problems without any sacrifices on their part. Caught in the contradictions of the Californian Ideology, Gingrich is – as one Wired contributor put it – both their ‘friend and foe’.[34]

In the USA, a major redistribution of wealth is urgently needed for the long term economic well being of the majority of the population. However, this is against the short term interests of rich white folks, including many members of the virtual class. Rather than share with their poor black or hispanic neighbours, the yuppies instead retreat into their affluent suburbs, protected by armed guards and secure with their private welfare services.[35] The deprived only participate in the information age by providing cheap non-unionised labour for the unhealthy factories of the Silicon Valley chip manufacturers.[36] Even the construction of cyberspace could become an integral part of the fragmentation of American society into antagonistic, racially-determined classes. Already ‘red-lined’ by profit hungry telephone companies, the inhabitants of poor inner city areas are now threatened with exclusion from the new on line services through lack of money.[37] In contrast, members of the virtual class and other professionals can play at being cyberpunks within hyper-reality without having to meet any of their impoverished neighbours. Alongside the ever widening social divisions, another apartheid is being created between the ‘information-rich’ and the ‘information-poor’. In this hi-tech Jeffersonian democracy, the relationship between masters and slaves endures in a new form.

Cyborg Masters and Robot Slaves

The fear of the rebellious ‘underclass’ has now corrupted the most fundamental tenet of the Californian Ideology: its belief in the emancipatory potentiality of the new information technologies. While the proponents of the electronic agora and the electronic marketplace promise to liberate individuals from the hierarchies of the state and private monopolies, the social polarisation of American society is bringing forth a more oppressive vision of the digital future. The technologies of freedom are turning into the machines of dominance.

At his estate at Monticello, Jefferson invented many clever gadgets for his house, such as a dumb waiter to deliver food from the kitchen into the dining room. By mediating his contacts with his slaves through technology, this revolutionary individualist spared himself from facing the reality of his dependence upon the forced labour of his fellow human beings.[38] In the late-twentieth century, technology is once again being used to reinforce the difference between the masters and the slaves.

According to some visionaries, the search for the perfection of mind, body and spirit will inevitably lead to the emergence of the post-human: a bio-technological manifestation of the social privileges of the virtual class. While the hippies saw self-development as part of social liberation, the hi-tech artisans of contemporary California are more likely to seek individual self-fulfillment through therapy, spiritualism, exercise or other narcissistic pursuits. Their desire to escape into the gated suburb of the hyper-real is only one aspect of this deep self-obsession.[39] Emboldened by supposed advances in Artificial Intelligence and medical science, the Extropian cult fantasises of abandoning the ‘wetware’ of the human state altogether to become living machines.[40] Just like Virek and the Tessier-Ashpools in William Gibson’s Sprawl novels, they believe that social privilege will eventually endow them with immortality.[41] Instead of predicting the emancipation of humanity, this form of technological determinism can only envisage a deepening of social segregation.

Despite these fantasies, white people in California remain dependent on their darker skinned fellow humans to work in their factories, pick their crops, look after their children and tend their gardens. Following the recent riots in Los Angeles, they increasingly fear that this underclass will someday demand its liberation. If human slaves are ultimately unreliable, then mechanical ones will have to be invented. The search for the holy grail of Artificial Intelligence reveals this desire for the Golem a strong and loyal slave whose skin is the colour of the earth and whose innards are made of sand. As in Asimov’s Robot novels, the techno-utopians imagine that it is possible to obtain slave like labour from inanimate machines.[42] Yet, although technology can store or amplify labour, it can never remove the necessity for humans to invent, build and maintain these machines in the first place. Slave labour cannot be obtained without somebody being enslaved.

Across the world, the Californian Ideology has been embraced as an optimistic and emancipatory form of technological determinism. Yet, this utopian fantasy of the West Coast depends upon its blindness towards – and dependence on – the social and racial polarisation of the society from which it was born. Despite its radical rhetoric, the Californian Ideology is ultimately pessimistic about fundamental social change. Unlike the hippies, its advocates are not struggling to build ecotopia or even to help revive the New Deal. Instead, the social liberalism of New Left and the economic liberalism of New Right have converged into an ambiguous dream of a hi-tech Jeffersonian democracy. Interpreted generously, this retro-futurism could be a vision of a cybernetic frontier where digital artisans discover their individual self-fulfillment in either the electronic agora or the electronic marketplace. However, as the zeitgeist of the virtual class, the Californian Ideology is at the same time an exclusive faith. If only some people have access to the new information technologies, Jeffersonian democracy can become a hi-tech version of the plantation economy of the Old South. Reflecting its deep ambiguity, the Californian Ideology’s technological determinism is not simply optimistic and emancipatory. It is simultaneously a deeply pessimistic and repressive vision of the future.

There are Alternatives

Despite its deep contradictions, people across the world still believe that the Californian Ideology expresses the only way forward to the future. With the increasing globalisation of the world economy, many members of the virtual class in Europe and Asia feel more affinity with their Californian peers than other workers within their own country. Yet, in reality, debate has never been more possible or more necessary. The Californian Ideology was developed by a group of people living within one specific country with a particular mix of socio-economic and technological choices. Its eclectic and contradictory blend of conservative economics and hippie radicalism reflects the history of the West Coast – and not the inevitable future of the rest of the world. For instance, the anti-statist assumptions of the Californian ideologues are rather parochial. In Singapore, the government is not only organising the construction of a fibre-optic network, but also trying to control the ideological suitability of the information distributed over it. Given the much faster growth rates of the Asian ‘tigers’, the digital future will not necessarily first arrive in California.[43]

Despite the neo-liberal recommendations of the Bangemann Report, most European authorities are also determined to be closely involved within the development of new information technologies. Minitel – the first successful public interactive network in the world – was the deliberate creation of the French state. Responding to an official report on the potential impact of hypermedia, the government decided to pour resources into developing ‘cutting edge’ technologies. In 1981, France Telecom launched the Minitel system which provided a mix of text-based information and communications facilities. As a monopoly, this nationalised telephone company was able to build up a critical mass of users for its pioneering on-line system by giving away free terminals to anyone willing to forgo paper telephone directories. Once the market had been created, commercial and community providers were then able to find enough customers or participants to thrive within the system. Ever since, millions of French people from all social backgrounds have happily booked tickets, chatted each other up and politically organised on line without realising they were breaking the libertarian precepts of the Californian Ideology.[44]

Far from demonising the state, the overwhelming majority of the French population believe that more public intervention is needed for an efficient and healthy society. In the recent presidential elections, almost every candidate had to advocate – at least rhetorically – greater state intervention to end social exclusion of the unemployed and homeless.[45] Unlike its American equivalent, the French revolution went beyond economic liberalism to popular democracy. Following the victory of the Jacobins over their liberal opponents in 1792, the democratic republic in France became the embodiment of the ‘general will’. As such, the state was believed to defend the interests of all citizens, rather than just to protect the rights of individual property owners. The discourse of French politics allows for collective action by the state to mitigate – or even remove – problems encountered by society. While the Californian ideologues try to ignore the taxpayers’ dollars subsidising the development of hypermedia, the French government can openly intervene in this sector of the economy.[46]

Although its technology is now increasingly dated, the history of Minitel clearly refutes the anti-statist prejudices of the Californian ideologues – and of the Bangemann committee. The digital future will be a hybrid of state intervention, capitalist entrepreneurship and DIY culture. Crucially, if the state can foster the development of hypermedia, conscious action could also be taken to prevent the emergence of the social apartheid between the ‘information rich’ and the ‘information poor’. By not leaving everything up to the vagaries of market forces, the EU and its member states could ensure that every citizen has the opportunity to be connected to a broadband fibre optic network at the lowest possible price.

In the first instance, this would be a much needed job creation scheme for semi-skilled labour in a period of mass unemployment. As Keynesian employment measure, nothing beats paying people to dig holes in the road and fill them in again.[47] Even more importantly, the construction of a fibre optic network into homes and businesses could give everyone access to new on line services and create a large vibrant community of shared expertise. The long term gains to the economy and to society from the building of the the Net would be immeasurable. It would allow industry to work more efficiently and market new products. It would ensure that education and information services were available to all. No doubt this construction project will create a mass market for private companies to sell existing information commodities films, TV programmes, music and books across the Net. At the same time, once people can distribute as well as receive hypermedia, a flourishing of community media and special interest groups will quickly emerge. For all this to happen, collective intervention will be needed to ensure that all citizens are included within the digital future.

The Rebirth of the Modern

Even if it is not in circumstances of their own choosing, it is now necessary for Europeans to assert their own vision of the future. There are varying ways forward towards the information society – and some paths are more desirable than others. In order to make an informed choice, European digital artisans need to develop a more coherent analysis of the impact of hypermedia than can be found within the ambiguities of the Californian Ideology. The members of the European virtual class must create their own distinctive self-identity.

This alternative understanding of the future starts from a rejection of any form of social apartheid – both inside and outside cyberspace. Any programme for developing hypermedia must ensure that the whole population can have access to the new on-line services. In place of New Left or New Right anarchism, a European strategy for developing the new information technologies must openly acknowledge the inevitability of some form of mixed economy – the creative and antagonistic mix of state, corporate and DIY initiatives. The indeterminacy of the digital future is a result of the ubiquity of this mixed economy within the modern world. No one knows exactly what the relative strengths of each component will be, but collective action can ensure that no social group is deliberately excluded from cyberspace.

A European strategy for the information age must also celebrate the creative powers of the digital artisans. Because their labour cannot be deskilled or mechanised, members of the virtual class exercise great control over their own work. Rather than succumbing to the fatalism of the Californian Ideology, we should embrace the Promethean possibilities of hypermedia. Within the limitations of the mixed economy, digital artisans are able to invent something completely new – something which has not been predicted in any sci-fi novel. These innovative forms of knowledge and communications will sample the achievements of others, including some aspects of the Californian Ideology. It is now impossible for any serious movement for social emancipation not to incorporate feminism, drug culture, gay liberation, ethnic identity and other issues pioneered by West Coast radicals. Similarly, any attempt to develop hypermedia within Europe will need some of the entrepreneurial zeal and can-do attitude championed by the Californian New Right. Yet, at the same time, the development of hypermedia means innovation, creativity and invention. There are no precedents for all aspects of the digital future.

As pioneers of the new, the digital artisans need to reconnect themselves with the theory and practice of productive art. They are not just employees of others – or even would-be cybernetic entrepreneurs. They are also artist-engineers – designers of the next stage of modernity. Drawing on the experience of the Saint-Simonists and Constructivists, the digital artisans can create a new machine aesthetic for the information age.[48] For instance, musicians have used computers to develop purely digital forms of music, such as drum ‘n’ bass and techno.[49] Interactive artists have explored the potentiality of CD-rom technologies, as shown by the work of Anti-Rom.[50] The Hypermedia Research Centre has constructed an experimental virtual social space called J’s Joint. In each instance, artist-engineers are trying to push beyond the limitations of both the technologies and their own creativity. Above all, these new forms of expression and communications are connected with the wider culture. The developers of hypermedia must reassert the possibility of rational and conscious control over the shape of the digital future. Unlike the elitism of the Californian Ideology, the European artist-engineers must construct a cyberspace which is inclusive and universal. Now is the time for the rebirth of the Modern.

‘Present circumstances favour making luxury national. Luxury will become useful and moral when it is enjoyed by the whole nation. the honour and advantage of employing directly, in political arrangements, the progress of exact sciences and the fine arts…have been reserved for our century.’[51]

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Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron are members of the Hypermedia Research Centre of the University of Westminster, London: www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk. We would like to thank Andrej Skerlep, Dick Pountain, Helen Barbrook, Les Levidow, Jim McLellan, John Barker, John Wyver, Rhiannon Patterson and the members of the HRC for their help in writing this article.

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Footnotes

[1] Naum Gabo and Anton Pevsner, ‘The Realistic Manifesto, 1920′, page 214.
[2] For over 25 years, experts have been predicting the imminent arrival of the information age, see Alain Touraine, La Société post-industrielle; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages; Daniel Bell, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society; Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave; Simon Nora and Alain Minc, The Computerisation of Society; and Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom.
[3] See Martin Bangemann, Europe and the Global Information Society; and the programme and abstracts on Virtual Futures ’95, Conference Website.
[4] See Mitch Kapor, ‘Where is the Digital Highway Really Heading?’.
[5] See Mike Davis, City of Quartz; Richard Walker, ‘California Rages Against the Dying of the Light’; and the records of Ice-T, Snoop Dog, Dr Dre, Ice Cube, NWA and many other West Coast rappers.
[6] See George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left, page 124.
[7] Jerry Rubin, ‘An Emergency Letter to my Brothers and Sisters in the Movement’, page 244. The Yippies were members of the Youth International Party – an influential group within the American New Left of the late-1960s and early-1970s.
[8] For the key role played by popular culture in the self-identity of the American New Left, see George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left; and Charles Reich, The Greening of America. For a description of the lives of white-collar workers in 1950s America, see William Whyte, The Organization Man.
[9] In a best-selling novel of the mid-1970s, the northern half of the West Coast has seceded from the rest of the USA to form a hippie utopia, see Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia. This idealisation of Californian community life can also be found in John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider; and even in later works, such as Kim Stanley Robinson, Pacific Edge.
[10] For an analysis of attempts to create direct democracy through media technologies, see Richard Barbrook, Media Freedom.
[11] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, pages 255-6. Also see Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage; and Gerald Emanuel Stern (ed.), McLuhan: Hot & Cool.
[12] See John Downing, Radical Media.
[13] Arthur Kroker and Michael A. Weinstein, Data Trash, page 15. This analysis follows that of those futurologists who thought that ‘knowledge workers’ were the embryo of a new ruling class, see Daniel Bell, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society; and economists who believe that ‘symbolic analysts’ will become the dominant section of the workforce under globalised capitalism, see Robert Reich, The Work of Nations. In contrast, back in the 1960s, some New Left theorists believed that these scientific- technical workers were leading the struggle for social liberation through factory occupations and demands for self-management, see Serge Mallet, The New Working Class, Spokesman Books, Nottingham 1975.
[14] See Dennis Hayes, Behind the Silicon Curtain, for a description of contract work in Silicon Valley; and, for a fictional treatment of the same subject, Douglas Coupland, Microserfs. For more theoretical examinations of post-Fordist labour organisation, see Alain Lipietz, L’audace ou l’enlisement; Mirages and Miracles; Benjamin Coriat, L’atelier et le robot; and Toni Negri, Revolution Retrieved.
[15] As Seymour Martin Lipset points out, anti-statism liberalism has – and still is – the underlying basis of American politics on both the Right and the Left: ‘These [liberal] values were evident in the twentieth century fact that…the United States not only lacked a viable socialist party, but also has never developed a British or European-style Conservative or Tory party.’, see Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism, pages 31-32.. The convergence of the New Left and New Right around the Californian Ideology, therefore, is a specific example of the wider consensus around anti-statist liberalism as a political discourse in the USA.
[16] For McLuhan’s success on the corporate junket circuit, see Tom Wolfe, ‘What If He Is Right?’. For the use of his ideas by conservative thinkers, see Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages; Daniel Bell, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society,; Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave; and Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom.
[17] Heroic males are common throughout classic sci-fi novels, see D. D. Harriman in Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon; or the leading characters in Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy; I, Robot; and The Rest of the Robots. Hagbard Celine – a more psychedelic version of this male archetype – is the central character in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminati Trilogy. In the timechart of ‘future history’ at the front of Robert Heinlein’s novel, it predicts that, after a period of social crisis caused by rapid technological advance, stability would restored in the 1980s and ’90s through ‘…an opening of new frontiers and a return to nineteenth-century economy’! Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon, pages 8-9.
[18] See Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine. Of course, this analysis is derived from Karl Marx, Grundrisse; and ‘Results of the Immediate Process of Production’.
[19] See Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community, and his home pages.
[20] See the gushing interview with the Tofflers in Peter Schwartz, ‘Shock Wave (Anti) Warrior’; and, for the magazine’s characteristic ambiguity over the Speaker of the House’s reactionary political programme, see the aptly named interview with Newt Gingrich in Esther Dyson, ‘Friend and Foe’.
[21] Progress and Freedom Foundation, Cyberspace and the American Dream, page 5.
[22] See Kevin Kelly, Out of Control. For a critique of the book, see Richard Barbrook, Pinnochio Theory.
[23] Progress and Freedom Foundation, Cyberspace and the American Dream, page 13. Toffler and friends also proudly proclaim that: ‘America…remains the land of individual freedom, and this freedom clearly extends to cyberspace’ in Progress and Freedom Foundation, Cyberspace and the American Dream, page 6. Also see Mitch Kapor, ‘Where is the Digital Highway Really Heading?’.
[24] See Simon Schaffer, Babbage’s Intelligence.
[25] See Jonathan Palfreman and Doron Swade, The Dream Machine, pages 32 – 36, for an account of how a lack of state intervention meant that Nazi Germany lost the opportunity to build the world’s first electronic computer. In 1941 the German High Command refused further funding to Konrad Zuze, who had pioneered the use of binary code, stored programs and electronic logic gates.
[26] See Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community.
[27] As President Clinton’s Labor Secretary puts it: ‘Recall that through the postwar era the Pentagon has quietly been in charge of helping American corporations move ahead with technologies like jet engines, airframes, transistors, integrated circuits, new materials, lasers, and optic fibres…The Pentagon and the 600 national laboratories which work with it and with the Department of Energy are the closest thing America has to Japan’s well-known Ministry of International Trade and Industry.’, see Robert Reich, The Work of Nations, page 159.
[28] For an account of how these cultural innovations emerged from the early acid scene, see Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Interestingly, one of the drivers of the famous bus was Stewart Brand, who is now a leading contributor to Wired.
[29] Dennis Hayes, Behind the Silicon Curtain, pages 21-2, points out that the American computer industry has already encouraged by the Pentagon to form cartels against foreign competition. Gates admits that he’d only recently realised the ‘massive structural change’ being caused by the Net, see Bill Gates, ‘The Bill Gates Column’.
[30] See Howard Rheingold’s home pages, and Mitch Kapor, ‘Where is the Digital Highway Really Heading?’. Despite the libertarian instincts of both these writers, their infatuation with the era of the Founding Fathers is shared by the neo-fascist Militia and Patriot movements, see Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America.
[31] See the hacker heroes in William Gibson, Neuromancer; Count Zero; and Mona Lisa Overdrive; or in Bruce Sterling (ed.), Mirrorshades. A prototype of this sort of anti-hero is Deckard, the existential hunter of replicants in Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner.
[32] According to Miller, Thomas Jefferson believed that black people could not be members of the Lockean social contract which bound together citizens of the American republic: ‘The rights of man…while theoretically and ideally the birthright of every human being, applied in practice in the United States only to white men: the black slaves were excluded from consideration because, while admittedly human beings, they were also property, and where the rights of man conflicted with the rights of property, property took precedence’, see John Miller, The Wolf by the Ears, page 13. Jefferson’s opposition to slavery was at best rhetorical. In a letter of 22 April 1820, he disingenuously suggested that the best way to encourage the abolition of slavery would be to legalise the private ownership of human beings in all States of the Union and the frontier territories! He claimed that ‘…their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burden on a greater number of coadjutors [i.e. slave-owners]‘, see Merill Peterson (ed.), The Portable Thomas Jefferson, page 568. For a description of life on his plantation, also see Paul Wilstach, Jefferson and Monticello.
[33] For California’s turn to the Right, see Richard Walker, ‘California Rages Against the Dying of the Light’.
[34] See Esther Dyson, ‘Friend and Foe’. Esther Dyson collaborated with the Tofflers in the writing of The Peace and Progress Foundation’s Cyberspace and the American Dream, which is a retro-futurist manifesto designed to win votes for Gingrich from members of the ‘virtual class’.
[35] For the rise of the fortified suburbs, see Mike Davis, City of Quartz; and Urban Control: the Ecology of Fear. These ‘gated suburbs’ provide the inspiration for the alienated background of many cyberpunk sci-fi novels, such as Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash.
[36] See Dennis Hayes, Behind the Silicon Curtain.
[37] See Reginald Stuart, ‘High-Tech Redlining’.
[38] See Paul Wilstach, Jefferson and Monticello.
[39] See Dennis Hayes, Behind the Silicon Curtain.
[40] For an exposition of their retro-futurist programme, see the Extropians, FAQ.
[41] See William Gibson, Neuromancer; and Count Zero.
[42] See Isaac Asimov, I, Robot; and The Rest of the Robots.
[43] See William Gibson and Sandy Sandfort, ‘Disneyland with the Death Penalty’. Since these articles are an attack on Singapore, it is ironic that the real Disneyland is in California – whose repressive penal code includes the death penalty!
[44] For the report which led to the creation of Minitel, see Simon Nora and Alain Minc, The Computerisation of Society. An account of the early years of Minitel can be found in Michel Marchand, The Mintel Saga.
[45] According to a poll carried out during the 1995 presidential elections, 67% of the French population supported the proposition that “the state must intervene more in the economic life of our country”, see Le Monde, ‘Une majorité de Français souhaitent un vrai “chef” pour un vrai “Etat”‘.
[46] For the influence of Jacobinism on French conceptions of democratic rights, see Richard Barbrook, Media Freedom: the contradictions of communications in the age of modernity. Some French economists believe that the very different history of Europe has created a specific Рand socially superior Рmodel of capitalism, see Michel Albert, Capitalism v. Capitalism; and Philippe Delmas, Le Mątre des Horloges.
[47] As Keynes himself says: ‘”To dig holes in the ground”, paid for out of savings, will increase, not only employment, but the real national dividend of useful goods and services.’, see J.M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, page 220.
[48] See Keith Taylor (ed.), Henri Saint-Simon 1760-1825; and John E. Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde.
[49] As Goldie, a jungle music-maker, puts it: “We have to take it forwards and take the drums ‘n’ bass and push it and push it and push it. I remember when we were saying that it couldn’t be pushed anymore. It’s been pushed tenfold since then…”, see Tony Marcus, ‘The War is Over’, Mixmag, August 1995, page 46.
[50] For information on ANTI-rom, see their website.
[51] Henri Saint-Simon, ‘Sketch of the New Political System’ in Keith Taylor (ed.), Henri Saint-Simon 1760- 1825, page 203.

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Benjamin Coriat, L’atelier et le robot, Christian Bourgois Éditeur, Paris 1990.

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William Gibson and Sandy Sandfort, ‘Disneyland with the Death Penalty’, Wired, 1.4, September/October 1993, pages 51-55, 114-115.

Dennis Hayes, Behind the Silicon Curtain, Free Association Books, London 1989.

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Mitch Kapor, ‘Where is the Digital Highway Really Heading?’, Wired, 1.3, July/August 1993, pages 53-59, 94.

George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: a Global Analysis of 1968, South End Press, Boston 1987.

Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: the New Biology of Machines, Fourth Estate, London 1994.

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Arthur Kroker and Michael A. Weinstein, Data Trash: the theory of the virtual class, New World Perspectives, Montreal 1994.

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Simon Nora and Alain Minc, The Computerisation of Society, MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts 1980.

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Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: finding connection in a computerised world, Secker & Warburg, London 1994,

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Kim Stanley Robinson, Pacific Edge, Grafton, London 1990.

Jerry Rubin, ‘An Emergency Letter to my Brothers and Sisters in the Movement’ in Peter Stansill and David Zane Mairowitz (editors), BAMN: Outlaw Manifestos and Ephemera 1965-70, Penguin, London 1971, pages 242-244.

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Responses

Louis Rossetto: editor-in-chief of Wired

Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi: author of Neuromagma

John Barker: Londoner, novelist and activist

Celia Pearce: an insider’s view of The Californian Ideology

Jeffrey Kaplan: the counter-culture writes back

John Blower: a response from FeNix

Mark Dery: The Californian Demonology

European Digital Artisans Network 1st May 1997

Making The Future

1. We are the digital artisans. We celebrate the Promethean power of our labour and imagination to shape the virtual world. By hacking, coding, designing and mixing, we build the wired future through our own efforts and inventiveness.

2. We are not the passive victims of uncontrollable market forces and technological changes. Without our daily work, there would be no goods or services to trade. Without our animating presence, information technologies would just be inert metal, plastic and silicon. Nothing can happen inside cyberspace without our creative labour. We are the only subjects of history.

3. The emergence of the Net signifies neither the final triumph of economic alienation nor the replacement of humanity by machines. On the contrary, the information revolution is the latest stage in the emancipatory project of modernity. History is nothing but the development of human freedom.

4. We will shape the new information technologies in our own interests. Although they were originally developed to reinforce hierarchical power, the full potential of the Net and computing can only be realised through our autonomous and creative labour. We will transform the machines of domination into the technologies of liberation.

5. We will contribute to the process of democratic emancipation. As digital artisans, we will come together to promote the development of our trade. As citizens, we will participate within republican politics. As Europeans, we will help to break down national and ethnic barriers both inside and outside of our continent.

The Present Moment

6. Freedom today is now often just the choice between commodities rather the ability to determine our own lives. Over the past two hundred years, the factory system has dramatically increased our material wealth at the cost of removing all meaningful participation in work. Even poorer members of European societies can now live better than the kings and aristocrats of earlier times. However the joys of consumerism are usually constrained by the boredom of most jobs.

7. Since 1968, the desire for increased monetary rewards has increasingly been supplemented by demands for increased autonomy at work. In the European Union and elsewhere, neo-liberals have tried to recuperate these aspirations through their policies of marketisation and privatisation. If we are talented workers in the ‘cutting-edge’ industries like hypermedia and computing, we are promised the possibility of becoming hip and rich entrepreneurs by the Californian ideologues. They want to recruit us as members of the ‘virtual class’ which seeks to dominate the hypermedia and computing industries.

8. Yet these neo-liberal panaceas provide no real solutions. Free market policies don’t just brutalise our societies and ignore environmental degradation. Above all, they cannot remove alienation within the workplace. Under neo- liberalism, individuals are only allowed to exercise their own autonomy in deal-making rather than through making things. We cannot express ourselves directly by constructing useful and beautiful virtual artifacts.

9. For those of us who want to be truly creative in hypermedia and computing, the only practical solution is to become digital artisans. The rapid spread of personal computing and now the Net are the technological expressions of this desire for autonomous work. Escaping from the petty controls of the shopfloor and the office, we can rediscover the individual independence enjoyed by craftspeople during proto-industrialism. We rejoice in the privilege of becoming digital artisans.

10. We create virtual artifacts for money and for fun. We work both in the money-commodity economy and in the gift economy of the Net. When we take a contract, we are happy to earn enough to pay for our necessities and luxuries through our labours as digital artisans. At the same time, we also enjoy exercising our abilities for our own amusement and for the wider community. Whether working for money or for fun, we always take pride in our craft skills. We take pleasure in pushing the cultural and technical limits as far forward as possible. We are the pioneers of the modern.

11. The revival of artisanship is not a return to a low-tech and impoverished past. Skilled workers are best able to assert their autonomy precisely within the most technologically advanced industries. The new artisans are better educated and can earn much more money. In earlier stages of modernity, factory labourers symbolised of the promise of industrialism. Today, as digital artisans, we now express the emancipatory potential of the information age. We are the promise of history.

12. We not only admire the individualism of our artisan forebears, but also we will learn from their sociability. We are not petit-bourgeois egoists. We live within the highly collective institutions of the market and the state. For many people, autonomy over their working lives has often also involved accepting the insecurity of short- term contracts and the withdrawal of welfare provisions. We can only mitigate these problems through our own collective action. As digital artisans, we need to come together to promote our common interests.

13. We believe that digital artisans within this continent now need to form their own craft organisation. In early modernity, artisans enhanced their individual autonomy by organising themselves into trade associations. We proclaim that the collective expression of our trade will be: the European Digital Artisans Network (EDAN).

The Aims of EDAN

14. We urge everyone who is working within hypermedia, computing and associated professions on this continent to join EDAN. We call on digital artisans to form branches of the network in each of the member states of the European Union and its associated countries. By forming EDAN, we will also be creating a means of forging links between European digital artisans and those from elsewhere in the world. We will strive for cooperation in work and in play with our fellow artisans in all countries.

15. We believe that the principal task of EDAN is to enhance the exercise of our craft skills. By collaborating together, we can protect ourselves against those who wish to impose their self- interests upon us. By having a strong collective identity, we will enjoy more individual autonomy over our own working lives.

16. EDAN will celebrate our creative genius as digital artisans. The network will act as the collective memory about the achievements of digital artisans within Europe. It will publicise outstanding ‘masterpieces’ of craft skill made by its members among the trade and to the wider public.

17. The network will be the social meeting-place for digital artisans from across Europe. EDAN will organise festivals, conferences and congresses where we can meet to organise, discuss and party. We believe that digital artisans should express their collective identity by regularly celebrating together in private and public.

18. EDAN will collect detailed knowledge about the trade in the different regions of Europe. It will aim to provide information about best practice in contracts, copyright agreements and other business arrangements to its members. The network will also be a source of contacts in each locality for digital artisans looking for work in different areas of Europe.

19. We believe that what cannot be organised by our own autonomous efforts can only be provided through democratic political institutions. The network will lobby for changes in local, national and European legislation which can enhance our working lives as digital artisans. As concerned citizens, we will also support the fullest development of public welfare services.

20. EDAN will campaign for European governments to put more resources into the theoretical and practical education of digital artisans in schools and universities. The network will facilitate links between educational institutions teaching hypermedia and computing across the continent. EDAN also believes that publicly-funded research is necessary for the fullest development of our industry.

21. EDAN will urge the European Union to launch a public works programme to build a broadband fibre- optic network linking all households and businesses. We believe in the principle of universal service: everyone should have Net access at the cheapest possible price. No society can call itself truly democratic until all citizens can directly exercise their right to media freedom over the Net.

22. We will campaign for the creation of ‘electronic public libraries’ where on-line educational and cultural resources are made accessible to everyone for free. Public investment in digital methods of delivering life-long learning is needed to create an information society. The Net should become the encyclopedia of all knowledge: the primary resource for the new Enlightenment.

23. We believe that the role of the hi-tech gift economy should be further enhanced. As the history of the Net has shown, d.i.y. culture is now an essential part of the process of social development. Without hacking, piracy, shareware and open architecture systems, the limitations of the money-commodity economy would have prevented the construction of the Net. EDAN also supports open access as means of people beginning to learn the skills of hypermedia and computing. The promotion of d.i.y. culture within the Net is now a precondition for the successful construction of cyberspace.

24. We are the digital artisans. We are building the information society of the future. We have come together to advance our collective interests and those of our fellow citizens. We are organised as the European Network of Digital Artisans. Join us.

Digital Artisans of Europe Unite!

The State In Cyberspace

The rapid expansion of e-commerce depends upon effective legal regulation of the Net. As in the rest of the economy, courts and police are needed to enforce the ‘rules of the game’ within on-line marketplaces. Theft remains theft even when committed with the latest technology. Since the Net encourages its own forms of anti-social behaviour, governments also have to update their legislation to counter the new threats from so-called ‘cyber-terrorism’. [2] Trespass laws must now protect computer systems as well as physical buildings. Not surprisingly, media corporations expect that the courts and the police will carry on protecting their intellectual property. Anyone who distributes unauthorised copies of copyright material over the Net must be punished. Anyone who invents software potentially useful for on-line piracy should be criminalised. Like other companies, media corporations need a secure legal framework for conducting e-commerce with their customers. As in the old Wild West, business will only prosper once law and order is established on the new electronic frontier. [3]

This new common sense has displaced the fashionable anti-statism of a few years ago. According to the Californian ideology, national governments are incapable of controlling the global system of computer-mediated communications. Instead, individuals and businesses will compete to provide goods and services within unregulated on-line marketplaces. The advance to the hi-tech future is simultaneously the return to the liberal past. [4] Above all, this nostalgic ‘New Paradigm’ supposedly not only delivers greater economic efficiency, but also extends individual freedom. For instance, state regulation of broadcasting will become obsolete once everyone can buy and sell programming over the Net. Just like after the American revolution, public institutions will only be needed to provide minimal ‘rules of the game’ for people to trade information with each other. [5] In their constitution, the Founding Fathers formally prohibited government censorship of the press: the First Amendment. This ‘negative’ concept of media freedom emphasised the absence of legal sanctions against publishing dissident opinions. Like their fellow entrepreneurs, writers and publishers should be able to produce what their customers want to buy. Free speech is free trade. [6]

For decades, experts and entrepreneurs have predicted that the emerging information society would realise the most libertarian interpretations of the First Amendment. They have never doubted the eventual triumph of their hi-tech vision: one virtual marketplace for trading information commodities. Instead of buying physical objects, people would purchase on-line versions of books, newspapers, films, television, radio, music, software and games – and also sell their own creations. Above all, this pay-per-use form of computer-mediated communications would have copyright protection hardwired into its social and technical architecture. The First Amendment is trading intellectual property within cyberspace.

‘Anyone with a computer and some organised information located on it can offer the information for sale. The customers are as close to the data base as their telephone. Publishing of information is thus likely to become a more competitive industry…’ [7]

Intellectual property has long been seen as a commodity just like all other commodities. Yet, at the same time, the sellers of information have always wanted to avoid fully alienating their products to their customers. Even on primitive presses, the costs of reproducing existing publications were very much lower than making the first copy of a new work. As well as justified by liberal philosophy, copyright laws were also a pragmatic solution to the problem of plagiarism. The state enforced the monopoly of particular individuals over reproducing specific items of information to reward their creativity. [8] Unlike political censorship, liberals believed that this economic censorship was essential for media freedom. For instance, the Founding Fathers included copyright protection alongside the First Amendment within the American constitution. If free speech was synonymous with free trade, the state had to defend intellectual property. [9]

In early copyright legislation, the ownership of information was always conditional. Just as media commodities were never fully alienated, no one could claim absolute ownership over intellectual property. Instead, copyrights could be lawfully expropriated for a ‘fair use’ in the public interest, such as political debate, education, research or artistic expression. [10] However, during the last few decades, these restrictions on copyright ownership have been slowly disappearing. According to hi-tech neo-liberals, all information must be transmuted into pure commodities traded within unregulated global markets. In their Californian ideology, media freedom is the ‘negative’ freedom from state interference. Yet, in practice, the marketisation of information requires more legal regulation of the Net. For instance, national laws and international treaties have already been adopted to cover the on-line trading of media commodities. Even if nation states give up trying to censor the content of the Net, their courts and police will be needed more than ever to defend the ownership of copyrights. [11] As John Locke emphasised long ago: ‘The great and chief end of… Mens… putting themselves under Government… is the preservation of their Property.’ [12]

The Digital Panopticon

While the Net remained a predominantly text-based system used by academics and hobbyists, media corporations could happily ignore the emergence of this participatory form of computer-mediated communications. According to the experts, the majority of the population was only interested in new information technologies which would offer a wider choice of media commodities. However, this ostrich strategy became increasingly untenable as more and more people went on-line. Along with making their own entertainment, Net users also enjoy sharing information with each other. For instance, many owners of music CDs give MP3 copies to their on-line friends – and even to complete strangers. Much to their horror, media corporations have slowly realised that the Net threatens the core of their business: the sale of intellectual property.

The owners of copyrights are now demanding that the state launches the ‘war on copying’. [13] The courts and police must prevent consenting adults from sharing information with each other without permission. In a series of high-profile cases, industry bodies are suing the providers of technical facilities for swapping copyright material. [14] At the same time, media corporations are experimenting with encryption and other software programs which prevents unauthorised copying. [15] However, this anti-piracy offensive is proving to be only partially effective. For instance, the music industry’s attempts to close down Napster simply encourages people to install more sophisticated software for swapping music. [16] Even worse, the failure to agree a common method of encryption means that MP3 has become the de facto standard for distributing music over the Net. Contrary to neo-liberal prophecies, the transmutation of information into commodities is becoming more difficult in the digital age.

Since intellectual property can’t be protected within the existing Net, media corporations want to impose a top-down form of computer-mediated communications in its place: the digital Panopticon. [17] If everyone’s on-line activities could be continually monitored, nobody would dare to defy the copyright laws. When information was sold as a commodity, media corporations would be able to control its subsequent uses. Across the world, security agencies are already developing ‘Big Brother’ technologies for placing every user of the Net under constant surveillance. For instance, the Chinese regime deters dissent by spying on the on-line activities of its citizens. Even the elected governments of the USA and the EU like snooping on the e-mails of their real or imaginary enemies. [18] According to the Californian ideology, such oppressive behaviour would become an anachronism in the unregulated virtual marketplace. Yet, only a few years later, it is commercial companies which are pressing for the monitoring of private Net use to defend their intellectual property. Until there is some fear of detection, people will carry on spontaneously sharing copyright material with each other. Ironically, the ‘negative’ freedom of the First Amendment now justifies the totalitarian ambitions of the digital Panopticon. As the head of the Motion Picture Association of America warns: ‘If you can’t protect that which you own, then you don’t own anything.’ [19]

Despite the futurist rhetoric of its proponents, the digital Panopticon perpetuates an earlier stage of industrial evolution: Fordism. Ever since the advent of modernity, each transient burst of technological and social innovation has been idealised as an a timeless utopia. During the last century, the Fordist factory didn’t just become the dominant economic paradigm, but also provided the model for politics, culture and everyday life. [20] The media corporations now want to impose this top-down structure on computer-mediated communications. Like workers on an assembly-line, users of the digital Panopticon will be under constant surveillance from above. Like viewers of television, they can only passively consume media produced by others. The new information society must be built in the image of the old industrial economy. Free speech should only exist as media commodities.

The Hi-Tech Gift Economy

Many Left intellectuals also believe that the Net will – sooner or later – be replaced by the digital Panopticon. How could the version of computer-mediated communications devised by poor academics and insignificant nerds triumph over the structure championed by wealthy and influential media corporations? [21] Ironically, these gurus disprove their own masochistic predictions when they themselves go on-line. Like everyone else, they don’t primarily use the Net to consume media, but to send e-mails, swap information, conduct on-line research and participate in network communities. While there can be nothing new about more television, interactive collaboration over the Net is novel. The digital Panopticon is a future which is already history.

For the emerging information society is being built according to principles laid down by the scientists who invented the Net. Funded by the state and foundations, academics collaborate with each other by giving away their findings in journals and at conferences. Scientists had no need for on-line systems for trading information commodities. Instead, they built the code of the Net in the image of the academic gift economy. Designing for their own use, they invented a form of computer-mediated communications for sharing knowledge within a single virtual space: the ‘intellectual commons’. [22] Above all, the pioneers of the Net knew that the publication of findings across many different books and journals was hampering scientific research. From Vannevar Bush to Tim Berners-Lee, they developed technologies which could overcome this fragmentation of academic knowledge. The passive consumption of fixed pieces of information would become the participatory process of ‘interactive creativity’. [23]

As the Net spread outside the university, its new users quickly discovered the benefits of sharing knowledge with each other. There has never been much demand for the equal exchange of commodities when people can access the labour of a whole community in return for their own individual efforts. [24] Many non-academics are also striving to overcome the fixed boundaries imposed by the commodification of information. For instance, musicians have long appropriated recordings for DJ-ing, sampling and remixing. [25] The popularity and capabilities of the Net is intensifying these ambiguities within the economics of music-making. The MP3 format doesn’t just make the piracy of copyright material much easier. As importantly, the social mores and technical structure of the Net encourages enthusiasts to make their own sounds. The passive consumption of unalterable recordings is evolving into interactive participation within musical composition. [26]

What began inside scientific research is now transforming music-making and many other forms of cultural expression. Back in the early-1990s, only a few academics and hobbyists could access this open form of computer-mediated communications. A decade later, almost every academic discipline, political cause, cultural movement, popular hobby and private obsession has a presence on the Net. Whether for work or for pleasure, people are creating websites, bulletin boards, listservers and chat rooms. Although only a minority are now engaged in scientific research, all Net users can participate within the hi-tech gift economy. A few hope that network communities are prefiguring the co-operative and ecological societies of the future. Some are convinced that ‘interactive creativity’ is the cutting-edge of modern art. Most simply participate within on-line projects as a leisure activity. Far from being displaced by the digital Panopticon, the ‘intellectual commons’ of the Net continues to expand at an exponential rate. Free speech is a free gift.

What’s Left of Copyright?

The Net is now proclaimed as the new paradigm of society. Business, government and culture are supposed to restructure themselves in its image: flexible, participatory and self-organising. [27] Although often seen as pioneers of the hi-tech future, media corporations are terrified of this emerging paradigm. For the rapid growth of the Net is exposing the contingency of their intellectual property. As information separates from physical products, copyright loses its apparent basis in nature. Quite spontaneously, most people are opting to share knowledge rather than to trade media commodities over the Net. Technological progress is symbiotic with social evolution. Free speech can flourish without free trade.

The media corporations are desperate to reverse history back to the previous paradigm: the Fordist factory. As in old sci-fi stories, they dream of giant mainframes spying upon everyone’s on-line activities. Like members of the secret police, the owners of copyright are nostalgic for the Cold War days of ‘Big Brother’. However, history has moved on. The centralised vision of computer-mediated communications is already technically obsolete. How much computing power would be needed to make a detailed analysis of every piece of data in the information flows passing across the Net? How could constant top-down surveillance be imposed on all peer-to-peer file-sharing within cyberspace? But, without constant monitoring from above, the effectiveness of encryption and other security devices is limited. As hackers have repeatedly proved, anything which is encoded will be eventually decoded. When no one is looking, media commodities will spontaneously transmute into free gifts on the Net.

Since there is no technological fix for protecting copyright, the media corporations can only preserve their wealth in one way: state power. The police and the courts must deter people from pirating intellectual property or inventing software for making unauthorised copies. The social mores and software codes of the Net must be criminalised. Only fear of punishment can force everyone inside the digital Panopticon. For the media corporations, the ‘negative’ form of media freedom is now synonymous with state enforcement of economic censorship. The law must be obeyed. The Net must be replaced with the digital Panopticon. Free trade is more important than free speech.

According to the Free Software Foundation, the growing contradiction between legality and reality within the Net can only be resolved by extending the scope of the First Amendment. The economic interests of the few should no longer take precedence over the political liberties of the many. The ‘negative’ concept of media freedom must now apply to private corporations as well as public institutions. Above all, the state should refrain from enforcing not only political censorship, but also economic censorship. [28] As privileges of copyright disappear, information should be regulated in a more libertarian way: ‘copyleft’. Although producers should still be able to prevent their own work from being claimed by others, everyone must be allowed to copy and alter information for their own purposes. Free speech is freedom from compulsory commodification. [29]

Even this proposal isn’t radical enough for some Net pioneers. For instance, Tim Berners-Lee decided that the original programs of the web should be placed in the public domain. Instead of making proprietary software for sale in the marketplace, this inventor was developing tools for building the ‘intellectual commons’. His web programs were much more likely to be adopted as common standards if all residual traces of individual ownership were removed. Being a scientist funded by EU taxpayers, Tim Berners-Lee was happy to give away his research to anyone who could benefit from more accessible computer-mediated communications. Owned by nobody, the web could become the common property of all. [30]

In the prophecies of the hi-tech neo-liberals, all information was going to be inevitably transformed into unalloyed commodities. Inside the digital Panopticon, everyone would be forced to prioritise a ‘single business model’: trading intellectual property. [31] Yet, when given a choice, almost everybody prefers the bottom-up Net over this top-down version of computer-mediated communications. Crucially, the absence of intellectual property within the Net has never been an obstacle to the successful commercialisation of computer-mediated communications. On the contrary, many dot-com entrepreneurs have discovered that more profits can be made outside the protection of the digital Panopticon. Businesses trade more efficiently with their suppliers and their customers when everyone uses open source software. Employees collaborate with each other much more easily within the non-proprietary architecture of the Net. [32] Despite their wealth and influence, media corporations are unlikely to persuade their fellow capitalists to adopt the digital Panopticon. While serious money can be made on the existing Net, why should businesses adopt a less flexible and more intrusive form of computer-mediated communications?

Even for the trading of intellectual property, there is no pressing need for investing in expensive copyright protection systems. Information can still be commodified through other tried-and-tested methods: advertising, real-time delivery, merchandising, data-mining and support services. [33] While these techniques remain profitable, the weakening of intellectual property within the Net can be tolerated. Increasingly, information exists as both commodity and gift – and as hybrids of the two. No longer always fixed in physical objects, the social distinction between proprietary and free information becomes contingent. For instance, the Linux operating system can either be downloaded without payment from the Net or be purchased on a CD-rom from a dot-com company. [34] This hybrid existence is not confined to ‘cutting edge’ software. For instance, the same dance tune is sold on vinyl, given away on MP3 and sampled to create new sounds. The passive consumption of fixed pieces of information now co-exists with the participatory process of ‘interactive creativity’. Free speech is both free trade and free gifts.

Making Media

According to current copyright legislation, this new form of free speech is simply a new type of theft. Information must always remain a commodity within cyberspace. Yet, within the Net, free speech is evolving into the fluid process of ‘interactive creativity’. Information exists as commodities, gifts and hybrids of the two. Oblivious to this growing contradiction, politicians carry on tightening the legal protection of copyright at both national and international levels. [35] They are determined to help their local media corporations to compete successfully within the global marketplace. As a result, the letter of law criminalises the on-line activities of almost every Net user. For instance, giving away bootleg MP3s is stealing the intellectual property of media corporations. The ‘negative’ concept of media freedom prohibits political censorship only to justify economic censorship. Free trade is state power. [36]

Yet, in their daily lives, everyone knows that there is almost no chance of being punished for swapping MP3s. The existing copyright laws are increasingly unenforceable within the Net. If only for pragmatic reasons, the concept of media freedom now needs be extended beyond freedom from political censorship. For instance, in nineteenth century Europe, Karl Marx argued that free speech shouldn’t be confined within free trade. The Left had to struggle not only against political censorship, but also economic censorship. Crucially, the removal of legal controls was an essential precondition, but not a sufficient foundation for free speech. Everyone also had to have access to the technologies for expressing themselves: the ‘positive’ concept of media freedom. [37] During the Fordist epoch, the Left almost forgot this libertarian definition of free speech. For technical and economic reasons, ordinary people appeared to be incapable of making their own media. Instead, the Left supported public service broadcasting so its leaders could gain access to the airwaves. Free speech was restricted to elected politicians. [38]

With the advent of the Net, this limited vision of media freedom is becoming an anachronism. For the first time, ordinary people can be producers as well as consumers of information. Marx’s ‘positive’ concept of media freedom is now pragmatic politics. Instead of making media for them, the state can help people to make their own media. For instance, public service broadcasters can nurture network communities and telecoms regulators can encourage infrastructure investment. [39] Above all, the state must reverse the recent tightening of the copyright laws. For the ‘positive’ concept of media freedom precludes vigorous economic censorship. The widespread ‘fair use’ of copyright material should be recognised in law as well as in practice. The rigid enforcement of intellectual property must give way to official toleration of more flexible forms of information: bootlegs, copyleft, open source and public domain. ‘Fair use’ is free speech. [40]

For most people, the weakening of copyright protection is someone else’s problem. They are unconcerned that trading of commodities in the old media must co-exist with the circulation of gifts in the new media. [41] Even neo-liberals are realising that the trading of physical commodities is much easier outside the digital Panopticon. While e-commerce will always depend upon legal regulation, ‘interactive creativity’ among Net users has little need for courts and police. When copying is ubiquitous, punishing people for stealing intellectual property will seem perverse. Instead of formal laws, most on-line activities can be regulated by the spontaneous rules of polite behaviour. [42]

‘The more perfect civilisation is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself…’ [43]

Sooner or later, the state will abandon its attempts to impose economic censorship on the Net. Even the media corporations will eventually have to accept the demise of information Fordism. Instead of copyright enforcement, government intervention can focus on extending and improving access to the Net for all people. The ‘negative’ freedom from state censorship must evolve into the ‘positive’ freedom to make media. In the age of the Net, free speech can become: ‘…the right to make noise… to create one’s own code and work… the right to make the free and revocable choice to interlink with another’s code – that is, the right to compose life.’ [44]

Footnotes

[1] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, page 98.

[2] For instance, the British government is introducing legislation which includes any actions which ‘seriously interfere with or seriously disrupt an electronic system’ within its definition of ‘terrorism’. See Will Knight, ‘Hackers Will Become Terrorists Under New Law’, page 1.

[3] For an analysis of increasing legal regulation of the Net, see Lawrence Lessig, Code.

[4] See Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, ‘The Californian Ideology’.

[5] See Mitch Kapor, ‘Where is the Digital Highway Really Heading?’.

[6] For an analysis of the origins of the First Amendment in English liberalism, see Leonard Levy, Emergence of a Free Press. An English liberal mandarin later defined ‘negative’ freedom as: ‘…the area within which the subject – a person or group of persons – is or should be left to do or be what he [or she] is able to do or be, without interference by other persons…’ Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, pages 121-2.

[7] Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom, page 211.

[8] See Christopher May, A Global Political Economy of Intellectual Property Rights, pages 16-44.

[9] See Richard Barbrook, Media Freedom, pages 7-18; and Leonard Levy, Emergence of a Free Press, pages 220-281.

[10] See Christopher May, A Global Political Economy of Intellectual Property Rights, pages 45-66.

[11] Despite denouncing state regulation as obsolete, Newt Gingrich’s neo-liberal think-tank still saw that: ‘Defining property rights in cyberspace is perhaps the single most urgent and important task for government information policy.’ The Progress and Freedom Foundation, Cyberspace and the American Dream, page 11.

[12] John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, page 395. For a socialist remix of this liberal analysis, see Eugeny Pashukanis, Law and Marxism.

[13] This analogy with the repressive ‘war on drugs’ is made in Richard Stallman, ‘Freedom – or Copyright?’, page 2.

[14] See the Recording Industry Association of America, ‘RIAA Lawsuit Against Napster’; and the Motion Picture Association of America, ‘DVD-DeCSS Press Room’.

[15] For instance, all the major record labels are members of a consortium to develop encryption methods for copyright-protected music, see the Secure Digital Music Initiative website.

[16] For instance, see the Gnutella and Freenet websites.

[17] See Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community, pages 289-296. The dystopian vision of the Net is inspired by the symbol of oppressive modernity in Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish.

[18] See Elmo Recio, ‘The Great Firewall of China’; and Duncan Campbell, ‘Inside Echelon’.

[19] Jack Valenti talking about the potential threat from the DeCSS decryption program in ‘Film Studios Bring Claim Against DVD Hackers in Federal Court’.

[20] See Simon Clarke, ‘What in the F—’s Name is Fordism’.

[21] For instance, Robert McChesney says: ‘It’s almost an iron law of US communication[s] media… that… the corporate sector comes in, and… muscles all… other people out of the way and takes it over.’ Corporate Watch, ‘Towards a Democratic Media System’, page 3.

[22] Lawrence Lessig, Code, page 141. Also see Michael Hauben and Rhonda Hauben, Netizens, page ix.

[23] Tim Berners-Lee, ‘Realising the Full Potential of the Web’, page 5. Also see Richard Barbrook, ‘The Hi-Tech Gift Economy’; and ‘Cyber-communism’.

[24] See Rishab Ghosh, ‘Cooking Pot Markets’; and Richard Barbrook, ‘The Hi-Tech Gift Economy’.

[25] See Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life; and Sheryl Garratt, Adventures in Wonderland.

[26] See Jacques Attali, Noise, pages 133-148. Also see Romandson, ‘Interactive Music’.

[27] From academic research to management theory, this new paradigm now fascinates the cutting-edge of intellectual life. For instance, see Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society; and Jonas Ridderstråle and Kjell Nordström, Funky Business.

[28] See Richard Stallman, ‘Freedom – or Copyright?’. Some American judges have already defined computer programming as a form of free speech, see Patricia Jacobus, ‘Court: Programming languages covered by First Amendment’.

[29] See Free Software Foundation, ‘What is Copyleft?’.

[30] See Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, pages 78-80.

[31] See Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, pages 70-71.

[32] See John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong, net.gain.

[33] See Esther Dyson, Release 2.0, pages 131-163.

[34] See Robert Young, ‘How Red Hat Software Stumbled Across a New Economic Model and Helped Improve an Industry’.

[35] See Christopher May, A Global Political Economy of Intellectual Property Rights.

[36] See Lawrence Lessig, Code, pages 30-60.

[37] See Karl Marx, ‘Debates on Freedom of the Press’. In contrast with its ‘negative’ predecessor, ‘positive’ freedom is defined as: ‘I wish to be… a doer – deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon… by other men as if I was… a slave incapable of… conceiving goals and policies of my own and realising them.’ Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, page 131. For this socialist concept of political rights, also see Karl Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’.

[38] See Richard Barbrook, Media Freedom, pages 55-73.

[39] See Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, ‘The Californian Ideology’, pages 63-68.

[40] See Richard Barbrook, ‘Cyber-communism’, pages 26-35.

[41] For a discussion of the ‘fragmentation of copyright’, see Christopher May, A Global Political Economy of Intellectual Property Rights, pages 144-157.

[42] Among early users of computer-mediated communications, such spontaneous self-regulation was dubbed ‘netiquette’, see Michael Hauben and Rhonda Hauben, Netizens, pages 63-4.

[43] Tom Paine, Rights of Man, page 165.

[44] Jacques Attali, Noise, pages 132.

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Ever done cross stitch? Followed a knitting pattern? Made a wee tapestry?

Maybe the thought of such lame activity brings a smug smile to your face. It’s the sort of thing you just can’t admit to and stay fashionable.

What on earth’s it got to do with new media culture, anyway? Such homely, farmhouse crafts just don’t cut it when you can take a digital camera snap or a scan of some random object, mangle it with the face of a soon-to-be ex-friend in Photoshop and print up your own t-shirt. Out with the homemade jam and in with the paper jam.

But let’s take a different look at this – please bear with me while I take you on a digital detour for a moment. There have been some interesting developments in digital culture recently. We have seen an explosion in the use and production of bitmap fonts, which don’t expand and contract easily like normal fonts but are designed to be viewed on screen as small and crisp as possible. These allow designers to take the crazy amounts of text information given to them by demanding clients and cram it into the limited screen space available while still preserving precious white space. (This is essential to allow a design to breathe and therefore remain interesting and readable, if you’ve yet to hear a designer throw a wobbly about it. If you are a designer, you’ll probably be shaking your head in sad recognition at this point.)

At first these fonts emerged for practical reasons but soon became a mark of slick style and ultra-modern design on the web (we shall put aside for a moment the fact that they are not accessible to those readers with impaired vision.) They are constructed not with curves, as the traditional font has always been, but simply by carving a letter out of a block of say, 10 by 10 pixels, much like the way text is displayed on the tiny monochrome lcd screens of mobile phones.

Designing these – along with graphics and icons – far from being slavishly boring, is curiously relaxing and addictive. It’s like relieving stress systematically with a sheet of bubble wrap, but producing something pretty and intricate at the same time. Add in the kudos of announcing you’re doing interactive design, and you’ve got a winning formula for whiling away the hours – and, dare I say it, making money on the side.

With sites like Warp Records (www.warp-net.com) and Flipflopflyin (www.flipflopflyin.com – the minipops section especially) now going down in the history of the web, pixel popping has become a major art form. Recognisable celebrities are rendered in 4 jagged colours and only one centimetre square. Like the appeal of small things in the real world- spider mites, micromachines, puppies, mobile phones- pixel art definitely has the greatest emotional power per square inch.

And yet, for all the machismo of the webdesign industry, with its appalling gender imbalance, the technique itself differs very little from making a cross-stitch sampler – a talent which goes back hundreds of years and was purely the realm of uneducated adolescent girls. You’ve got to admit it, boys, it’s not so uncool. There’s a bit of passion for traditional craft in all of us.

Whether icons would go down well at your local church sale of work, though, remains to be seen.

(or, why I am against 3D navigation)

Think back to the moment when you first heard all the fuss about the net. For your humble author the first memory is of seeing the film Jumping Jack Flash – and it’s not so much memorable for the image of Whoopi Goldberg brandishing a mansize toothbrush against an unknown intruder, (which has its merits) but for the fact that the plot effectively hinged on her character instant messaging a spy trapped in Russia.

Perhaps you recall soundbites like “This is the beginning of end for the postal system/business air travel/commuting…” and other such ridiculous hype. It seemed almost reasonable, yet now we laugh cynically at such innocence.

However, there was a seed of truth in those statements, which is probably why so many of us swallowed them at the time. The kernel of it was that the internet collapses space. Its magical combination of electricity, protocols and hardware, strung out across the globe, really do make Moscow seem as close to us as the PC in the next room.

So, what did the great design minds do with this remarkable inversion of geography? They said “Let’s make a virtual gallery you can wander round” or “Let’s make a virtual nightclub.” Suddenly with such clumsy reproductions of the real world online, we had all its disadvantages (having to travel from one place to another in real time) with none of the advantages (the texture of a painting, the feel of a pint glass, and other luxuries which I shall let you imagine in your own time.)

For some reason this desire to imitate travel still persists. Almost every fledgling webdesigner at some point suggests a navigation system based on rooms or spaces. (Go into the conference room and you can see the press releases. Go into the telephone booth and you get contact information.)

Forget it! Physical dimensions are not what networked IT does well, and it’s certainly not an advantage (unless you are playing Tomb Raider, in which case you may be glad there’s a metre of virtual stone between you and some rabid wolf.) What if you wanted to compare differing sets of information, or change the order and grouping of images in our virtual gallery? On the web this becomes immediately possible, but it renders the metaphor superfluous at best; counter-intuitive at worst.

Information and 3d space can rarely, if ever, be combined to good effect. Many extremely talented designers have tried to solve complex navigation and data representation problems, such as menus with many layers and interlinking options, by creating a kind of space which you can circumnavigate or zoom in and out of the text. But if you can find me a casual web user that understands what on earth is going on with these things, I promise to eat that very man-size toothbrush.

Not so long ago, Apple announced that in their development of the next version of Mac OS, they were exploring a new desktop metaphor which was not based on two dimensions but three. Everybody danced around excitedly on reading the press release. But what happened? We ended up with beveled icons and little folders that look like they’re standing up on the desktop. Cute, but not exactly a quantum leap.

I could be wrong about this. But one thing’s for sure, you’d have to spend a lot more money than Apple did to prove it.

The Liberalism Discussion

MD: I would simply add as a kind of hypertext link to that statement, the term ‘liberal’ in America means something very different [from the European use of the term. WvW] and I think the boilerplate phrase ‘liberal economics’ is more usefully phrased for Americans as a ‘laissez-faire’ Ayn Randian deregulated economics. Not liberalism in the sense of social policies but ‘liberal’ meaning the least regulated, the least statist intervention.

RB: Simon Martin Lipset says in his book American Exceptionalism: ‘all Americans are liberals’ it is just that they are either conservative liberals or social liberals. And that is part of the problem in the American debate; it is completely narrow. And he says quite rightly that there’s never been really a conservative party. You know pro-church, pro-aristocracy party since the revolution and similarly there’s never been a real socialist party, not even in the social democratic sense.

The Commodification of Social Theories and the State

MD: When Richard suggested they recapitulate Spencerian social theory it is interesting to know that the Spencerian theory was every bit as popular with the monopoly capitalists of his days as the neo-biological downsized demassified decentralized theories of Kevin Kelly are with corporate managerial theorists as Peter Drucker and Tom Peters, the last one being the author of the book Thriving on Chaos which is a bizarre carnival mirror, kind of fun house distortion of Deleuze in a very strange way. The disillusion of the body politics in sort of a flesh-eating viral fashion into a puddle of anomic atomized cellular units protoplasmicly going their own separate ways on the one hand echoes delirious excesses of Deleuzian theory at its most outermost bounds, and on the other hand the American militia movement at this moment, which also embraces very much the notion of micro-political resistance. Where have we ever heard that phrase before? Foucault sits upright in his grave and coughs a blood bubble!

RB: That’s the interesting thing there is this link between the New Left and the New Right which is: anti-statism which actually anti-democracy. Both are against representative democracy. They see the political process as inherently corrupt because it involves compromise, the articulation of interests. The both have the common fantasy of direct democracy. Pure speech actions between people. This is interesting because – in classical republicanism – media freedom was seen as part of participation in the democratic process, it was not the substitute for it. But both the New Left and the New Right saw the media as a substitute for representative political institutions. Guattari talks about the community radio stations as ‘the immense permanent meeting of the airwaves’ where people engage in direct democracy, bypassing the Italian state. As we know it is a very deeply reactionary idea. Because politics involves being a citizen and that’s the reason why I’m a libertarian Social Democrat and not an ultra leftist! You have to accept that we are not we’re not just members of civil society. Both deny this dialectic between membership of civil society and political citizenship.

The Future of the State

MD: Since you are looking for differences between us one difference that should absolutely be highlighted but should be triple underscored italicised and said in fluorescent wired day-glo orange: I’m not a Social Democrat!!! nor am I an academic neo-Marxist!!! I’m deeply, deeply disenchanted with the notion of the nation state and profoundly saddened about the perilous state of constitutional participatory democracy in America at this point which is not to say that I don’t think that it is a remarkably robust line of political code and that I don’t think it is inherently one of the more liberating political systems, but where Richard and I part company is that – in America – the federalist paradigm, the government has been effectively brought to heel and hollowed out and turned essentially into a sickafennic lapdog by corporate power that is evermore global in scope that flows with the frightening liquidity over national borders from whence springs all of this utopian rhetoric in the Wired camp about the end of the nation state, the end of geography in a sort of dizzy vertiginous hyper-real way that almost sounds post-modern. And again the discorporation from the immediate physical body. But in their hands, in the hands of what a New Yorker essayist called the ‘Tofflerist/Gingrichist alliance’ all this rhetoric of returning power to the individual and ultimately to the local level is really a very transparent threadbare blind for on the one hand utterly unraveling of the social safety net and laying the full burden of responsibility for the sort of social concerns at the doorstep of the individual, and simultaneously as I said in my paper dismantling the rickety framework of the nation state that even now only just constraints corporate power to clear the way for transnational media monoliths whose power is utterly unconstrained and answerable to no one. So the pernicious, corrosive enzymes of corporate power have effectively hollowed out constitutional democracy in America. And we need look no further than the recent capitulation to all of Rupert Murdoch’s attempts to roll back anti-monopoly legislation where essentially all of the inside the beltway power-brokers basically melt and kissed his ring. This is the moment to my mind where the state is in serious peril.

RB: This libertarian rhetoric is of a limited section of the economy and is an ideology in the classic sense of the word: it is a false description of reality. What’s interesting is that it is not a really successful economic strategy compared to the post-war period or the New Deal. State regulations and taxes are like physical exercises, nobody really wants to do them or have it imposed on them. A good example is universal access. One of the big campaigns of these free marketeers is to remove universal access from the provision of this new fibre-optic grid. It is literally going to be the virtual class that will be half-wired into the fiber-optic grid and the rest of the population will be left the decaying copper infrastructure. But if you create a mass market you need the masses to be on-line. So it needs the state to pro-actively built the turn-and-see value in order to electrify to…. If I were Time Warner I would want the state to organise the infrastructure and be able sell your commodities.

MD: But how do you respond to my critique, my misgivings, profound weariness, my trepedation about rallying around the banner of the state. As a Social Democrat, you sound much more sanguine about participatory democracy’s ability to disentangle itself from the tentacles of corporate power and I would like you to address the way in which corporate power profoundly undermined the fundamental tenets of participatory democracy.

RB: Political democracy is centered around state structures. If you are against the state in a very fundamental sense, you are against political democracy. It is about participating in political decision-making at a region a national and now at a continental level in Europe. That you have to state first and foremost. We are living within a mixed economy and each of these actors play a different role. But we have to be wary of saying that the state is disappearing, because in a sense it is accepting the propaganda but still the state plays an enormous role, in America as everywhere else. You have to be aware not to over exaggerate globalisation as we are still not at the stage we were in 1914. International trade is less important than it was then. After that we entered a period in which nations became radically autonomous, especially in the Depression era. Eastern Europe as the prime example. Everybody did this, everybody retreated behind the protectionist walls and yes they have been broken down in the last fifty years we reassembled a global trading system, but even now we are still not at the point we were at the beginning of this century.

MD: My question hangs in the air unanswered; your response to my question about the extent in which corporate intervention and influence peddling and the enormously long dark shadow of transnational corporate power pass inside the beltway which effectively to my mind parries participatory democracy. There is a growing feeling in America which gives rise to the Militia Movement throwing a lever in a ballot booth is essentially a sob for the masses and that the real decisions made in the corridors of power have everything to do with pacts and corporate influence peddling and that that acts as a prophylactic, a firewall against the real wills and desires expressed by the people. Your response to that is that we first have to concede that we are committed to the state, and the state is a really profound influential entity; I would not deny that the state has a profound influence and still exercises an enormous impact on the everyday lives of citizenry e.g. in America. The point is that the state is evermore ventriloquised by transnational corporate power. Let me give you a material example; the recent telecommunication legislation in America. A statist, highly interventionist radically deregulatory act. It is the issue that draws all the heat and light from the Wired people because as libertarians they are very concerned with individual rights; it is the Hyde amendment, the so-called Communication Decency Act, which is a hairball! A fleetingly brief mirage, a distraction! The real profound issue in there are the evisceration of common carriage, the roll back of the regulation that would prevent monopolies and given media markets. So this is statist intervention but it is essentially the hamburgler hand puppet given out at McDonald playlands, you know, so, it is operated by corporate power. The pincers of the state close on our lives, but the people manipulating those indicators are in fact a sort of Deakyanesque captains of consciousness of global corporate power. It seems that you have to take that into account when you sort of robustly singing the anthem of statism.

Voting

RB: There is a very specific problem in American because fifty percent of the population don’t vote, it has to do with the very bizarre constitution that you have that, as you can read in The Federalist Papers, was designed to obstruct popular will. Alexander Hamilton makes it absolutely clear if you read what he says about it. So it is partly due to the American constitution, so you need constitutional reform, the end of the division between legislator and executive, proportionate representation, there is rather a number of measures, and even on a more profound level since Roosevelt there has not been a political project in America which is of a very consciously articulated social democratic value.

MD: That is a distant geographically removed, I think academically aloof analysis of why Americans aren’t voting. If you descend to the ragtag and bobtail and ask them why they don’t vote they don’t say: We don’t vote because we think the democratic project has been brought to its knees by too much separation between legislative and executive branches. They say: I don’t vote because I feel it doesn’t make a difference! I feel that there is a profound disjuncture, a disconnect, a rupture, a bifurcation between this impotent, again, sop for the masses that I’m adopt a sort of a monkey on a unicycle performance kind of trained act that I play into the illusion of democratic participation when I doodively margin to the polling booth throw the lever and think that that has a profound impact when in fact that impact has largely been subverted by the real powers who have kind of woven their tendrils inside the beltway to the point where they have fenced out real democratic participation. It seems to me that the prophylactic alternatives, pragmatics progressive solutions, you propose don’t address the real gut-level visceral embodied quotidian reasons that Americans en masse are saying Don’t Vote! They don’t vote because it does not make a difference. To me it’s a no-brainer that it doesn’t make a difference because corporate power has unplugged participatory democracy by vast amounts of liquid capital with which they flooded the halls of representative legislation. If you’re going to make the case for the nation state you’ve got to look who at the end of the century in terminal culture is evermore ventriloquising the nation state. My position, my half-hearted animic endorsement of the nation state has entirely to do, following that analysis with the notion that is the last threadbare shopworn, flimsy prophylactic evermore rickety firewall between us and the raging fireball of totally unconstrainted corporate power that will run rough-shod over individual liberty.

Eric Heroux You hold that the new media made possible by the Internet heralds a new day that might well overcome the “contradictions of media freedom.” One of these contradictions is that while the political rights of free public speech arrived, the means of disseminating free speech rested in the of very few who could afford a press. But today, new media potentially allow for everyone to speak to everyone at some point. And even the rudimentary beginnings of this process seem promising, or as you remind us, “…the success of the Internet system was based on the spontaneous collaboration of its participants on a global scale. ” Nevertheless, the Internet is rapidly becoming commercialized and privatized. And states are already regulating content over the Internet– China, Germany, USA, etc. The oft-repeated promise of democratization remains a mere potential. In a world where only one third of the people have ever owned a telephone, a modem seems rather improbable. Or…?

Richard Barbrook I think that you are confusing the two elements of the contradiction of media freedom: participation and democratisation. This is why I think that it is important to analyse the history of media freedom. We’re then able to look at the deep roots of many contemporary debates.

For example, many of our contemporary debates over the future of the Net were also carried out over radio broadcasting in ’20s and ’30s America. In the early days of the ‘wireless’, radio enthusiasts could experiment with the potentiality of the new media without much interference from the state or the large corporations. Given the ease of obtaining a broadcasting licence or buying airtime, almost anyone could appear on the radio if they really wanted to. But radio broadcasting could only act as a participatory media because it had a limited number of users. It was the democratisation of radio broadcasting which ended the brief experiment in participation. The new users were interested in radio as a source of entertainment and information rather than as a way of expressing themselves. For instance, mutual interference between unregulated stations caused interference for many listeners, especially in the big cities. The passing of the restrictive 1927 Radio Act was a politically popular piece of regulation because it allowed most radio users – who were owners of cheap listening devices – to obtain good quality signals of programmes with the star performers produced by the networks. Of course, this restrictive piece of legislation also opened the way for the dominance of the airwaves by large corporations and the censorship of political/cultural opinions, especially by left-wing radicals. But we should not forget that it was the democratisation of radio broadcasting which provided the social basis for the transformation of the new media from active involvement into passive consumption.

The question now facing the Net is how far hypermedia will repeat this contradictory history. Will democratisation of its availability lead to the end of participation? When the market was small, the corporations weren’t much interested in providing Net services. When only few techies and academics were using on- line services, there was little demand for political regulation. As in the ’20s, there are some senses in which we should welcome the increasing involvement of the corporations and the state within cyberspace — it shows that the Net is becoming a popular phenomenon. Whether private or nationalised, large companies will be needed to make hypermedia widely available. If on-line services are to become ubiquitous, some form of basic content regulation will be needed. The point is whether this involvement is incompatible with the community involvement treasured by many of the pioneers of the Net. Despite appreciating the vigilance against corporate monopolies and state censorship, I think that the prophets of doom are treating the contradictions of media freedom as part of an ‘eternal present’ rather than a historical process. The emergence of hypermedia is the latest expression of the modern aspiration to transcend the contradiction between participation and democracy within media freedom. It is no accident that a fibre-optic grid has greater technological potentiality for two-way communications on a mass scale than the airwaves. It is the crystallisation of an emergent social practice which goes beyond the limitations of Fordism.

E.H. You proposed that, “The emergence of hypermedia is the latest expresson of the modern aspiration to transcend the contradition between participation and democracy within media freedom.” Do our aspirations or social practices tend to precede and even lead to technologies that mirror them? Some would see it the other way around, e.g., Jacques Ellul and the critics of technocracy. For them, the problem is how technologies influence social practices.

R.B. Technology is not the subject of history. As Sartre pointed out, technology is a crystallised praxis. It expresses the social relations and the social knowledge of a given historical era. For sure, machines have a material-technical basis which will limit its capabilities. This can be seen in the Net– downloading large images can be a frustrating experience because of the low bandwidth of the domestic telephone system. But the reasons why certain paths of innovation are followed and others ignored do not lie in some inherent logic within technology. McLuhan was wrong! On the contrary, states, companies and communities devote time and effort to researching and developing technologies which are useful for their own purposes. For instance, the Net was created by the state for military communications, was improved by amateurs as a form of horizontal communications and is now being further advanced by corporations who want to make money from “interactive tv”. Each section of the mixed economy hasn’t just created its own particular form of content, but also shaped the technological basis of hypermedia. As they used to say in the ’70s, science is social relations.

E.H. Raymond Williams wrote a book about television back in the 1970s in which he insisted that it was up to how we deploy technics such as TV, up to the specific social practice or cultural form, to determine the effects of media technology on democracy. A medium can be either monopolized by the commodity form or democratized by smaller “alternative” uses….

R.B. When I was a radio pirate, I would have agreed with this analysis. Each frequency granted to a commercial operator was one denied to a community radio station. However I think that this analysis is very difficult to apply to hypermedia. I don’t think that we’re faced with an either/or choice anymore. On the contrary, corporate involvement in building the Net could actually enhance community uses of the new information technologies. For instance, although broadband networks will be built mainly to sell home entertainment, they can also be used for distributing d.i.y. culture and information on a much wider scale. As long as two-way communications are possible over the network, hypermedia cannot be monopolised by the commodity form. Given that many software producers– such as music companies and book publishers– are dependent on commercialising artistic forms originating in popular culture, I don’t think that this would be even in their narrow commercial interests either!

E.H. Back when radio was a radically new promise of mass communications, Bertolt Brecht used to insist that “Society cannot share a common communications system so long as it is split into warring factions.” To the degree that societies remain divided along the lines of race and class, will even the new media be something we really share?

R.B. But what is “a common communications system”? Is it the entire population grouped around their television sets watching the same programme? – or the electronic marketplace with a myriad of interlocking companies – or the electronic agora composed of many diverse communities?

It could be argued that this Brecht quote has potentially totalitarian implications. In radical Jacobin theories, social contradictions could be overcome through ideological uniformity imposed from above. Rather we should ask how far media freedom – including for hypermedia– can overcome the class differences within contemporary capitalism? In many ways, both the Right and the Left overestimate the power of the media to shape society. This is probably because the “opinion formers” spend so much of their lives trying to appear on the media! For instance, both black and white people in the USA share the same phone network– “a common communications system” — yet they don’t use it to ask each other out socially very much…

E.H. This is quite right. Communication as genuine dialogue across divided sectors of society is a bit illusory and unattained so far. The Italian thinker, Gianni Vattimo, in “The Transparent Society” argues that contemporary media will never contribute to a transparent communication and unified understanding among different tribes– but almost the obverse. That is, the society of “generalized communication” has produced an increasing pluralization of groups and identities. Media do not lead to a rational unalienated intersubjectivity among people, as Habermas wishes. Instead we see the proliferation of new and disorienting possiblilities, new myths, hybrid tribes, multiple dialects and subcultures. Vattimo sees us as oscillating between belonging and disorientation. He finds this a promising development, something potentially positive.

R.B. Again I would want to challenge the either/or basis of this question. Although the nation state retains its importance, there is a simultaneous process of globalisation and localisation shaping people’s lives. These parallel processes have positive and negative features. For instance, ethnicity can be both a source of self-identity and of racism. The national movement in Slovenia was emancipatory while in Serbia it created a new form of fascism. I think that we need to use dialectical forms of analysis rather than one-sided approaches. By this I do not mean the left Hegelian dialectics which simply sees the Negative opposed to the Positive, i.e. the sort of approach pioneered by Bakunin in “The Reaction in Germany” which has been at the centre of most radical left thought ever since. Rather I would like to see an analysis of the fuzzy and contradictory nature of our advanced modern society. The Net itself is an interesting example of how the supposedly separate areas of state, private and community activities are both in competition with each other and dependent upon each other at the same time.

E.H. And much of the new communication freedom seems to have unleashed an unseemly crowd of miseducated gossips. Guy Debord was rather pessimistic on this point, as opposed to McLuhan’s glad prophecies of a global village. Debord wrote that “The Sage of Toronto . . . spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.” One wonders what Debord would say about most newsgroups!

R.B. McLuhan’s concept of the “global village” can seem very apt in the present stage of the Net because it still only has an elite group of users. The social controls of a village are possible because everyone knows everyone else. Ironically, the Canadian guru was reexporting the Jeffersonian dream of creating technological pastoralism in the USA! In contrast with this fantasy about farmers, Debord dreams instead of the digital city — workers united through horizontal communications within an electronic agora. The question therefore has to be posed about whether it is possible to have mass democracy without representation in both politics and the media?

E.H. For me the dimly formulated paradox is that cyberspace is inherently global: it tends to ignore geopolitical boundaries and regulations and power hierarchies (aside from, as I noted before, the outright censorship that is already happening), and yet cyberspace depends upon a very traditional material base– everything from the silicon hardware to the electric energy to the programmed connections can only be maintained by the technically complex organization of labor, knowledge, and resources found in developed countries. For the moment, that material base is equivalent to technocracy, in as much as it cuts across diverse economies and state practices. Cyberspace implies both the new freedom of global communication and the maintenance of technocratic bureaucracies. Cyberspace is a kind of communicational anarchy which depends upon a socio-technical hierarchy of expertise and resource production. We are entering an era in which hierarchy has led to a new kind of freedom, but that freedom is virtual. It is a virtual freedom since it can never choose to dismantle the technocratic base upon which it depends, for that would necessarily lead to the collapse of cyberspace itself. Still it is fascinating to see where this paradox might lead us. But I think that right now one of the tensions created is the contradiction you have pointed out. Do you have an educated guess about what we’ll see in the near future here?

R.B. The development of cyberspace is only the latest and most dramatic manifestation of the evolutionary pressures inherent within modernity. The precondition of capitalism is the relentless drive to surpass all existing preconditions. At the core of this process is the breaking up of traditional local communities by increasing the socialisation of human existence on a global scale. The transition from Fordism to the information society is simply the present stage in this process.

Yet, despite all our technological and social advances, the majority of humanity have only just joined this modernisation process. As Chomsky likes to point out, most people have yet to make a telephone call let alone get wired to the Net. As Lula (leader of the Brazilian Workers’ Party) said, the poor in the Third World haven’t yet reached Fordism let alone anything more futurist. We’re therefore faced by the paradox of being able to realise and not realise the ‘end of history’ at the same time.

If we follow this argument of Hegel and Kojeve, the 1789 revolution declared the formal democratic principles of universal rights for all (male) citizens, including the right of media freedom. Ever since, people have been trying to realise these principles in practice through a variety of means (and include women within them). For instance, it has been claimed that media freedom would be realised in practice through public service broadcasting, the ‘free market’ and community self-organisation. In practice, all these different forms of media freedom have been elitist rather than democratic. Now, with the emergence of the Net, it is possible to see how every citizen could be both a producer as well as a consumer of media. Brecht’s dream of making every receiver into a transmitter is now technically possible.

However, contrary to the optimism of the technological determinists, the advance of science doesn’t automatically benefit everyone. The impact of mechanical spinning machines and the cotton gin was to reinforce slavery in the Old South not to free the slaves. There have to be social and political debates over how and in whose interests any new technologies are deployed within society. But, as I hope that I’ve shown in earlier answers, the arguments over the development of the Net are not necessarily clear-cut. For instance, both the neo-liberal and neo-Luddite positions are wrong because they try to over-simplify complex situations. On the one hand, the neo-liberal belief that cyberspace has to be organised as a free market doesn’t correspond to how really existing capitalism operates. On the other, neo-Luddite opposition to any involvement by private corporations in the building of cyberspace ignores the need for large organisations to coordinate social labour.

The social democratic response to these failed strategies should be to advocate methods by which we can realise the rational within hypermedia. Above all, the key issue is extending access to the new information technologies beyond the confines of the virtual class (aka symbolic analysts, knowledge elite, etc.). This is the problem at the centre of your question. Especially in the USA, the most privileged sections of the workforce have been tempted to shirk their responsibilities to their fellow citizens and to withdraw into their gated suburbs, including those built in cyberspace. As shown by their uncritical admiration for the liberal slave-owners of 1776, the New Right are happy to celebrate the social autism of the virtual class as an expression of individual freedom. Yet, the Left critique often takes the form of a blind hostility towards the new information technologies as if they’re a cause rather than an expression of the apartheid between the information rich and poor.

As social democrats, we need instead to encourage a creative miscegenation between the contradictory components of the mixed economy to accelerate the process of modernisation. For instance, the active involvement of government is necessary in the building of the infobahn, from imposing universal access requirements to subsidising cultural production. Similarly, the large corporations will play a key role in organising the mass production of digital technologies and information services. Above all, we should do everything to foster community and individual participation in producing and distributing information. If a self-reinforcing virtuous circle can be started, the development of cyberspace can become a process of inclusion rather than exclusion. In the long run, the democratic form of cyber-modernisation will even prove to be more efficient in the narrowest economic sense as well as providing wider social, political and cultural benefits. The philosophical ‘end of history’ for media freedom can be realised, but only by overcoming the practical and social difficulties encountered in constructing cyberspace within the contradictory processes of actual history. The electronic agora is yet to be built– and it can only be achieved as a practical task undertaken through collective labour.

E.H. You are currently involved in another form of alternative media. What is your latest project and who is your audience?

R.B. I’m planning to do another book. This will present the arguments in a less academic style, have more about hypermedia and be graphically rich. This is the pop single rather than the serious album!

‘Imagine that human beings were used as reading machines. Assume that in order to become reading machines they need a particular training’ (Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1934).

Machines are predictable and humans are not. In celebrated papers of the late 1940s the English mathematician Alan Turing questioned this notion. Having been a wartime cryptographer at Bletchley Park, then a computer theorist at the National Physical Laboratory and Manchester, Turing claimed he had indeed occasionally been surprised by the output of some discrete state machines. But this revealed nothing about the source of surprise, rather it reflected one’s own mentality. The view that machines could never truly surprise was but a version of brainy folks’ snootiness towards mere deduction or computation.[1] Turing gave this prejudice a ready social explanation. A big machine like the new Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) at the National Physical Laboratory would need servants (whom Turing presumed would be women) to run the hardware, but their tasks would soon be absorbed by the machine itself. When sufficiently routine, even its masters’ tasks could also be taken over by ACE. But ‘they would surround the whole of their work with mystery and make excuses couched in well chosen gibberish’. Intellectuals and bosses liked to think that higher functions could never be automated, because they were informal, discretionary, and startling.[2]

To counter this mystification, Turing distinguished between rules of conduct governing every eventuality, which were not to be had, and laws of behaviour, which might well exist though currently be unknown. Like Ludwig Wittgenstein, with whom he had some unfortunate exchanges about mathematical conventionalism in Cambridge seminar rooms just before the War, Turing reflected on rules and games. Once upon a time, the outcome of horse races was determined by Jockey Club stewards. Now it was thoroughly mechanized by photography. But Turing had a print of a photo finish whose outcome depended on whether six inches of saliva sprayed across the finishing line counted as part of a horse’s head. The rules didn’t say – so the decision had to be referred back to the stewards’ discretion. Criteria for automated judgments could still be vague, even though all might acknowledge the lawlike character of the behaviour involved. He showed the picture to his Manchester colleague, the physical chemist turned social theorist and fierce anti-communist Michael Polanyi. Polanyi gladly used photos of equine spittle in his own 1951 lectures on tacit knowledge and unspecifiable procedures. The distinction between conduct and lawlike behaviour also helped Turing explain how machines could learn. Though the laws of behaviour of a discrete state machine could and would never vary, its conduct might indeed develop in surprising directions. Hence followed a version of the maker’s knowledge argument that one knew with certainty only what one built. The machine/human distinction was just a matter of whether such laws were exhaustively known, not whether one was afterwards surprised by their ways of execution.[3]

The wealth of commentary on Turing’s proposals has attended mainly to the imitation game he then devised. An interrogator communicating solely by teletype with a woman and a discrete state machine is challenged to identify the former. It has now been claimed there are machines which can defeat the interrogator. An American manufacturer of disco dance floors, Hugh Loebner, offers an annual prize to programmers of such machines and to convincingly human humans too.[4] It has also been argued that the Turing Test proved a dead end, a distraction for devotees of artificial intelligence now to be consigned to history. It has been suggested that the imitation game is too easy for the machine, since it displaces someone pretending to be a woman and ignores the full social repertoire through which attributions of intelligence are commonly made. It has been suggested that the imitation game is too stiff, since it tests whether discrete state machines possess specifically human intelligence, not simply any kind of intelligence.[5] I do not propose a further contribution to this debate. I agree with Donald Michie, the Oxford classicist who worked with Turing at wartime Bletchley on cryptography, chess and machine intelligence. Michie has pointed out that there are certainly intelligent but inarticulable human activities which would make the test obselete. Michie thought it understandable but fatal that Turing had defined intelligence in terms of academic communication not craft skills. I also agree with Robin Gandy, another of Turing’s closest collaborators and subsequently distinguished mathematical logician, who advises that the celebrated 1950 paper be read not as philosophy but propaganda and that machine programs alone cannot provide the right way to discuss intelligence.[6]

But of all Turing’s exegetes, I find the most congenial in Hugh Kenner, eminent literary critic of modernism. Kenner did not assume human action and capacity stable, then wonder whether machines might ever mimic them. Instead, he proposed the investigation of changing human capacity and action, then wondered whether such changes made them more machine-like. ‘Imagine that human beings were used as reading machines’, Wittgenstein had suggested. What kind of training would be needed to execute this task ? Kenner saw that the imitation game was but one of a long series of projects in technical fakery – Swift’s speculations on whether Gulliver was man, machine or horse; Vaucanson’s automata; Babbage’s analytical engines; Keaton’s acting; Warhol’s soup tins. The point of this list was to remind us that notions of authentic human capacity and specifically mechanical capability develop in tandem. Kenner remarked that in the prediction that by the century’s end discrete state machines would pass a five minute test about 3 times in ten, ‘Turing himself was not perhaps allowing for the possibility that people will grow more machine-like’.[7] In fact Turing also seems to have just such a millenial prospect in view: ‘the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted’. The imitation game is then less interesting as philosophical propaganda than as historical sociology.[8]

This would be an historical sociology of technology. It has been rightly urged that a history of brain models is really a history of the literary and material technologies which are familiar to, and then used as metaphors by, brain scientists. Their metaphorical menagerie exhibits mental clocks, logical pianos, barrel organisms, neural telegraphs and cerebral computer nets.[9] How do specific technologies get into this zoo ? Claims that certain systems can mimic, or even exhibit, intelligence are sustained by social hierarchies of head and hand. Minds are known because these social conventions are known. Colin Blakemore, an eminent contemporary neuroscientist, describes the brain as ‘a biological instrument more complex, more compact, more sophisticated than any machine made by man’. It might therefore seem to escape metaphoric analysis. But no: ‘within this enigmatic kilogram-and-a-half of jelly resides a power of computation that embarrasses the weightiest computer_.A computer with so many components and connections could administer the world. Perhaps it is not surprising that a few famous and infamous brains in history have tried to do the same’.[10] Such conventions include those which maintain or question the privileges of discretionary behaviour. Intellectual labour’s apparently discretionary character may be subsumed within more determinist regimes if it can be subjected to precise estimation. Then the performance of such labour by machines seems more plausible. There are obvious philosophical counterparts of the components of this argument: materialism, reductionism and determinism are ranged against idealism, emergence and free will. But the story which follows attempts to give these rather olympian philosophical themes a local significance in scientists’ interests in taming and analysing underdetermined behaviour by the measurement of intellectual outputs. Since the Enlightenment, neurology, anthropology and physiology have often relied on such measures: oxygen flow, pulse rate, galvanic activity, phrenological charts, cerebral thermometry or – most pervasively – cranial capacity have all been used as markers of underlying brain activity and thus intellectual, social and moral rank. No doubt the instruments used to make such measures then become the source of neurological metaphor.[11] But this kind of cerebral metrology embraces a wider history than that which links craniometry with more recent strategies of intelligence testing and psychometrics. It includes commonplace enterprises which preserve a space for mental life, and define and measure quantitative tokens of that life, so as to show how intellectuals function in economy and society. Cerebral metrology may involve physico-chemical monitoring of brains and bodies and competitive examinations to test intellectual achievement; but it also includes assessments of risk which displace cautionary theodicy by social insurance; political economies which show how price formation depends on matters of psychological judgment; or forms of industrial organisation which expropriate embodied skill as allegedly visible productive performance.

The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to suggest how judgements that machines are intelligent have involved techniques for measuring brains’ outputs. These techniques show how discretionary behaviour is connected with status of those who rely on intelligence for their social legitimacy. These connections seem rather evident in Turing’s own milieu. Protagonists of thinking machines and artificial minds then scarcely doubted the entanglement of brains and culture. In the 1940s, for example, collective organisation and military mobilisation of intellectual labour seemed to make feedback systems acutely plausible representations of human capacity. Cybernetics temporarily convinced those who had lived among (and occasionally as) homoeostatic devices. The political scientist Herbert Simon, future guru of AI, moved via management science and military planning into ‘artificial intelligence research into high-order intellectual processes’. Soon he was predicting that within a decade ‘most theories in psychology will take the form of computer programs’.[12] In 1950 the English biologist John Zachary Young gave a major series of radio lectures on new models of the brain using the then fashionable language of cybernetics and feedback theory. He mixed the well-established neurological research of Sherrington and Adrian with the up-to-date information theories of Lashley and Wiener. In quick succession he compared the brain with a guided missile system and with a mechanical computer based on networked valves. ‘In order to have some picture of how the brain works it is useful to think of it as an enormous ministry whose one aim and object is to preserve intact the country for which it is responsible’ – an image utterly familiar to a British audience accustomed to world war and welfare state. Young’s version of brain science closely tracked changes in communications technology. He recalled how Cartesian clockwork gave way to Victorian engineering. Had not Thomas Huxley claimed that mind is to brain as whistle is to steam engine ? The brain was obviously the machine which itself generated science; science was just the way good brains worked. Managerialism was the right way to run society and model the brain. ‘We do not know much yet about what goes on in our brains and therefore cannot expect educators to educate them properly, psychologists to help us correct their workings, or surgeons to know whether it is wise to cut pieces out of them’. [13]

As he prepared to write up his broadcasts for publication at the end of 1950, Young needed advice on estimating the storage capacity of a brain-like machine. He recalled a meeting at Manchester a year before on ‘the mind and the computing machine’. There he debated the computer analogy with Polanyi and Turing. Young, Turing and their contemporaries such as the cyberneticist Ross Ashby (whose homeostatic ‘Design for a Brain’ first appeared in 1948) were much impressed by state-determined systems completely described by prior position and given imput. Ashby reckoned that such systems were exactly what experimenters achieved in ideal laboratory trials. Young urged that such systems were the best possible models of how neurological systems worked.[14] Polanyi, by contrast, worked hard to show how eliminativist neurology, cybernetics and the vices of Soviet Communism fitted together. He argued that contemporary neurologists reduced their subject matter to measurable variables and so got rid of discretion and will. Cybernetics turned humans into robots. Soviet ideology did the same — and had seduced fellow-travelling intellectuals such as Desmond Bernal because ‘rational action becomes a lifeless banality’. Polanyi found his allies among neurologists such as John Eccles and eminent opponents in Turing and Young.[15] Though very sceptical of its metaphysics, Turing knew all about cybernetics. From summer 1949 he joined a London discussion group on the topic with such enthusiasts as Ashby and Warren McCulloch. Soon Turing broadcast for the BBC on whether digital computers could think. Meanwhile, in October 1950 his Manchester paper appeared in the nation’s pre-eminent philosophy journal, Mind, under the title ‘Computing machinery and intelligence’.[16]

The closing section of Turing’s paper was devoted to the problem of building a brain. Anything that could be turned into a routine could be aped by a computer and so plausibly performed by the kind of brain which Young set forth. Young deprecated intellectuals’ talk of ‘pseudo-things’ and ‘semi-things’ such as consciousness or mind. He claimed that cerebral evolution explained why humans might resist the possibility of treating brains as machines and so replacing one by the other. In February 1947, in a talk to the London Mathematical Society on the operation of ACE, Turing spent some time detailing the social organisation required to tend it and the gibberish with which bosses would try to resist their own automation. ‘This topic leads to the question as to how far it is in principle possible for a computing machine to simulate human activities’.[17] Turing insisted that learning machines, the basis of building brains, must possess operating rules which could ‘describe completely how the machine will react whatever its history might be, whatever changes it might undergo. The rules are thus quite time-invariant’. For the admirers of state-determined machines the principal puzzle would be the appearance of innovation: ‘intelligent behaviour presumably consists in a departure from the completely disciplined behaviour involved in computation, but a rather slight one, which does not give rise to random behaviour, or to pointless repetitive loops’. Now Turing turned back to the history of his own discipline, citing an 1843 account of Charles Babbage’s project to build a digital computer. In planning his Analytical Engine, Babbage had early developed the notion of conditional branching. As Turing’s biographer sagely remarks, mechanising conditionality ‘would be analogous to specifying not only the routine tasks of the workers but the testing, deciding, and controlling operations of the management‘. Bosses make choices, and intellectuals make reasoned but discretionary ones. The history of such choices might tell us something about the cultural history of thinking machines.[18]

It has been convincingly suggested that the early nineteenth century separation of calculation from intelligence depended on the low status of the mechanics who performed computation and thus made its mechanization then seem viable.[19] Enlightenment ergonomics provided metrologies of work which were then applied to brains and helped make intelligent machines plausible. In the rapid industrialisation of the first decades of the 19th century, theorists of the factory system such as Charles Babbage represented the workforce as a collective machine under intelligent management. To extend their cultural legitimacy, Babbage and his allies showed that capricious or miraculous change could be the programmed outcome of intelligent mechanism. But when challenged by cultural conservatives, more friendly to priestcraft and the academy, they made sure to preserve a realm of intellect and will. This could help their own command over economic and social resources. By the end of the 19th century, scientific professionals such as Thomas Huxley and his colleagues among the scientific naturalists rapidly gained this command, imposed tests of intelligence and aptitude on the brainpower of the nation, and accounted for the brain as a complex mechanism. They also conceded that the mind might escape such mechanisation – using techniques of precision quantification, they were able to point to those tokens of mental activity which could indeed be subjected to measurement and thus mechanism. The balance of this admittedly Anglocentric paper, therefore, is devoted to the intellectual and social crises of industrialisation in the 1830s and of professionalisation in the 1870s, the cerebral metrologies developed at those moments, and the issues of prediction and underdetermination raised by the evaluation of brain power.

‘The engine knows’

  ‘The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with. This it is calculated to effect primarily and chiefly, of course, through its executive faculties’ (Ada Lovelace: Sketch of the Analytical Engine, 1843).

This cautionary text about the unoriginality of digital machines, which Turing cited in 1950, had originally been generated during Babbage’s dramatic publicity campaign for his troubled Analytical Engine. Babbage used contacts such as the Piedmontese military engineer and future premier Luigi Menabrea and then the aristocratic philomath Ada Lovelace. The ‘Sketch of the Analytical Engine’ appeared in journals in Geneva and then London in the winter of 1842-43.[20] It showed the new machine was an unprecedented technical system designed to carry in its memory one thousand numbers each of fifty digits. The store consisted of sets of parallel figure wheels, structured like those in the store of Babbage’s earlier Difference Engine, launched in the early 1820s and still incomplete despite massive government and private investment. Sequences of operation cards carried instructions to the engine, which were decoded in the store using the machine’s library of logarithmic and other functions, and then distributed to the operating sections of the mill. Such distribution could itself be modified by variables set by the existing state of operations in the machine. These crucial aspects of the Engine, its capacity for memory and for anticipation, were to be profound resources for Babbage’s metaphysics and his political economy. ‘Nothing but teaching the Engine to foresee and then to act upon that foresight could ever lead me to the object I desired’.[21] Discussions with his colleagues such as Menabrea questioned Babbage’s account of the knowledge which such complex processes of training and judgement might involve. When Menabrea completed his essay on the machine, he remarked that ‘the machine is not a thinking being, but simply an automaton which acts according to the laws imposed upon it’.[22]

Enlightened savants such as Babbage and his allies well understood the figure of the automaton as a resource for estimating labour power and defining their own managerial role. They were enthusiasts for techniques first developed by the French engineer and academician Charles Coulomb, who after managing colonial military works had tried to evaluate the maximum effect extractible from labour, and the chemist and economist Antoine Lavoisier, who worked out laboratory methods treating all humans as so many machines absorbing vital air and nutriment. They could determine ‘how many pounds weight correspond to the efforts of a man who recites a speech, a musician who plays an instrument. Whatever is mechanical can similarly be evaluated in the work of the philosopher who reflects, the man of letters who writes, the musician who composes. These effects, considered as purely moral, have something physical and material which allows them, through this relationship, to be compared with those which a labourer performs’. Lavoisier’s chemical technology of self-experiment allowed him to evaluate ‘the efforts of the mind as well as those of the body’, because all humans were understood as automata labouring in closed exchange systems. By constructing, displaying and imagining such self-governing machine systems, the enlightened supposed they could make their own social order and a powerful place within it. So automata had a salient political function in ‘the technologies of rationalism’[23]. Menabrea and his allies worked hard to link this kind of algebraic analysis of human capacities with the urgent practical demands of military and civil engineering and thus to reform the labour force of new states. Babbage’s own use of such rationalist resources marked him out as an unusually sympathetic apostle of Enlightenment techniques in early Victorian Britain. In this context, the Analytical Engine was a neat way of accounting for labour discipline alongside intellectual control.

Babbage and Lovelace, who translated and annotated Menabrea’s memoir in 1843, used highly anthropomorphic language to describe the faculty of anticipation, feeling and choice which they reckoned the engine would display. Lovelace had her own self-destructive interests in the bodily experiences of doing analysis. Alan Turing strangely echoed some of her own worries when, in a testy passage of his 1950 paper directed against theologians, he pointed out that ‘in attempting to construct such [intelligent] machines we should not be irreverently usurping [God's] power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children’. Lovelace explicitly saw her own frail body as a ‘laboratory’ for testing currently fashionable materialist theories of mind, especially those of her ambitious young physiological mentor, William Carpenter. Carpenter, Babbage and Lovelace all discussed the effects of mathematical analysis on bodily constitution and of bodily condition on mathematical capacity. Then they applied these lessons to the calculating machines.[24] Babbage conceded that ‘in substituting mechanism for the performance of operations hitherto executed by intellectual labour…the analogy between these acts and the operations of mind almost forced upon me the figurative employment of the same terms. They were found at once convenient and expressive, and I prefer to continue their use’. Hence he was committed to phrases such as ‘the engine knows‘, to describe its predetermined move from one calculation to the next. Lovelace put the issue like this: ‘although it is not itself the being that reflects, it may yet be considered as the being which executes the conceptions of intelligence. The cards receive the impress of these conceptions, and transmit to the various trains of mechanism composing the engine the orders necessary for their action’. This execution of intelligence was directly linked to the capacities of reliable subordinate workmen: ‘it will by means of some simple notations be easy to consign the execution of them to a workman. Thus the whole intellectual labour will be limited to the preparation of the formulae, which must be adapted for calculation by the engine’. The subordination of machinofacture to intelligence was crucial. The Analytical Engine, like Turing’s ACE a century later, raised the issue of the class division of intelligence. Menabrea ended his memoir with a reflection on the ‘economy of intelligence’. ‘The engine may be considered as a real manufactory of numbers’. In her remarkable annotations to this text, Lovelace extended and qualified these remarks about the manufacture process. She urged that the issue of whether the ‘executive faculties of this engine…are really even able to follow analysis in its whole extent’ could only be answered by watching the engine work. She explicitly analogized between the working of the machine and the mind, notably in respect of the separation between operation cards, variable cards and number cards. ‘It were much to be desired’, she noted, ‘that when mathematical processes pass through the human brain instead of through the medium of inanimate mechanisms, it were equally a necessity of things that the reasonings connected with operations should hold the same just place as a clear and well-defined branch of the subject of analysis…which they must do in studying the engine’. The science of operations was proposed as a new discipline of utter generality both within the surveillance of cerebral labour and in the manufacture of exact values.[25]

Management of labour’s caprices held the key to these connexions. In the decade of political reform and the factory system, Babbage tried to make industry uniquely visible to managers so as to guarantee the reliability of output. One could survey ‘not only the mechanical connection of the solid members of the bodies of men’ but also, ‘in the form of a connected map or plan, the organization of an extensive factory, or any great public institution, in which a vast number of individuals are employed, and their duties regulated (as they generally are or ought to be) by a consistent and well-digested system’. Under this gaze factories looked like perfect engines and calculating machines looked like perfect computers.[26] These engines for manufacturing numbers were developed alongside the discourse of political economy. The ‘philosophy of manufactures’ provided Babbage with an account of what he called the ‘domestic economy of the factory’. His publications on the economy of the factory and the automatism of labour power culminated in his great survey of 1828-32, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, a work based on intelligence gathered throughout the factories of Britain, soon translated into every major European language. As the calculating engine was a ‘manufactory of figures’, so Babbage sketched his definition of a ‘manufactory’, especially its disaggregation of production processes into their simplest components to allow economy and surveillance in terms of consumed power, wages, or time.[27]

Babbage’s specifications placed unprecedented demands on the skills of the machine tool workshops. A report drafted in 1829 for the gentlemen of the Royal Society by Babbage’s closest allies conceded that ‘in all those parts of the machine where the nicest precision is required the wheelwork only brings them by a first approximation (though a very nice one) to their destined places, and they are then settled into accurate adjustment by peculiar contrivances which admit of no shake or latitude of any kind’.[28] The troublesome terms in these bland remarks by the gentlemen of science were the references to nice precision, accurate adjustment and shake or latitude. What might seem to a savant to be matters of irrational judgement were key aspects of the customary culture of the industrialising workshop. The rights of the workers to the whole value of their labour informed much of the radical protest of these key years. The Chartist workforce protested against the campaigns ‘to make us tools’. Proletarian visitors to the machine shows equally frequently complained that their own role in manufacture was invisible there. In contrast, Babbage’s colleague ‘the Pindar of Manufacture’ Andrew Ure characteristically lapsed into the imagery of Olympus and of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to describe the new automatic machinery as ‘the Iron Man sprung out of the hands of our modern Prometheus at the bidding of Minerva – a creation destined to restore order among the industrious classes’.[29]

These issues made urgent the problem of the source and ownership of the intelligence and skills embodied in machines confessedly designed to perform mental work. In his Economy of Machinery Babbage made much of the means through which the automatic lathe and its product, the calculating engine, would guarantee ‘identity’ and ‘accuracy’.[30] Proponents of machinofacture reckoned that the factory system was evidently a consequence of intelligent reason and situated this intelligence in the complex relation between the fixed capital of the steam-driven engines and the mental capital of the millowners. The workforce itself was only judged a producer of value to the extent that it matched precisely the capacities of the machines. The qualities attributed to this intelligence were just those required from this form of superintendence, anticipation and meticulous scrutiny. This was the definition of intelligence which Babbage embodied in his machines and the sense of intelligence which he reckoned those machines displayed. He even claimed that these were the virtues of divinity. Natural theology was the indispensable medium through which early Victorian savants broadcast their messages. The dominant texts of this genre were the Bridgewater Treatises composed in the early 1830s by eminent divines and natural philosophers under the management of the Royal Society’s presidency.[31] The treatise produced by William Whewell, then mathematics tutor at Trinity College Cambridge, was among the most successful of these. Babbage’s machine philosophy was here assailed from a perspective in complete contrast to those of the radical artisans. Whewell rejected continuities at every level. He invented the word ‘palaetiology’ to describe the rational search for causes of current systems, just so as to point out that this search must always terminate with the inexplicable and spiritual. He denied any material origin for thought or language. He reckoned that discoveries were not made by the patient accumulation of facts but rather by the sudden dramatic superinduction of a fundamental idea which then governed the phenomena. He thought that his students could be drilled to formalise mathematical truths but not taught how to discover them. ‘We cannot unfold the mind of a spider or bee into the mind of a geometer’. The historical emergence of intelligence from mere matter was itself, for Whewell, not a lawlike surprise but rather a divine and thus miraculous act. Whewell maintained a consistent hostility to the implications of mechanised analysis: ‘we may thus deny to the mechanical philosophers and mathematicians of recent times any authority with regard to their views of the administration of the Universe’. Worse was to follow. Whewell brutally denied that mechanised analytical calculation was proper to the formation of the clerisy. In classical geometry ‘we tread the ground ourselves at every step feeling ourselves firm’ but in machine analysis ‘we are carried along as in a railroad carriage, entering it at one station and coming out of it at another…..it is plain that the latter is not a mode of exercising our own locomotive powers…It may be the best way for men of business to travel but it cannot fitly be made a part of the gymnastics of education’.[32]

These remarks were direct blows to Babbage’s programme. He called the reply to Whewell he produced in 1837 the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise and labelled it ‘a fragment’. It contained a series of sketches of his religious faith, his cosmology and his ambitions for the calculating engines. It amounted to a confession of his faith that the established clerisy was incompetent, dangerous and innumerate. Babbage had shown that memory and foresight were the two features of intelligence represented in his machines. He now showed, using resources from his calculating engines and from David Hume’s notorious critique of miracles and revelation, that these features of machine intelligence were all that was needed to understand and model the rule of God, whether based on the miraculous work of the Supreme Intelligence or on His promise of an afterlife. Foresight could be shown to be responsible for all apparently miaculous and specially providential events in nature. Throughout the 1830s Babbage regaled his guests with a portentous party trick. He could set the machine to print a series of integers from unity to one million. Any observer of the machine’s output would assume that this series would continue indefinitely. But the initial setting of the machine could be adjusted so that at a certain point the machine would then advance in steps of ten thousand. An indefinite number of different rules might be set this way. To the observer, each discontinuity would seem to be a surprise, if not a ‘miracle’, an event unpredictable from the apparent law-like course of the machine. Yet in fact the manager of the system would have given it foresight. Whewell’s Bridgewater Treatise appeared at the start of March 1833. Less than two months later Babbage had already worked out a salon experiment using the Difference Engine to print the series of even integers up to ten thousand and then increase each term in steps of three. The sudden discontinuity was predictable to the analyst and yet surprising to the audience. Babbage drew the analogy with divine foresight, whether in the production of new species or in miraculous intervention. In May 1833, therefore, Babbage was ready to show a mechanical miracle.[33]

His onlookers were almost always impressed. As early as June 1833 Lady Byron and her daughter Ada Lovelace ‘both went to see the thinking machine (for such it seems)’ and were treated to Babbage’s miraculous show of apparently sudden breaks in its output. ‘There was a sublimity in the views thus opened of the ultimate results of intellectual power’, she reported. The dour Thomas Carlyle was predictably sceptical, and thundered his complaint about Babbage’s analogy between thought and steam power. ‘Innumerable are the illusions of Custom, but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous….Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seen it twice, or two hundred, or two million times ? There is no reason in Nature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine, for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to the Steam-Engine, a power whereby Cotton might be spun, and money and money’s worth realised’.[34] Two years later a curious visitor was treated to a lecture of three hours on the topic of programmed discontinuities: ‘the whole, of course, seems incomprehensible, without the exercise of volition and thought’. Here, then, was the spiritual equivalent of the systematic gaze. In answer to Whewell’s boast that only induction might reveal the divine plan of the world, and that machine analysis could never do so, Babbage countered that the world could be represented as an automatic array only visible as a system from the point of view of its manager. The world-system was a macroscopic version of a factory, the philosophy of machinery the true path to faith, and the calculating engines’ power of ‘volition and thought’ demonstrated to all.[35]

Babbage’s house-party miracles were not the only way in which London reformers like Charles Darwin learnt about the capacity of machines to mimic sudden and unexpected actions. In the metropolitan anatomy schools where Marshall Hall taught and Thomas Huxley studied in the 1840s, the new doctrine of the reflex arc indicated that the central nervous system functioned like an automatic machine. Hall notoriously sought to distinguish the realm of the cerebrum, the proper governor of the sensory and voluntary nerves, from the more automatic, less capricious, excito-motory nerves. Some went further: the York medical teacher Thomas Laycock argued that since the cranial ganglia were continuous with the spinal cord, they must be regulated ‘by laws identical’. Compare this map of structural continuities of law-like determinism with that Babbage drew of the division between the automatism of mechanical labour and the unique privileges of the philosopher and manager. The language and technique of comparative anatomists and neurologists in the mid-century repeatedly questioned, though they tried to preserve, the proper sphere of mind and soul over and above an ever-expanding automatic system.[36] Thus the unitarian medic Carpenter, Lovelace’s erstwhile moral confidant and soon the capital’s premier physiology professor, wondered whether the cerebrum displayed the reflex functions common elsewhere in the body’s system of nerves and ganglia which he so patiently mapped. Somehow there had been an apparently discontinuous ‘increase of intelligence’ and ‘predominance of will over the involuntary impulses’. Eventually Carpenter wrote of cerebral reflexes no less automatic than those of the lower nervous system. Consciousness and will were then strictly limited, and the rule of the neurological machine extended to zones previously the prerogative of mind alone. Thus was forged the careful boundary around what later Victorian philosophers and intellectuals would call ‘the mysterious citadel of the will’.[37]

Carpenter and Babbage argued that a single law could govern the universe’s unfolding, whether in cosmology or physiology. Both attacked Whewell’s donnish claim that divinity, spirit and mind supervened on, and dramatically disrupted, the law-like progression. And both understood the division of labour as apt evidence for the way in which machine-like automatism could generate apparent, but by no means miraculous or inexplicable, innovation.[38] In the 1870s, when the new professionals of the physiological and physical sciences set out to capture the commanding heights of government expertise, industrial science and college jobs, they carried with them this interest in the emergence of novelty from mechanically governed systematic order. Some psychologists and physiologists also reckoned that the security of intellectuals’ new status was dependent on preserving a realm of voluntary action and discretion resistant to reduction. The new tool in their hands was the capacity which men like Babbage had forged – the science of measurement. It had become plausible that natural objects like brains really behaved the way that geared engines did. At the end of his Economy of Machinery Babbage had described ‘a higher science’ which ‘is now preparing its fetters for the minutest atoms that nature has created: it is the science of calculation which becomes continually more necessary at each step of our progress’.[39] It is significant for this story of the cultural meaning of thinking machines that a prophecy of the universal role of tabulated calculation appears at the end of a text on social organisation of the factory system.

A mechanical equivalent of consciousness

‘I believe that we shall, sooner or later, arrive at a mechanical equivalent of consciousness, just as we have arrived at a mechanical equivalent of heat. If a pound weight falling through a distance of a foot gives rise to a definite amount of heat, which may properly be said to be its equivalent, the same pound weight falling through a foot on a man’s hand gives rise to a definite amount of feeling, which might with equal propriety be said to be its equivalent in consciousness’ (Thomas Henry Huxley, ‘On Descartes’ Discourse’, 1870)

In any recognizable or recognized form, intellectuals first appeared in England around 1870. Gentlemen of letters and of science had not until then been members of a well-defined social class. Their standing had relied on the model of the learned professions – law, medicine and the church. Babbage complained in 1851 that ‘science in England is not a profession: its cultivators are scarcely even recognized as a class’.[40] It has been said that Victorian intellectuals ‘thought of themselves as exchanging specialized products in a market which was tolerably free, and the sum of whose intellectual commodities made up the sum of knowledge’.[41] But neither in political economy nor in materialist metaphysics was it easy to see exactly how to measure the productivity, and thus estimate the value, of this special class. Negative implications quickly clustered in English around the term ‘intellectual’. The airy realm of pure theory, brain rather than brawn, seemed too easily to distance this social formation from the common-sense world of market and home. Aesthetes were satirised as otherworldly; philosophers were viewed as useless on the exchange; experimenters were damned as inhuman vivisectors or as cloistered myopes. So when in the 1830s Whewell’s allies tried to defend their university against the tide of utilitarianism, the philosophic radical John Stuart Mill influentially answered by noting that ‘in intellect’ England was ‘distinguished only for…doing all those things which are best done where man most resembles a machine, with the precision of a machine’. The portentous Catholic theologian Cardinal Wiseman feared that ‘the next generation’ might be ‘brought up in the ideas of many of the present, that man is a machine, the soul is electricity, the affections magnetism, that life is a rail road, the world a share market, and death a terminus’.[42] Either brain power could be precisely estimated, thus bringing brains to market, or else it could be claimed that such valuation was really denigration, so keeping brains sacred.

By the 1870s aggressive positivists and scientific naturalists, cultural critics and ambitious lay experts, all sought recognition as a distinct order. By analogy with the ‘labour aristocracy’ of highly skilled technicians and artisans, there was now an ‘intellectual aristocracy’ which had in the 1850s turned secretive discretionary government into well-oiled administrative machinery and by 1870 had imposed competitive public examinations on the military, the civil service and most cognate institutions.[43] The polite language of intellectual labour changed too. The Oxford English Dictionary (1888), compiled by James Murray and other intellectual aristocrats, carefully recorded the introduction of new terms for cerebral labour and its effects. In 1864 the Poet Laureate, Alfred Tennyson, started using the term ‘brain-labour’. In 1871 novelists invented ‘brainwork’ and psychical researchers started investigating ‘brain-waves’. In 1878 Huxley’s closest friend Joseph Hooker coined the term ‘brain-power’, and the author of a work on The Hygiene of Brain and Nerves began referring to ‘brain-workers’. In the United States, it was reported, one could now be ‘brainy’ (1874) and even suffer from ‘brain-fag’, a term soon picked up by William James. And from 1877 the Brain even had an eponymous learned journal all its own. The physiological psychology of Hall and Carpenter was now an entire professional world. It is thus tempting to link these lexicographic innovations with the ‘new phrenology’ which Brain‘s founders, the metropolitan hospital physicians John Hughlings Jackson and David Ferrier, then developed. These new phrenologists displaced the mapping of mental faculties by the exact energetics of sensory-motor phenomena. There could be no physiology of mind as such: ideas, memories, delirium, verbal slips, were markers for the expanding realm of sensory-motor phenomena. This was when Jackson, for example, introduced the punning term ‘barrel organism’ for the mechanisms of aphasia. ‘Neural physiology is concerned only…with the physics of the nervous system’. This version of cerebral metrology, with its naturalistic and evolutionist implications for the social order and careful explication of its apparent inequalities, provided what has acutely been called ‘a cosmic genealogy for middle-class civilisation’.[44]

So in March 1870 Thomas Huxley came up to Cambridge to tell an audience of young Christians that the true path from Cartesian dualism led to ‘legitimate materialism’ – ‘man is nothing but a machine…capable of adjusting itself within certain limits’. Huxley called this ‘the introduction of Calvinism [understand: predestination] into science’. Exactly three years later Huxley again lectured on animals (and humans) as automata; so the university’s newly hired professor of experimental physics James Clerk Maxwell told a more senior Cambridge audience that such Cartesian metaphysics was just bad physics. Huxley’s fatal mix of Cartesianism and Calvinism was an error based on overconfidence in ‘absolutely perfect data and the omniscience of contingency’. Maxwell explained the cerebral metrology of bad metaphysics: ‘What is the occupation of a metaphysician ? He is nothing but a physicist disarmed of all his weapons – a disembodied spirit trying to measure distances in terms of his own cubit, to form a chronology in which intervals of time are measured by the number of thoughts which they include, and to evolve a standard pound out of his own self-consciousness’. The telling point in this intriguing contrast between the naturalist’s materialism and the physicist’s indeterminism is that both discussed how brain work could be turned into measurement. Huxley judged that a materialist science of consciousness was in prospect because he held that a mechanical equivalent of consciousness could be established. ‘It is because the body is a machine that education is possible’. Maxwell reckoned that no such science was to be had because there was no plausible physical measure of changes in consciousness, whether it be ‘the little word which sets the world a fighting, the little scruple which prevents a man from doing his will, the little gemmule which makes us philosophers or idiots’.[45]

To deny the possibility of a ‘cerebral metrology’ was just to deny the submission of intellectuals to the mundane economy. As Otto Sibum reminds us, the enormous significance of James Joule’s construction of a ‘mechanical equivalent of heat’ for Victorian technical culture and economic life offered the notion of ‘mechanical equivalence’ as an apt way of measuring value[46]. Brain work could be made part of this economy if some token could be found allowing that work to be measured. Huxley, who thought of himself as ‘something of a mechanical engineer in partibus infidelium’, reckoned there was such a token – hence his appeal to the ‘mechanical equivalent of consciousness’. The pious and scholarly Maxwell held otherwise – hence his argument that the brain was an example of an underdetermined, arbitrary system. In February 1879 Maxwell discussed these matters with Francis Galton, genealogist of the new intellectual aristocracy, author of Hereditary genius, a self-confessedly ‘conscious machine’ then ‘busy with experiments on the workings of my own mind’. Maxwell had already attacked Galton’s hereditarian determinism in his 1873 Cambridge lecture and again in an article on atoms for the Encyclopedia Britannica a couple of years later. Now Maxwell wanted him to consider moments when the course taken by a material system ‘is not determined by the forces of the system’. Such a system ‘invokes some determining principle which is extra physical (but not extra natural) to determine which of the two paths it is to follow…it may at any instant at its own sweet will, without exerting any force or spending any energy, go off along that one of the particular paths which happens to coincide with the actual condition of the system at that instant’. For Maxwell, there were indeed natural systems of such complexity that they lay beyond the grip of the metrology derived from the conservation of energy. In such systems ‘expenditure’ could not be used as a token of real transformation. Cerebration was exactly such a system. The Maxwellian position reserved a certainly natural realm for brain-work outwith the control of the physical economy.[47]

Institutionalisation of the experimental natural sciences within the universities, and the role of scientific experts in the state, were influentially urged by Huxley and his powerful allies. Political interest focussed on the expansion in public education and mass journalism, on German models of industrial expertise and military might, debates about church authority, about evolution and vivisection. All these themes of the early 1870s helped summon into existence a publicly recognizable intellectual profession.[48] It was just such a group of intellectuals whom Huxley entertained at the Metaphysical Society in London only a few months after his Cambridge lecture with the painstaking and imaginative anatomy of a frog in the deliberately futile search for the amphibian’s soul. It was at such an audience of commercially-minded intellectuals, too, that the ‘worldly philosopher’ and Manchester professor William Stanley Jevons aimed his remarkable manifesto, The Principles of Science (1874). Jevons urged that brute economic facts were mere reflections of mental phenomena. This was exactly why post-Smithian economics could become an exact science and why physical measurement could be applied to the brain’s output: ‘The time may come when the tender mechanism of the brain will be traced out, and every thought reduced to the expenditure of a determinate weight of nitrogen and phosphorus. No apparent limit exists to the success of the scientific method in weighing and measuring, and reducing beneath the sway of law, the phenomena both of matter and mind’.[49]

Jevons and his allies among the new marginalist economists showed how the economy could be understood as a mental machine; and they also made sure to reserve an impenetrable zone of pure intellect. So in 1869 Jevons automated logic by turning Boolean algebra and Babbage’s calculating engine into a ‘logical piano’, a device built for him by a local clockmaker designed to automate reasoning.[50] What he judged Babbage’s ‘exquisite book’ on machinery and manufacture also gave Jevons the resources to replace the labour theory of value by a more thoroughly psychophysical account. Consumption would take place if calculations of increases in pleasure overbalanced those of further painful exertion. In 1870 Jevons published in the house journal of the new scientific professionals, Nature, on a series of experiments on muscular exertion which helped convinced him that labour became more painful the longer it was performed. Jevons learnt his experimental techniques directly from Babbage’s protocols and indirectly from the ergonomic models of Coulomb and Lavoisier.[51] From Carpenter’s physiological psychology Jevons then deduced two universal laws of the economy which tied economic activity firmly to psychological and measurable principles. Consumption relied on the marginal effect of external impressions on the neurospinal system; production on the differential action of muscles guided by the sensorimotor system towards external objects. The link between automatism and physiological psychology showed how the social order could be incorporated directly into the human frame. Like Carpenter and other admirers of the social cosmology of physiological psychology, Jevons made sure to reserve the realm of mind apart. ‘Every mind is thus inscrutable to every other mind and no common denominator of feeling seems possible’; but ‘we may estimate the equality or inequality of feelings by decisions of the human mind’. What could be estimated with great precision were the public tokens of these feelings in mechanical exertion, price formation and consumption decisions. These in turn depended on the mechanical behaviour of the reflex system. Marginalist economics treated homo economicus as a thinking machine. As a machine, its economic activity was individualised, quantified and then referred to physiological mechanics. In 1872 the economic journalist Walter Bagehot composed Physics and Politics, a history of economic organisation based entirely on the development of the reflex system as set out by Huxley himself. Huxley then issued Bagehot’s text in his influential series of works propagandising for scientific naturalism. Babbage’s productive machines here became human machines driven by neurological forces. But because these were machines which could think, a sequestered realm could be left for the exercise of mind, and especially for those of the intellectual analysts who alone could set out the laws which governed all of social and economic life[52].

Competitive public examination of brainpower and expert value, newly introduced in the 1870s, was a triumph for the scientific professionals. Some worried that such quantitative estimates would miss the true qualities of intellect and spirit; others nicely compared examinations with ‘engines’ to drive social progress.[53] Their introduction might seem subversive of morally strenuous instruction among intellectual elites. Maxwell understood the resistance to testing the tyro intellectuals of a newfangled experimental physics laboratory. ‘In the present day’, he conceded in October 1871, ‘men of science are supposed to be in league with the material spirit of the age, and to form a kind of advanced Radical party among men of learning’. Would lab work for brainy students end up ‘tainting their mathematical conceptions with material imagery…Will they not break down altogether ?’ The mechanisms of breakdown and and brain work were the obsession of Victorian Cambridge’s intellectual elite. In his study of their manufacture, Andrew Warwick tellingly cites such commentators as Ralph Waldo Emerson on these remarkable ‘cast-iron men’ and recalls the catastrophic breakdowns during mathematics training of both Maxwell and Galton, the latter of whom had felt as if he had ‘tried to make a steam-engine perform more work than it was constructed for’.[54] Cerebral metrology was highly controversial. The head of the new Edinburgh University physics laboratory, Peter Guthrie Tait, judged examination of students’ ability in measurement experiments as a good way of testing their intellect. The Cambridge mathematician Isaac Todhunter, Whewell’s executor, countered that experimenters should be “born and not manufactured”. Both sides charged the other with levelling standards and breeding uniformity. Tait wanted “social entropy” in the laboratory, not the “eternal, hideous, intolerable sameness” of mathematical life. Energetics evidently provided the right language for cerebral metrology.[55]

Maxwell’s energetics studied mechanical systems which behaved erratically or capriciously. His first triumph had been an essay on the stability of Saturn’s rings. In his campaigns to establish properly exact standards for electrical resistance during the 1860s, he’d had his attention drawn to the puzzles of making mechanical governors which could control the rate of spin of a current-carrying coil. The equations of motion of such homeostatic systems showed surprising irregularities and often escaped complete analysis. In early 1873, a few weeks before his paper attacking Descartes, Huxley and determinism, Maxwell introduced problems about apparently continuous, orderly, mathematical systems which nevertheless displayed sudden discontinuities as questions for Cambridge students.[56] In the 1870s he decided to use this expertise to teach his public the right lessons about the cognitive capacities of machines and the properly secure realm of mind. In dialogue with his Scottish colleagues such as Tait, Maxwell began satirising the capacities of any Laplacean intelligence which claimed complete knowledge of the entire future of a mechanical system. Maxwell reduced this intelligence to ‘a finite being’, a ‘pointsman on a railway line’, or, in William Thomson’s felicitous phrase, ‘a demon’.[57] There was a resonance with the physiological agencies of Jevons’ economics, which, unknown to the wilful economic agent, guided decisions about labour and consumption in the busy marketplace of clashing values. The link between indeterminacy, measurement and intellectual life was set forth in 1868 by Norman Lockyer, Nature‘s founder, and Balfour Stewart, Jevons’ opposite number as Manchester physics professor. They wrote of ‘a machine of infinite delicacy of construction’ such as an electric mine exploded by a long-range telegraphic signal. This was a singular point in the smooth physics of mechanical energy. Then the scientists invited their readers to compare this intriguingly mechanical yet startling system with a living body, and, in particular, with the ‘obscure transmutations of energy’ in ‘the mysterious brain chamber’ of a human being acquiring a new truth. In 1871 William Carpenter picked up the theme in a widely read article on ‘the physiology of will’: he acknowledged the existence of a mechanism of thought, then insisted that ‘there is a power beyond and above all such mechanisms — a will which_can utilize the automatic agencies to work out its own purpose’. Here was a a rude mechanical (rather than a deity) incapable of performing work but able to shift valves without friction or inertia, whose actions surpassed those of contemporary mechanical philosophy and defined a boundary which that science could not transcend.[58] Maxwell and his allies agreed to limit their science’s scope in order to scotch the dominion of blind fate and articulate the constitution, and social role of, scientific intellectuals. ‘Every existence above a certain rank has its singular points: the higher the rank, the more of them. At these points, influences whose physical magnitude is too small to be taken into account of by a finite being, may produce results of the greatest importance. All great results produced by human endeavour depend on these singular states when they occur’, and it was the solemn duty of public scientists to disseminate wider understanding of ‘singularities and instabilities’ so that the ill effects of materialism and the reduction of humans to mere machines could be corrected and quashed. At the end of his life Maxwell wondered whether the soul was ‘like the engine driver, who does not draw the train himself, but, by means of certain valves, directs the course of the steam so as to drive the engine forward or backward or to stop it .’[59]

The demonic implications of Maxwell’s account of instability and discontinuity had a long and complex aftermath – in psychical research and theosophy, cybernetics and information science. Michael Polanyi made full use of the demon in his lectures on tacit knowledge in the 1950s. The ‘emergence of man and the thoughts of man’ must not be understood as passive motions of matter and mind, but rather ‘the gradual rise of autonomous centres of decision’. The Maxwellian demon was Polanyi’s perfect example of such a centre free from the tyranny of material mechanism. This helped Polanyi contest Turing’s apparent attribution of intelligence to digital machines. Autonomous centres, such as human minds, themselves determined what might count as a machine. ‘Since the control exercised over the machine by the user’s mind is – like all interpretations of a system of strict rules – necessarily unspecifiable, the machine can be said to function intelligently only by aid of unspecifiable personal coefficients supplied by the user’s mind’. But in his 1948 talk on intelligent machinery, Turing also emphasised the social basis of this kind of technology. He suggested that ‘intellectual activity consists mainly of various kinds of search’, among which he singled out ‘what I should like to call the ‘cultural search’. The isolated man does not develop any intellectual power. It is necessary for him to be immersed in an environment of other men. From this point of view the search for new techniques must be regarded as carried out by the human community as a whole, rather than individuals’.[60]

This paper has offered some historical remarks about the new techniques of mechanical intelligence and the communal cultures sustaining them. Babbage’s automated conditionality was a decisive moment in the history of these techniques, because he used startling outputs to show how even the most dramatically surprising events in his culture could be quantified and programmed. When intellectuals appeared in England as a specific class formation, debates about the scope of cerebral metrology, automation and determinism became correspondingly intense. In such images as Huxley’s mechanical equivalent of consciousness, and Maxwell’s cunning proletarian pointsman, Victorians worked out ways of redefining the role of the intellectual in the social economy. By finding proxies for mental life in variables which could be measured the system of thinking machines gained plausibility within a carefully defined but nevertheless rather extensive realm. Processes which are deemed machine-like can therefore be mechanised. It is true that ‘the cliché example’ of such a process has been the Taylorist ideal of production-line work. Resistance to thinking machines is sometimes bound up with resistance to (or satires of) Taylorisation. It is for this reason that Kenner neatly connects the imitation game with the on-screen antics of Keaton and Chaplin. One correspondingly cliché example of unmechanisable work is the artisan ideal of craft workshop culture. In cultures where administrative discretion and capricious coteries are seen as the principal threat to social virtue, mechanisation and predictability seem like ideals. In those where automation and expropriation of skill are seen as insidious, the tacit and irremediably embodied will be praised.[61] This is why judgments that some machines can think or that brains are well represented by such machines are of necessity implicated in rival accounts of the socioeconomic order. The hardware of cerebral metrology does more than provide the material for the neurological imagination. It also helps provide the brain with its cultural and economic place.

‘OK Computer’ is published in Michael Hagner (ed.), Ecce Cortex: Beitraege zur Geschichte des modernen Gehirns, Wallstein Verlag, 1999, pp. 254-85.

Footnotes

I thank Robin Boast, Gerd Gigerenzer, Michael Hagner, Emily James, Anna-Katherina Mayer, Andrew Mendelsohn, Helmut Mueller-Sievers and Alison Winter for help with the themes of this paper.

^[1] Alan Turing: Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind 59, 1950, S.433-60, S. 450-1.

[2] Andrew Hodges: Alan Turing: the Enigma. London. 1992, S. 357.

[3] Turing 1950, S. 452, 458; Michael Polanyi: Personal Knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy. London. 1958, S. 20.

[4] Charles Platt: What’s it mean to be human anyway ?. Wired 1, April 1995, S. 80-85.

[5] Blay Whitby: The Turing test: AI’s biggest blind alley ?. In P.J.R.Millican and A.Clark (Hg.), Machines and Thought: the Legacy of Alan Turing. Oxford. 1996, S. 53-62; Hubert Dreyfus: What Computers Still Can’t Do Cambridge, MA. 1992, S. 78; Robert French: Subcognition and the limits of the Turing test. Mind 99, 1990, S. 53-65; H.M.Collins, Artificial Experts. Cambridge, MA. 1990, S. 186-97.

[6] Donald Michie: Turing’s Test and Conscious Thought. Artificial Intelligence 60, 1993, S. 1-22; Robin Gandy: Human versus Mechanical Intelligence. in Millican and Clark 1996, S. 125-36.

[7] Ludwig Wittgenstein: Blue and Brown Books. Oxford 1975, S. 120; Hugh Kenner: The Counterfeiters. Bloomington. 1968, S. 123. Siehe Dreyfus 1992, S. 280.

[8] Collins 1990, S. 222-24.

[9] Jamie Kassler: Man a musical instrument: models of the brain and mental functioning before the computer. History of science 22, 1984, S.59-92; Gerd Gigerenzer: Discovery in cognitive psychology; new tools inspire new theories. Science in context 5, 1992, S. 329-50; and especially Gerd Gigerenzer and Daniel Goldstein: Mind as computer: the birth of a metaphor, 1994.

[10]Â Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin: Head and hand: rhetorical resources in British pedagogical writing 1770-1850. Oxford Review of Education 2, 1976, S. 231-54; Colin Blakemore: The baffled brain. In: Richard Gregory and Ernst Gombrich (Hg.): Illusion in nature and art. London 1973, S. 9-48, S.9-11.

[11] Steven Shapin: The politics of observation. Cereberal anatomy and social interests in the Edinburgh phrenology disputes. Sociological Review Monographs 27, 1979, S. 139-78; Stephen Jay Gould: The Mismeasure of Man. New York 1981; Anson Rabinbach: The Human Motor. Berkeley 1990; Anne Harrington: Medicine, mind and the double brain. Princeton 1989, S.113.

[12] Hugh Kenner: The Mechanic Muse. New York 1987, S. 109; Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Ludwig Pfeiffer, (Hg.), Materialities of Communication. Stanford 1994, S. 292, 329-32; Peter Galison: The ontology of the enemy: Norbert Wiener and the cybernetic vision. Critical Inquiry 21, 1994, S. 228-66; Vernon Pratt: Thinking Machines: the evolution of artificial intelligence. Oxford 1987, S. 212-14; Dreyfus 1992, S. 82.

[13] J.Z.Young: Doubt and certainty in science: a biologist’s reflections on the brain. New York. 1960, S. 49, 55.

[14] W.Ross Ashby: Design for a Brain: the origin of adaptive behaviour. London. 1960, S. 25-6, 270.

[15]Â Polanyi 1958, S.158-9, 237, 262-3.

[16] Hodges 1992, S. 415, 436; Young 1960, S. 137; Turing 1950.

[17] Young 1960, S. 50-1, 156; Hodges 1992, S. 357.

[18]Turing 1950, 459, 451; Hodges 1992, S. 298; Bernard Dotzler u. Friedrich Kittler (Hg.): Alan Turing: Intelligence Service. Berlin. 1987, S.227. Siehe Harry Braverman: Labour and Monopoly Capital. New York. 1974, S. 213-33; Alfred Sohn-Rethel: Intellectual and Manual labour. London. 1978, S. 170-4.

[19] Lorraine Daston: Enlightenment calculations. Critical Inquiry 21, 1994, S.182-202, S.186.

[20] Ada Lovelace: Sketch of the Analytical Engine by L.F.Menabrea. Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs 3, 1843, S. 666-731, S.722. Siehe Charles Babbage: Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. London. 1864, S. 112-41; Anthony Hyman: Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer. Oxford. 1982, S. 164-73; for Ada Lovelace’s role see Dorothy Stein: Ada: a Life and a Legacy. Cambridge, MA. 1985, S. 108-20 (who plays down her originality) and Betty Alexandra Toole: Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers. Mill Valley, CA. 1992, S. 194-260 (who emphasises it).

[21] Babbage 1864, S.114.

[22] Babbage 1864, S. 129-35; Lovelace 1843, S. 675.

[23] Charles Coulomb: Théorie des machines simples. Paris. 1821, S. 260. Siehe C. Stewart Gillmor: Coulomb and the Evolution of Physics and Engineering in Eighteenth-century France. Princeton. 1971, S. 23-4 u. François Vatin: Le Travail: Economie et Physique 1780-1830. Paris. 1993, S. 42-3. Antoine Lavoisier and Armand Seguin: Première mémoire sur la respiration des animaux. 1790. In Oeuvres. 6 Bdd. J.B.Dumas and E. Grimaux (Hg.). Paris. 1864-96. Bd. 2, S. 688-703, S.697. Siehe Bernadette Bensaude Vincent: Lavoisier: Mémoires d’une Révolution. Paris. 1993, S. 220; M. Norton Wise: Mediations: Enlightenment Balancing Acts or the Technologies of Rationalism. In Paul Horwich (Hg.), World Changes: Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science. Cambridge, MA. 1993, S. 207-56, S. 220.

[24] Turing 1950, S. 443; Alison Winter: A calculus of suffering: Ada Lovelace and the bodily constraints on women’s knowledge in early Victorian England. In Steven Shapin and Christopher Lawrence (Hg.), Science incarnate. Chicago. 1998, S. 202-39.

[25] H.W.Buxton: Memoir of the Life and Labours of the late Charles Babbage. R.A.Hyman (Hg.) Cambridge, MA.. 1988, S. 216 Anm.8; Lovelace/Menabrea 1843, S. 675, 689, 692, 723. For the ambitions for a new science see Toole 1992, S. 209-16.

[26] Babbage: On a Method of Expressing by Signs the Action of Machinery. Philosophical Transactions 116, 1826, S. 250-65 and draft in Cambridge University Library MSS ADD 8705.21 ; Dionysius Lardner: Babbage’s Calculating Engines. Edinburgh Review 59, 1834, S. 263-327, S. 318-319. Iwan Morus: Manufacturing Nature: Science, Technology and Victorian Consumer Culture. British Journal for the History of Science 29, 1996, S. 403-34 discusses the relation between commodification and the show of machines in the early Victorian period.

[27] Maxine Berg: The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy 1815-1848. Cambridge 1980, S. 182-89; Babbage: On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. London 1835, S. 120, 175. Siehe Richard M. Romano: The Economic Ideas of Charles Babbage. History of Political Economy 14, 1982, S. 385-405, p. 391.

[28] Buxton 1988, S. 86.

[29] E.P.Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth 1968, S. 889, 915; John Rule: The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England. London 1986, S. 357-63; Andrew Ure: The Philosophy of Manufactures. London 1835, S. 367.

[30] Babbage 1835, S. 67.

[31] W.F.Cannon: The problem of miracles in the 1830s. Victorian studies 4, 1960, S. 5-32.

[32] William Whewell: Astronomy and General Physics Considered with reference to Natural Theology. London 1834, S. 334; Ders.: Indications of the Creator. London 1846, S. 44; Ders.: Of a Liberal Education in General. London 1845, S. 40-41. Siehe Richard Yeo: William Whewell, Natural Theology and the Philosophy of Science in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Annals of Science 36, 1979, S. 493-516, u. George Stocking: Victorian anthropology. New York 1987, S. 69-70.

[33] Babbage: Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. London 1838, S. 32-43; Babbage’s first experiment with the Difference Engine, 18 May 1833, Cambridge University Library MSS ADD 8705.38 p.38. Siehe William J. Ashworth: Memory, efficiency and symbolic analysis: Charles Babbage, John Herschel and the industrial mind. Isis 87, 1996, S. 629-653.

[34]Lady Byron an King, 21.6. 1833. In Doris Langley Moore: Ada Countess of Lovelace. London 1977, S.44; S.E. de Morgan: Memoir of Augustus de Morgan. London 1882, S. 89; Thomas Carlyle: Sartor Resartus. London 1931, S. 232.

[35] George Ticknor: Life, Letters and Journals. London 1876.

[36] Brian Dolan: Representing novelty: Babbage, Lyell and experiments in early Victorian geology. History of Science 36, 1998, S. 299-327; Stephen Jacyna: Scientific Naturalism in Victorian Britain. PhD thesis. University of Edinburgh 1980, S. 161-73; Harrington 1987, S. 32-33; Adrian Desmond: Huxley. Harmondsworth 1998, S. 15-1

Cultural Babbage: Technology, Time and Invention edited by Francis Spufford and Jenny Uglow, Faber and Faber, London, pp 290.

This book is a collection of essays inspired by Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine – a never-completed Victorian mechanical calculator which is often claimed as the ancestor of the modern PC. In London’s Science Museum, a working version of this machine has pride of place in its computer exhibition. A few years ago, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling used Babbage’s prototype computer as the theme of their sci-fi novel about an alternative Victorian England. Fascinated by this resurrected icon, the essays in Cultural Babbage use the Difference Engine as the starting-point for a discussion of the relationship between arts and science, especially in Britain. Its essays range from the intrguing, such as Alex Pang’s examination of the Cold War origins of the geodesic dome, to the eccentric, such as Lavinia Greenlaw’s musings on being the poet daughter of a doctor. The most interesting contributions to the book deal with the wonderful conceit at the centre of Gibson and Sterling’s novel: the Difference Engine could have only been successfully built in Victorian England as an integral part of a social revolution.

In their essays, Tom Paulin and Neil Belton demonstrate how political conservatism has encouraged a deep-rooted hostility to science in this country. Despite being the first industrial nation, science in England has always been regarded with suspicion by those in power. Whether in Edmund Burke’s rantings against the French Revolution, Aldous Huxley’s literary snobbery or the present government’s neo-liberal dogmas, the Promethean powers of invention are feared as levelling and democratic forces which could sweep away inherited privileges and traditional deference. Scientific procedures are far too rational and, worst of all, continental in their precision.

Echoing the analysis of Will Hutton and other ‘New Labour’ gurus, Paulin and Belton believe that the relative and absolute decline of British manufacturing industry has been caused by the semi- feudal political system defended by English conservatism. As a consequence, the key essays in this book champion a ‘republican science’ which combines technical innovation with political change. For instance, Jon Katz demonstrates the continued relevance of Tom Paine’s republican politics in the age of the Net. Now the Difference Engine has evolved into the PC with a modem, we can finally realise Paine’s vision of media freedom where everyone can publish their opinions and participate in politics without the interference of government or monopolists. As in Gibson and Sterling’s novel, science and democracy can advance together.

However, this use of Babbage’s Difference Engine as the symbol of ‘republican science’ is not without its difficulties. In his essay, Simon Schaffer shows how Babbage promoted the idea that the Difference Engine possessed some form of ‘artifical intelligence’. Babbage was attracted to this deception because it concealed the human labour involved in the machine’s construction. He could never bring himself to acknowledge his dependence on the skills of the trained engineers who built the intricate parts needed for the Difference Engine. Yet, the main reason why Babbage failed to build his famous calculator was his inability to collaborate with Joseph Clement, the master machinist. Far from being a model for ‘republican science’, the story of the Difference Engine could instead be seen as a prime example of how archaic class prejudices have accelerated the industrial decline of England. Whether real or imagined, we need to free ourselves from all varieties of ‘Victorian values’ if we are to realise the democratic potential of scientific modernism.

An edited version of this article appeared in New Scientist, 16th March 1996.

“Mr Babbage’s invention puts an engine in place of the computer”

In summer 1823 the new and controversial Astronomical Society of London decided to award its gold medal to one of its own founder members, the equally controversial Cambridge-trained mathematician Charles Babbage. The award formed part of an energetic campaign to launch the construction of a Difference Engine to calculate navigational and astronomical tables. In his address to the Society in early 1824, the Society’s president, the financier, mathematician and orientalist Henry Colebrooke, summed up the significance of Babbage’s planned device. He referred to contemporary developments of industrial machinery only to contrast them with the Difference Engine. “In other cases, mechanical devices have substituted machines for simpler tools or for bodily labour….But the invention to which I am adverting comes in place of mental exertion: it substitutes mechanical performance for an intellectual process”. In other words, “Mr Babbage’s invention puts an engine in place of the computer”. [1] This may seem a paradoxical comment on the man who is now lauded as the computer’s inventor. But as with terms such as “typewriter”, the word “computer” referred here to a human being, in this case the hireling employed to perform the exhausting reckoning which every astronomical operation required. Babbage himself applied for the post of computer at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in summer 1814, until Herschel dissuaded him from the thankless task. The labour of verifying “the calculations of the computers” required in compiling astronomical tables for the new Society soon prompted a characteristic expostulation: “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam !” Hence developed the plans for the Difference Engine. [2]

Through his gesture at the urgent issues of technological redundancy and the subordination of the labour process, Colebrooke’s remark provides the theme of this story of the apt connection which Babbage helped forge between the development of machinofacture and the design of intelligent machines. A key to this link is the term “intelligence”. The word refers both to signals received from without and to the capacity to register and interpret these signals. In early nineteenth century Britain, the site for Michel Foucault’s explorations of the origins of the human sciences, Ian Hacking’s account of the emergence of statistics, and Adrian Desmond’s stories of the origins of materialist evolutionism, the word “intelligence” simultaneously embodied the growing system of social surveillance and the emerging mechanisation of natural philosophies of mind. [3] In what follows, I explore the co-production of ideologically freighted accounts of intelligence and of politically charged systems of machinery.

The politics of intelligence has been signally absent from much recent analysis of computation. Discussions of the limits of expert systems and the delimitation of the scope of artificial intelligence have too often hinged on a deracinated account of the very term “intelligence” and on an abstracted exposition of the capacity of machines to display this virtue. However, two salient themes of this contemporary literature will help my analysis of the constitution of Babbage’s intelligence:

First, consider a notorious paper (1980) by the philosopher John Searle directed against the strong claim that appropriately programmed computers may have cognitive states. [4] Searle proposed a simulacrum of such a computer, a “Chinese room” occupied by a human being completely devoid of intelligence about Chinese but supplied with a set of symbols and rules which would allow her to respond to inquiries from outside the room. Searle envisages that such a system might pass the Turing test, that is, become indistinguishable from native Chinese speakers. But neither necessary nor sufficient conditions could be given for attributing intelligence to such a system. In response to the suggestion that while the human being might not possess intelligence, yet the entire system might be said to do so, Searle counters that the enterprise of artificial intelligence “must be able to distinguish the principles on which the mind works from those on which non-mental systems work”, and to judge that a system is intelligent just because of its inputs and outputs would compel us to attribute intelligence to a wide range of non-mental systems. I am not concerned with the force of this response. I am concerned with one implication of the story of the Chinese room. It dramatises the spatial mode of such debates. The site of intelligence, whether within the human, within the machine, or within the human-machine system, is an intrinsic puzzle for debates about the mechanics of intelligence. In this paper, I seek to show that the spatial distribution of intelligence in the early nineteenth century factory system was a vital political problem.

Second, consider a recent book (1990) by the sociologist Harry Collins, Artificial Experts: social knowledge and intelligent machines. In the model of knowledge and skill transfer upon which much recent sociology of scientific knowledge depends, skills are principally acquired through enculturation, the acquisition of tacit capacities whose transmission is invisible and capricious and cannot, therefore, fully be spelt out in formal algorithms. This model tells against a classical account of experimentation in which trials may be replicated through the public and formal understanding of a set of demonstrative rules. So the model supports studies of laboratory life in which experimenters need to share a culture in order to go on in similar ways. Collins explores the implications for this model of attempts to build expert systems. Were it possible to design expert systems, in which programs could be developed exactly to simulate skilful human performances, the enculturational model might seem threatened. In Collins’ analysis, much is made of the collaborative work required from human beings to make their machines look expert and intelligent. “One of the reasons we tend to think a calculator can do arithmetic is the natural way we help it out and rectify its deficiencies without noticing. All the abilities we bring to the calculation – everything that surrounds what the calculator does itself are so widespread and familiar that they have disappeared for us”. [5] This is the other theme which my story highlights. The intelligence attributed to machines hinges on the cultural invisibility of the human skills which surround them. Collins’ argument sits very well with comparable sociological and historical studies on the invisibility of laboratory technicians or on the invisibility of support staff in art worlds. [6] In Babbage’s world, the artisanal skills which surrounded machinery were systematically rendered invisible. Then and only then might the machine seem intelligent. The attribution of automatism to the factory system accompanied the judgment that its mechanical components possessed intelligence.

In a desperate attempt to be unsystematic, the paper that follows is divided into five sections. The first summarises the career of the calculating engines between the 1820s and the 1840s. Babbage worked hard to make these machines intelligent. His definition of intelligence, the combination of memory and foresight, was explicitly applied both to the engines and to his exactly contemporary work in political economy. The engines were therefore small-scale manufactories. In the second section, it is shown that these accounts of intelligent machines were developed polemically in debates about the character of workers’ skill. Babbage had immediate experience of these conflicts in his own relationship with the engineers and support staff who built the calculating engines. By the 1840s, Babbage’s machine philosophy was a resource for, and derived its intelligence from, the new automatic system which emerged in the machine-tool industry and the factory system. In the third and fourth sections, the factory system is described through the experiences of the factory tourists of the 1830s and 1840s, of whom Babbage was one. These tourists were the first to represent the factory system and helped make it. The account of the factory as a transparent and rational system was designed to demolish traditional and customary networks of skill and artisan culture. Finally, Babbage’s attribution of machine intelligence to his God shows how skills were disembodied in the philosophy of machines. The characteristic Victorian obsessions of natural theology and of waste disposal were important sites for the development of this philosophy and where it did its political work.

Systems are socially constructed and so, as we are increasingly reminded, are the productive and unproductive bodies which inhabit them. This is why Babbage’s most penetrating contemporary reader, Karl Marx, famously reckoned that it would be easier to write “a critical history of technology,….a history of the productive organs of man in society” than Darwin’s “history of natural technology”. Babbage’s moment was decisive for the construction of sociotechnical systems, for the productive bodies of the workforce, and for the perception that their world was ordered systematically. These processes of construction and perception should not be separated. There is a whole history to be written of the counter-claim that they can be teased apart, that the point of view from which the systematic character of the social world can be detected is independent of that world. Early Victorian society provided major resources for this claim and it must be studied in detail to show how this position was developed. The philosophers of manufacture, like Babbage, carefully constructed a place from which they could make out the lineaments of the factory system. Critics of this philosophy, like Marx, pointed out the political implications of this construction. The issue of the science embodied in the machinery of the automatic system and the fate of the worker’s body was debated in speeches to London Chartists in 1856, where Marx announced that “all our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force”, and in his notebooks of 1857-8, where he observed that “it is the machine which possess skill and strength in place of the worker, is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it”. Under the “system of machinery”, as he defined it in early 1858, “the automatic one is merely its most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system”. What follows is not a “critical history of technology” but it is an attempt to show where the systematic vision came from and some of the effects it had. [7]

Calculating Engines and Intelligence

“The engine, from its capability of performing by itself all those purely material operations, spares intellectual labour, which may be more profitably employed. Thus the engine may be considered as a real manufactory of figures”

L.F.Menabrea, 1842, translated by Ada Lovelace, 1843. [8]

Babbage’s designs for intelligent machines dominated his career from the moment he reached Regency London as an independently wealthy and ambitious analyst. His Difference Engine was based on the principle that the nth differences of successive values of n-power polynomials were constants and thus tables of these values could be computed by the addition and subtraction of a set of predetermined constants. The device was launched in London in summer 1822, received the promise of Treasury backing in spring 1823, and Babbage began active collaboration on the project with the master engineer Joseph Clement the following summer. To pursue the enterprise Clement’s workshop at Newington Butts took on as many as eight men, including one specialist draughtsman. Furious fights between Clement and Babbage on the ownership of tools, designs and hardware began in spring 1829. Despite interventions by the Prime Minister Wellington, the mediation of other engineers such as Henry Maudslay, and the nationalisation of the engine in early 1830, the project collapsed forever amidst recriminations in summer 1834. [9] But in the mid-1830s Babbage began negotiating a new contract with Clement’s former draughtsman, C.G.Jarvis, with whom he developed plans for what they baptised the Analytical Engine. “The railroad mania withdrew from other pursuits the most intellectual and skilful draftsmen”, Babbage recalled. In 1842-3 he arranged for a major publicity campaign, initially through Italian contacts such as the Piedmontese military engineer and future premier L.F.Menabrea and then through his close ally the aristocratic philomath Ada Lovelace. [10] This new machine was an unprecedented technical system. It was designed to carry in its memory one thousand numbers each of fifty digits. The store consisted of sets of parallel figure wheels, structured like those in the store of the Difference Engine; the input-output device was based on sets of number cards and variable cards, the latter of which would control which gear-axis would be used; and the control was transmitted though what Babbage baptized operation cards. Sequences of cards carried instructions to the engine, which were decoded in the store using the machine’s library of logarithmic and other functions, and then distributed to the operating sections of the mill. Such distribution could itself be modified by variables set by the existing state of operations in the machine. These crucial aspects of the Engine, its capacity for memory and for anticipation, were to be profound resources for Babbage’s metaphysics and his political economy. “Nothing but teaching the Engine to foresee and then to act upon that foresight could ever lead me to the object I desired”. [11]

These resources were publicised throughout the 1840s, notably during Babbage’s important visit to the meeting of Italian scienzati at Turin in 1840, where he gave a public address on the new engine in the milieu of civil reform and nationalist sentiment. Babbage was invited to the meeting by Giovanni Plana, a Laplacian graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and Piedmontese government astronomer. Plana evoked the Engine with a brilliant political analogy: “hitherto the legislative department of our analysis has been all powerful – the executive all feeble. Your engine seems to give us the same control over the executive which we have hitherto only possessed over the legislative department”. The debates at Turin with Plana and the leading physicist Mossotti centred on the “intelligence” of this machine. They agreed that such intelligence would be measured by the capacity for anticipation. When Mossotti said he could not imagine how the engine could “perform the act of judgment”, Babbage described his recursion method for extracting roots from an equation of any degree: “his real difficulty consisted in teaching the engine to know when to change from one set of cards to another…..at intervals not known to the person who gave the orders”. The discussions with the Italian rationalists questioned the account of knowledge which such complex processes of training and judgement might involve. When Menabrea completed his essay on the machine, he remarked that “the machine is not a thinking being, but simply an automaton which acts according to the laws imposed upon it”. [12]

In the context of British and Piedmontese debates about industrialisation and social change, this was a powerful if questionable image. Menabrea and Plana worked hard to link their algebraic analyses of moving forces with urgent practical demands of military and civil engineering and thus to reform the labour force of the new state. Babbage and Lovelace, who translated and annotated Menabrea’s memoir in 1843, used highly anthropomorphic language to describe the faculty of anticipation, feeling and choice which they reckoned the engine would display. In 1838 Babbage conceded that “in substituting mechanism for the performance of operations hitherto executed by intellectual labour….the analogy between these acts and the operations of mind almost forced upon me the figurative employment of the same terms. They were found at once convenient and expressive, and I prefer to continue their use”. Hence he was committed to phrases such as “the engine knows”, to describe its predetermined move from one calculation to the next. The machine might be an automaton, but it carried intelligence. Lovelace put the issue like this: “although it is not itself the being that reflects, it may yet be considered as the being which executes the conceptions of intelligence. The cards receive the impress of these conceptions, and transmit to the various trains of mechanism composing the engine the orders necessary for their action”. This execution of intelligence was directly linked to the capacities of reliable, subordinate, workmen: “it will by means of some simple notations be easy to consign the execution of them to a workman. Thus the whole intellectual labour will be limited to the preparation of the formulae, which must be adapted for calculation by the engine”. The subordination of machinofacture to intelligence was crucial. The Analytical Engine raised the issue of the class division of intelligence. Menabrea ended his memoir with a reflection on the “economy of intelligence”. “The engine may be considered as a real manufactory of numbers”. In her remarkable annotations to this text, Lovelace extended and qualified these remarks about the manufacture process. She urged that the issue of whether the “executive faculties of this engine…are really even able to follow analysis in its whole extent” could only be answered by watching the engine work. She explicitly analogized between the working of the machine and the mind, notably in respect of the separation between operation cards, variable cards and number cards. “It were much to be desired”, she noted, “that when mathematical processes pass through the human brain instead of through the medium of inanimate mechanisms, it were equally a necessity of things that the reasonings connected with operations should hold the same just place as a clear and well-defined branch of the subject of analysis…which they must do in studying the engine”. The science of operations was proposed as a new discipline of utter generality both within the surveillance of mental labour and in the manufacture of exact values. The Analytical Engine was simply the “material and mechanical representative of analysis”, and through its working “not only the mental and material but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other”. [13]

Mental labour became a measurable form of work and embodied in machine intelligence. The exactly contemporary discourse of political economy, especially the philosophy of manufactures, provided Babbage both with an account of what he called the “domestic economy of the factory”, as he baptized it, and also with an analysis of the skilled mental labour embodied in machinery. Since the analytical engines were always compared with the Jacquard card looms of the weaving trade, this analogy was close and just. “The Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves”, wrote Lovelace. Readers were instructed to visit the popular London shows of practical science at the Adelaide Gallery and the Polytechnic Institution to learn about this loom for themselves, while Babbage presented the Piedmontese court with a woven silk portrait of Jacquard purchased in the Lyons silk factories – it formed part of his evangelical promotion of machinofacture in Victor Emmanuel’s capital. [14] Furthermore, since Babbage’s collaborators on the calculating engines were themselves veterans of the machine tool industry inaugurated by Maudslay and Clement, this experience was of direct relevance to the construction of the engines. The precision, discipline and domestic order of the factory was this an intimate concern of Babbage’s project.

Babbage’s publications on the political and domestic economy of the factory were exactly contemporary with the project to build the calculating engines. In the late 1820s Babbage took the Lucasian chair of mathematics in Cambridge and, in a series of lectures he planned to deliver in the university, he composed a thorough survey of British manufactures, first released as a contribution on the mechanical arts in the popular Encyclopaedia Metropolitana (1829), then published in 1832 as On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. This remarkable exercise in the political economy of machinery reached a fourth edition by 1835 and was, by then, already in print in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Russian. In Britain it was published by the agent of the reformist Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Charles Knight. When the leading Ricardian economist John McCulloch, a principal advocate of the benevolent effects of mechanization, complained about the absence of political economic data from the first edition, Babbage added new sections against the abstractions of the Ricardians and made more use of the numbers available to him through his allies in the statistical movement. Babbage put the third edition in the library of the London Mechanics’ Institution, a forum for the educational improvement of metropolitan artisans, and he used the text during his unsuccessful election campaign on a radical platform in the London constituency of Finsbury in late 1832: “if you are a manufacturer…and would see industry as free as the air you breathe – Go and vote for Mr Babbage. If you are a mechanic, depending on your daily bread on a constant and steady demand for the products of your skill…. – Go and vote for Mr Babbage”, thundered the Mechanics’ Magazine. [15]

Babbage himself made no attempt to deny the link between the engine project and the engine survey. The book’s very first sentence reads: “the present volume may be considered as one of the consequences that have resulted from the calculating engine, the construction of which I have been so long superintending. Having been induced, during the last ten years, to visit a considerable number of workshops and factories….I was insensibly led to apply to them those principles of generalization to which my other pursuits had naturally given rise”. [16] In his chapter on “the division of mental labour” Babbage cashed out this promissory note with a discussion of French schemes for the application of labour management to mathematical tabulation. The principles of hierarchy and the minimization of mental skill which Babbage found in G.F.Prony’s celebrated programme for the computation of new decimal tables in the 1790s were there made explicit as foundations of a general science of machine intelligence. This programme had been Babbage’s inspiration from his first pamphlets of 1822. Despite the fact that these tables were never published, they remained emblematic for British proponents of mechanized calculation. When Babbage visited Paris in 1819 he met the tables’ printer Didot and was given a copy of the section of the sine tables which had been set. Babbage left this invaluable compilation to his son in his will. One lesson he drew from the work of Prony and Legendre was that the subordinate computers “had no knowledge of arithmetic beyond the two first rules which they were thus called upon to exercise, and that these persons were usually found more correct in their calculations than those who possessed a more extensive knowledge”. [17]

This intriguing relation between subordination and accuracy was immediately applied to the calculating engines. Babbage always contrasted mechanisms which “perform the whole operation without any mental attention” and those which “require a moderate portion of mental attention”. His popular expositions of this distinction invoked the analogue with human intelligence revealed in the French project to dramatise the equivalence with machine intelligence and then to point out a contrast. Thus the fundamental operation of addition might be mechanized by “following exactly the usual process of the human mind”. But since “the calculations made by machinery should be done in a much shorter time than those performed by the human mind, Babbage argued that it was necessary to mechanize the “faculty of memory” rather than that of addition. “Memory” in the carriage of digits was, for example, represented as the addition of an extra projecting tooth to each number wheel in the difference engine, a tooth which could in its turn by engaged after the first stage of summation was completed. Finally, memory was to be replaced by anticipation. This was the key change between the Difference and the Analytical Engine. “It occurred to me that it might be possible to teach mechanism to accomplish another mental process – namely, foresight”. [18]

The transition from the Difference to the Analytical during the later 1830s raised three salient problems in the mechanization of memory and foresight. First, an issue discussed with the great science writer Mary Somerville and the Irish mathematician James McCullagh, the capacity of the engines to carry unlimited numbers of functions and variables and to represent unlimited series of digits, briefly, “an unlimited number of laws”. Babbage’s solution to this hard task was to draw on the Jacquard principle and to translate the “infinity of space, which was required by the conditions of the problem, into the infinity of time”. This “infinity of time” would be occupied by printing cards for the mill and in the printer itself, however long it be used, “the force to be exerted always remains the same”. The resources Babbage drew from political economy were directly deployed in the planning of the Analytical Engine through the application of time economy and supervision of work rate. [19] The second issue which Babbage raised was discussed with McCullagh and the German scientists Friedrich Bessel and Karl Jacobi, Prussian delegates to the 1842 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Manchester. This involved the engine’s “knowledge” of tabular numbers used during calculations. Babbage designed his engines to recognize correct values of logarithms and other variables and to ring a bell and stop when needed. The mechanism for the machine to check tabular inputs meant that “the Engine will always reject a wrong card by continually ringing a loud bell and stopping itself until supplied with the precise intellectual food it demands”. Once again, this anthropomorphic language exemplified Babbage’s move to make specialised mental labour redundant. Ultimately, he claimed, such tabular inputs would be made unnecessary. [20] Finally, Babbage even playfully contemplated means by which the Analytical Engine could be stopped during operation and its figure wheels disturbed; the Engine would then automatically restore the wheels to their proper values. “The property itself is useless”, he wrote, but it dramatised the self-regulation he sought to embody in his Engines. This self-regulatory automatism was a key aspect of the general division of labour which he sought to design into these analytical mechanisms, and thus the systematic character he wished to grant them. [21]

In each division of the Analytical project, the interaction between engine design and the principles of machinofacture was understood through Babbage’s model of intelligence, a term designed to capture both “information” and “skill”. Machine intelligence was therefore at once managerial skill, the skill embodied in machines and the data amassed by the analyst of machinofacture. At the same time, machine intelligence was mapped by the progressive redundancy of operatives’ manual skills. Babbage’s text on the economy of machinery was itself supposed to be an experiment in these principles of intelligence. It included series of questionnaires which managers were to complete when gathering exact information on mechanization. “The habit of forming an estimate of the magnitude of any object or the frequency of any occurrence, immediately previous to our applying to it measure or number, tends materially to fix the attention and improve the judgment”. [22] Babbage’s work in political economy depended on the application of precision measures and calculation to surveys of the factories and within them. He then erected a basic analogy between the development of the calculating engines and that of the economy at large. In 1851, for example, he announced his development of the engines with the statement that “man is a tool making animal”. The science of progress was emblematic of these arguments about mechanization and improvement. Progress was defined as “the substitution of machinery, not merely for the skill of the human hand, but for the relief of the human intellect”. The same principle guided the move from individual tools to complete factories. [23] As the Analytical Engine was a “manufactory of figures”, Babbage had to outline his definition of a “manufactory”. “A considerable difference exists between the terms making and manufacturing”, he explained. The difference lay in the economical regulation of the domestic system of the factory. This led to Babbage’s implementation of the division of labour, and, as he emphasised, the fundamental principle of that division which allowed the sensitive analytical regulation of the process of manufacture. The “Babbage principle”, as it came to be known, applied equally to the regulation of the factory and of the calculating engines:

“That the master manufacturer by dividing the work to be executed into different processes, each requiring different degrees of skill or of force, can purchase exactly that precise quantity of both which is necessary for each process; whereas if the whole work were executed by one workman, that person must possess sufficient skill to perform the most difficult and sufficient strength to execute the most laborious of the operations into which the art is divided”. [24]

As Babbage and his allies among the political economists showed, the disaggregation of the production process into its simplest components allowed a series of economies and practices of surveillance. Mechanized production required strict discipline. The same was true of the Analytical Engine. Parcelling the processes of Lagrangean algebra into specific components allowed the increase in speed of the machine, the transformation of infinities of space into manageable durations of time, the most economical recompense to each component in terms of consumed power (if mechanical) or consumed wages (if human). “The whole history of the invention has been a struggle against time”, Babbage wrote in 1837. The replacement of individual human intelligence by machine intelligence was as apparent in the workshop as in the engines. In the former, this task was both politically and economically necessary. “One great advantage which we derive from machinery is the check which it affords against the inattention, idleness or the dishonesty of human agents”. This set of failings could produce erroneous astronomical tables, hence the significance of Prony’s reports on the performance of the least intelligent computers when subject to the right management. Unreliable agents could also form trade union combinations, which, Babbage held, were always “injurious” to the workforce itself. His aim here was to contest the influence of “designing persons” and show the working classes that “the prosperity and success of the master manufacturer is essential to the welfare of the workman”, even though “I am compelled to admit that this connexion is in many cases too remote to be understood by the latter”. [25]

Babbage’s political strategies of the strife-ridden decade of the 1830s outlined a crucial role for the analytic manager. In his texts on political economy, such as his brief chapter on “the future prospects of manufacture as connected with science”, he mapped out this role in some detail. The combination of theory and practice adumbrated both in the Economy of Machinery and in the notes on the Analytical Engine was necessary and possible, if only because the machinery of the factory and the calculating engines precisely embodied the intelligence of theory and abrogated the individual intelligence of the worker. Only the superior combination and correlation of each component guaranteed efficient, economical, planned and therefore intelligent performance. This general, abstract, lawlike behaviour was only visible to the overseer, the manager, men such as Babbage. No doubt his own status as a gentlemanly specialist helped. He inherited £100,000 from his banker father in 1827, while the state spent more than £17,000 on his engines within the next decade. “The efforts for the improvement of its manufactures which any country can make with the greatest probability of success”, he argued in his text on machinery, “must arise from the combined exertions of all those most skilled in the theory, as well as in the practice of the arts; each labouring in that department for which his natural capacity and acquired habits rendered him most fit”. Such declarations, reiterated in Babbage’s successive reformist propaganda throughout his career, made his new class of managerial analysts the supreme economic managers and legislators of social welfare. In good Bonapartist style he thought they should be rewarded with newfangled life peerages and political power. The original cases of the division of mental labour had both inspired the first Difference Engine and also demonstrated the relevance of the principles of manufacture to the sciences themselves. This made the science of calculation the supreme legislative discipline, just as, according to Plana, the calculating engines provided both legislative and executive co-ordination. In 1832 Babbage spoke on the hustings in a Clerkenwell pub about the political advantage of his “wholesome habit…to be careful in the obtaining and sifting of facts”. In 1838 Babbage claimed that “whenever engines of this kind exist in the capitals and universities of the world, it is obvious that all the enquirers who wish to put their theories to the test of number” would design their work so that it would be subjected to the engines’ sums. “Those who neglect the indication” would be reduced to fallible human labour and thus excluded from the community of science. And in 1842, in the midst of a stormy interview with the premier Robert Peel, Babbage quoted at him Plana’s remarks about the new “control over the executive” offered by his engines: “Sir R. Peel seemed excessively angry when I knocked over his argument about professional service”. [26] This political and managerial language was not merely an elegant reformist metaphor. The calculating engines were themselves products of the system of automatic manufacture which Babbage sought to model, indeed, they were some of that system’s most famous and most visible accomplishments.

The Automatic System and Skill

“Everything which has been produced is the work of men’s hands, that is, has been made by the hands of the labouring portion of the people and of right belongs to them. No matter when it was produced or by whose head work as well as by their hands’ work it was produced, it all belongs to them because they are the workmen, or in their own language, producers” Francis Place, 1826. [27]

The first automaton which Babbage ever saw was a danseuse, one foot high, “her eyes full of imagination and irresistible”, when a very young visitor to the backstage workshop of a London exhibitor. Thirty years later he bought the danseuse at an auction sale of a bankrupt mechanical show and, after restoring its gears, displayed it at his house-parties. “A gay but by no means unintellectual crowd surrounded the automaton. In the adjacent room the Difference Engine stood nearly deserted: two foreigners alone worshipped at that altar”. [28] The anecdote illuminates the social site which the calculating engines occupied as competitors for polite attention with the vast array of automata and mechanisms on display in the London showrooms, the Jacquard looms and more catchpenny artifices among them. The trade brought a living to many operators. After he was hired in 1829 by Maudslay, the young engineer James Nasmyth sold the model of a steam engine which had got him the post to a London maker “who supplied such apparatus to lecturers at mechanics’ institutions”. Similarly, in early 1834 two models of the Difference Engine itself were made by the instrument designer Francis Watkins, who plied his trade as electrician and showman at the Adelaide Gallery. His models were designed to help Lardner’s public lectures on the Engine’s principles. When the Engine had been abandoned Babbage insisted “it should be placed where the public can see it”. It was put on display at the Strand museum of King’s College London. Next door, at the Admiralty Museum in Somerset House, visitors could view Maudslay’s celebrated block-making machinery designed for the Portsmouth naval dockyards. These technical systems were on show as the highest achievements of the early Victorian machine-tool industry. [29]

The London machine shows were designed to win income and teach important lessons to a wide range of publics. This was not an audience which knew exactly what it wanted and certainly not an audience that obviously wanted exactitude. Babbage reckoned that automatic systems, notably his own calculating engines, should yield specific truths about the relation between intelligence, work and mechanism. These truths were by no means self-evident nor uncontroversial, especially during the Swing riots and machine-breaking in the countryside and the factory towns which raged during the struggle for Reform. A Kent observer of the riots told Babbage in 1830 that “you in London, except the conspirators who are there, can form no idea of the effect the ceaseless fires are producing”. [30] Babbage’s lessons hinged on the proper ownership of machinery and thus, in the jargon of his favourite science, the source of productive value. The rights of the workers to the whole value of their labour informed much of the radical protest of these key years. Babbage announced that the capacity of his engines to produce reliable and exact values depended on their capacity to act automatically and demonstrated the immediate relationship between the intelligence of the analyst and the machine’s performance. Who should “own” these machines? Whose labour did they embody? The political implications of these questions could not have been missed, even if Babbage had not touted them so publicly in his Finsbury election campaign of 1832. During the revolutionary struggles of 1830-32, meliorist observers such as the London tailor and journalist Francis Place were persistently struck by “the systematic way in which the people proceeded”, while the “people” themselves protested against the campaigns “to make us tools” or “machines”. Plebeian agitators had been dispossessed by machines and treated as machines. These issues made urgent the problem of the source and ownership of the skills embodied in machines confessedly designed to perform mental work. [31]

The radical conflicts of the 1830s often centred on a contrast between two accounts of skilled labour. Working class interests appealed to traditional custom, in which skill was recognized as a property inherent in the persons of the workers themselves. As such, skill was reckoned to be scarcely communicable outside carefully controlled milieux which were designed to remain opaque to the surveillance of managers and inspectors. Thus attempts by observers such as Babbage to gather intelligence about machines and the workforce were politically controversial. In contrast to the traditional model, philosophers of machinery promoted an account of rational valuation, attempting to render the labour process transparent and skills rather easily measurable in the marketplace of wage labour. Babbage’s programme of intelligence about machinery and intelligence embodied in machinery was inevitably conflicted. These are early nineteenth century English conflicts which, following E.P.Thompson, we now typically associate with political economic campaigns of the against the Corn Laws and the customary moral economy of the grain rioters, where economic rationality fought with traditional forms of exchange, or, following Michel Foucault, with Benthamite strategies for the surveillance of the body in the illuminated spaces of the Panopticon. Babbage’s campaigns for machine intelligence take their place alongside these more familiar strategies for the reconfiguration of the productive body. [32]

In this context, the faculties of memory and foresight with which Babbage sought to endow the Analytical Engine also characterize his self-presentation as the unique author of the machine. They embodied his control over the engine and disembodied the skills, and camouflaged the workforce, on which it depended. He explained his view of the property of skill involved in the calculating engines in an appeal to the Duke of Wellington about their future in late 1834. He used the language of reform to defend his own status as their author. “My right to dispose, as I will, of such inventions cannot be contested; it is more sacred in its nature than any hereditary or acquired property, for they are the absolute creations of my own mind”. [33] This remarkable declaration followed a decade of strife with Clement, the brilliant (but here characteristically unnamed) engineer on whose work so much of the engine’s development depended. When the project was inaugurated Babbage had to work out whether the design was in “such a form that its execution [might be] within the reach of a skilful workman”. In turn, this prompted his immediate examination “in detail of machinery of every kind”. Fights were endemic about Babbage’s claims that the workforce should submit to, and only needed slavishly to follow, his detailed recipe for the calculating engines and that any results of this labour would belong to Babbage himself. [34]

Whatever his own sense of the capacities of the London engineers, Babbage’s first specifications placed unprecedented demands on the capacities of the machine-tool workshops at a key moment in their history. For the first engine mill he required at least six coaxial gear wheels turned to an extraordinary exactitude, while the printing system needed a further set of interlocking gears engraved with letters and figures. A report drafted in 1829 for the Royal Society by Babbage’s closest allies, including John Herschel and William Whewell, conceded that “in all those parts of the machine where the nicest precision is required the wheelwork only brings them by a first approximation (though a very nice one) to their destined places, and they are then settled into accurate adjustment by peculiar contrivances which admit of no shake or latitude of any kind”. [35] The troublesome terms in these bland remarks by the gentlemen of science were the references to nice precision, accurate adjustment and shake or latitude. At the start of the century such demands would have been judged proper solely to the closeted capacities of millwrights and turners. The great Manchester engineer William Fairbairn reminisced that “the millwright of former days was to a great extent the sole representative of mechanical art”. But in very rapid succession, in fields such as clock making, ornamental turning and, above all, the development of steam pistons and screw gears, masters such as Joseph Bramah and his chief workman Henry Maudslay began to design self-moving cutting lathes to allow the production of precise planes, reliable screws and slide-rests to control the work in the chuck. Their network of machine-tool firms dominated the training and regulation of precision engineering. Maudslay set up his own London works in Lambeth in 1797, and employees there followed suit: Richard Roberts in 1814 in Manchester, James Nasmyth, hired by Maudslay in 1829 before setting up in Manchester in 1836, and Joseph Whitworth, who began working for Maudslay in early 1825 and established his own firm in Manchester in 1833. The careers of all these men were charted and moralised in the mid-century by Samuel Smiles, the indefatigable chronicler of self-improvement and engineering achievement. [36] Clement was one of Smiles’ heroes and a veteran of this system too. The son of a handloom weaver, the trade which suffered most from rapid mechanization, Clement worked as a turner in Glasgow before training with Bramah and Maudslay in the 1810s. In 1817 he set up shop in Southwark, near Maudslay and the centre of the London engineering trade, where he soon introduced a new form of slide rest to render lathe-work regular and manageable. This remained rather domestic labour. When Babbage commissioned him in 1823 on the recommendation of the eminent engineer Marc Brunel, Clement had just one lathe set up in his own kitchen. As cash began to flow for the calculating engine project, Clement’s firm soon expanded to a scale of workforce, and of individual machine tools, quite new in the trade. Up to one-third of his business depended on the Difference Engine project. Whitworth was hired to work for Clement on the design. The Manchester City News observed that “Mr Clement contrived and manufactured numerous tools for executing the several parts of this [calculating] machine, educating, at the same time, special workers to manipulate and guide them….Mr Whitworth was possessed of a special aptitude for that minute accuracy of detail in mechanical work which necessarily must have been a marked characteristic of the skilled workmen engaged on Babbage’s machine”. [37]

These workshops were designed to train apprentices in the production of regular and repeatable accurate work through the use of highly standardised and automatic tools. A Lancashire engineer working in the 1840s recalled that “men in large shops are not troubled with a variety of work, but had one class of work and special tools. The men soon became expert and turned out a large quantity of work with the requisite exactness without a little of the thought required of those who work in small shops where fresh work continually turns up but always the same old tools”. However, as the comments on Whitworth reveal, the shops were also highly private sites of specialist aptitude routinely judged to be the personal quality of some privileged individual. Nasmyth remembered how his drawings of high pressure steam engines were decisive in obtaining employment at Maudslay’s shop: “Mechanical drawing is the alphabet of the engineer. Without this the workman is merely a hand; with it, he indicates the possession of a head”. Such local entanglements of standardised production and individualised skill were not easily unravelled by Babbage’s campaign for the mechanisation and quantification of the value of mental and manual labour. [38] Two critical problems haunted the work on the calculating engines. Firstly, the place of skill and the social and cognitive distance between designers, machinists and draughtsmen was vital for the project’s conduct. When Babbage set out on a European tour in 1828 he left Clement what he reckoned were “sufficient drawings to enable his agents to proceed with the construction of the Difference Engine during his absence”. Such written recipes soon proved hopelessly inadequate. Two years later, on his return, Babbage demanded that the engine construction site be moved from Clement’s works across the river to Babbage’s own house in Dorset Street. Brunel helpfully suggested a compromise site at the British Museum. When the government funded a new workshop next door to Dorset Street, Clement demanded a large financial recompense for the costs of splitting his workforce between two places. The financiers refused and Clement sacked most of his men. Jarvis, Clement’s ex-draughtsman and future co-designer of the Analytical Engine, explained to Babbage why it was important that work proceed “under your immediate inspection”: “you might be at once appealed to whenever it was found very difficult to produce nearly [the desired] effect which is a very common case in machinery”. The lesson is a familiar one. The production and reproduction of skills and material technology requires intense and immediate interaction in spaces specifically designed for the purpose. Such designs violated the conventions by which the machinists plied their trade. In Maudslay’s works, a large locked door protected “his beautiful private workshop” where “many treasured relics of the first embodiments of his constructive genius” were hung. “They were kept as relics of his progress towards mechanical perfection”. Such shrines were importantly protected from the intrusions of customers and patrons alike. Clement, for example, always refused to make out bills for his work and tools “because it not the custom of engineers to do so”. [39]

A second decisive problem for the engine project was therefore the issue of ownership and public knowledge. The costs of the work were traditionally in the hands of the engineer, while his tools, in this case the lathes, planes and vices, were always his own property. Thus the question of whether the Difference Engine was itself a tool became moot. From 1829 Babbage and Clement were in dispute about property and prices. Clement nominated Maudslay and Babbage nominated Bryan Donkin, designer of machinery for national weights and measures, to adjudicate the fight. Clement at once appealed to the customs of his craft: all the tools, especially the new self-acting lathes, belonged exclusively to him and he insisted on his right to make more calculating engines without Babbage’s permission. Once again, Jarvis explained the point to the infuriated mathematician:

“It should be borne in mind that the inventor of a machine and the maker of it have two distinct ends to obtain. The object of the first is to make the machine as complete as possible. The object of the second – and we have no right to expect he will be influenced by any other feeling – is to gain as much as possible by making the machine, and it is in his interest to make it as complicated as possible”. [40]

The Imperial Engine

Babbage’s characteristic solution was to propose the nationalisation of the engine, the tools and the designs. He was pursuing what he reckoned was the practical logic of much of the machine-tool industry. Outstanding initiatives, such as the campaign to establish imperial measures, the recoinage run from the Royal Mint, the development of precision tools at Greenwich Observatory, and the installation of a production-line for blockmaking machines at the Admiralty’s dockyards, were all state-funded projects. Such projects formed part of the activity of what has been labelled the “fiscal-military state”, involving large-scale military investment, a major financial bureaucracy and commitment to the accumulation of quantitative information about civil society. Babbage’s machine intelligence was designed to appeal to, and reinforce, these rather fragile interests. [41] In his direct appeals to the government, therefore, Babbage was forced to explain how rationally managed design might look like costly disorder. He told Wellington in summer 1834 that the shift from the Difference to the Analytical design was part of this order. “The fact of a new superseding an old machine in a very few years is one of constant occurrence in our manufactories….half finished machines have been thrown aside as useless before their completion”. This scarcely consoled the administration nor did it easily engage with the culture of the machine shops, where personal skill and thus individual property was at stake in every “improved” design and workshop layout. Once the engine had been nationalised and shifted to Babbage’s own workshop, it was proposed that Jarvis work there but remain under Clement’s management. Clement refused the deal because “my plan may be followed without my being in any way a gainer”, and Jarvis refused because he would be blamed for any failure “as being necessarily most familiar with the details, whereas all the praise which perfection would secure would attach to Mr Clement who would come over now and then and sanction my plans only when he could not substitute any of his own”. The machinist refused to become “party to my own degradation”. Babbage and his Royal Society allies might judge this as rational management, while the engineers often saw it as a challenge to their rights and skills. [42]

But while Babbage’s early projects collapsed under the force of these challenges, his campaign for machine intelligence and the automatic system successfully captured the interests of the engineering managers and their new system. The intelligence gathered for his work on manufacture offered two important lessons about wage rates and skill patterns. The engineers were prepared to value the calculating engine project by raising the wages of workmen who had been involved in the scheme and they were committed to the design of increasingly automated systems which would break down craft divisions and allow the employment of increasingly cheap hands and increasingly subordinate labour processes. In a telling annotation to his correspondence with Wellington, Babbage remarked that “I have been informed by men who are now scattered about in our manufacturing districts, that they all get higher wages than their fellow workmen in consequence of having worked at that machine”. Babbage’s source was Richard Wright, whom he first employed as a valet on his European tour in 1828. Five years later, Wright set up as an engineer in Lambeth Road, very near Maudslay. Armed with Babbage’s instructions, the young man set out on a tour of the northern workshops as part of the campaign to gather intelligence for Babbage’s book. In summer 1834 Wright went to Manchester to work for Whitworth, who had opened his mill there a year earlier after leaving the Difference Engine project. “They are building as large a Factory as any in Manchester”, Wright told Babbage. The struggle between craft custom and innovative production-line techniques was striking. According to an American visitor to the Whitworth factory, because of subordination of the workforce and the increasing use of self-acting machines “no-one in his works dared to think”. So Wright set out to make himself fit for the Babbage engine scheme. He went to classes at the local Mechanics’ Institute and drawing academy. He reported to Babbage that “there is much talk about the [calculating] Machine here, so much so that a man who has worked at it has a greater chance of the best work and I am proud to say that I am getting more wages than any other workman in the Factory”. Wright offered himself to Babbage as a possible master-engineer. “I should be glad to convince you that I am able to complete it by making either a model….or by making any difficult part of the Machine either calculating or printing”. During the later 1830s Wright was on the tramp throughout the factory system. In 1835, for example, he walked from London to Yorkshire, where he surveyed the factories and the mines, then on to Scotland, Ulster and Lancashire. Though he complained that “the habits and conversation of the Factory are indeed disgusting to a thinking mind”, by the end of the decade he had set up his own works in Manchester, where “I intend to employ nothing but the best workmen and material”, and from the early 1840s was in active consultation on the Analytical project. By making himself a “thinking mind”, Wright became Babbage’s ideal, a Smilesian paragon who reckoned that rational management and the careful surveillance of the division of labour provided the key to success in making the calculating engines. In a lengthy epistle Wright explained to Babbage how the new system should work and how management should rule the skills of the workforce:

“The man you select for the workshop ought to be a good general workman both at Vice and Lathe for such a man can see by the way a man begins a job whether he will finish it in a workmanlike manner or not. Perhaps you are not quite aware that at Mr Clement’s and most other Factories the work is divided into the branches Vice and Lathe, and in most cases the man who works at the one is nearly ignorant of the other….He ought above all to have studied the dispositions of workmen so as to keep the workshop free from contention and disorder and the causes of the repeated failures of so much new Machinery for I am sure there is more failures through waste of labour and bad management than there is through bad schemes or any other cause”. [43]

Wright’s was the anonymous voice recorded in the pages of Babbage’s Economy of Machinery and which this text helped make representative of the automatic system in the machine-tool trades. In the philosophy of manufacture much was made of the highly personal skills embodied in the master-engineers. In his travel notes for the engine survey, Babbage recorded that “causes of failure” should be found by consulting a “man of science on the principle” and “a practical engineer on mechanical difficulties”. It was acknowledged, and celebrated, that manual dexterity remained a central attribute of “the skilled workman”. Babbage reckoned that “the first necessity” for his Difference Engine was “to preserve the life of Mr Clement…it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to find any other person of equal talent both as a draftsman and as a mechanician”. Engine masters became heroes. According to Nasmyth “by a few masterly strokes Maudslay could produce plane surfaces so true that when their accuracy was tested by a standard plane surface of absolute truth, they were never found defective”. At the same time, “absolute truth” was increasingly vested in the standardised tool-kit of the machine shops. No doubt this was why the authoritative scales and tools in use were so often fetishised. Maudslay’s benchtop scale was “humorously called….The Lord Chancellor”, while Nasmyth and his colleagues boasted of “the progeny of legitimate descendants” which they had produced. [44]

In London, Lancashire, Clydeside and elsewhere, the systems these men helped forge were the sites of a new managerial and technical network, dependent as much on strenuous regulation of the labour process as on the development of new automatic machinery. The development of ready-made metal textile machinery, for example, was a result of this system. In the process, craft customs were subverted and standardised, accurate production secured. [45] The managers of the most advanced workshops eventually became Babbage’s closest allies and sources of intelligence and support. In his Economy of Machinery, Babbage made much of the means through which the lathe would guarantee “identity” and “accuracy”, and then accounted accuracy as an economy of time, since “it would be possible for a very skilful workman, with files and polishing substances”, to produce a perfect surface. So artisan skill could be transmuted into its wage equivalent. In 1847, he contributed a discussion of this theory of lathe-work and metal-turning to the definitive textbook produced by Charles Holtzapffel, doyen of specialist lathe designers. Holtzapffel himself then contributed a long description of Babbage’s own tools on the engine project. In the next decade, both Whitworth and Nasmyth offered Babbage support in completing the Analytical Engine and testified in public to the benefits of the calculating engines for their own trade. Babbage’s friend the dissenting mathematician Augustus de Morgan brilliantly summarised the relation between the lathe, emblem of automatic skill, and Babbage, master of mechanical analysis in a cartoon showing him at the lathe armed only with a series of logarithmic functions. [46]

Two salient features of this new network mattered for Babbage’s own project. Firstly, the systematisation of machine-tool production and working was immensely controversial and highly charged politically. Secondly, this process demanded the reorganisation of the productive body and of the visible space in which it performed. The pre-eminent example of these two features of the automatic system was provided at Portsmouth dockyard, the very earliest site at which the automatic machine-tool system was implemented. Between 1795 and 1807 the entire system of production of pulley-blocks for the Royal Navy was overhauled. Traditionally this production relied on highly specialised crafts in woodworking and milling. Turning and shaping had relied on manual skill and recompense claimed in terms of the informal acquisition by the workforce of wood-chips from the yards for domestic fuel and independent working. In the face of mass protests, military force was used. The new production-line system destroyed and reorganised every feature of this pattern. Pulley-blocks were standardised and marked to prevent what was now called “theft”. Standardised machinists replaced specialist craftsmen. Wood was replaced by steam-driven all-metal machinery and separate artisan tasks embodied in purpose-built lathes and clamps. The protagonists of this reorganisation were also the protagonists of much wider social change. The system was developed by Samuel Bentham, the inspector of naval works, who in collaboration with his brother Jeremy had already introduced an identical system of surveillance in Russian wordworking schemes in the early 1780s, a scheme soon to be known as the Panopticon. The engineering works were laid out by Marc Brunel and implemented by his close ally Henry Maudslay. These were the men who introduced Clement to Babbage, and the men who made this system of inspection, regulation and line-production a visible exemplar of rational management. [47]

Samuel Bentham and his colleagues made Portsmouth dockyard a site of “incessant work” and then turned it into a tourist attraction. The Panopticon could be switched from its initial function as a system of surveillance over wood-workers into a general machine for social control. The Portsmouth team argued that public visibility could be an invaluable aspect of their industrial reformation. Bentham “considered it highly conducive to the hastening the introduction of a general System of machinery that public opinion should be obtained in its favour, and that this was likely to be more surely effected by a display of well arranged machines, for the accomplishing of one particular object”. So from the 1810s the block machinery became a common resort for interested visitors. As Peter Linebaugh has argued, the new system of technological repression institutionalised at Portsmouth can be taken as exemplary of the emergence of the wage form and of the productive labourer. “On entering the block mill, the spectator is struck with the multiplicity of its movements and the rapidity of its operations”. [48] The impersonal pronouns in this account are eloquent. The combination of the disembodied labour process and the public representation of systematic mechanisation were equally vital for Babbage’s political economy. A mark of this significance was his development of and publicity for the mechanical notation which he developed to represent the structure and motions of machinery. Initially designed to “see at a glance what every moving piece in the machinery was doing at each instant of time”, this panoptic notation was proffered as a technology of universal management. In a draft of his 1826 paper Babbage stressed the advantages of machine semiotics because “of all our senses that of sight conveys intelligence most rapidly to the mind”. The industrial journalist Dionysius Lardner reported that the working of the human body and of the factory system could both be represented and managed this way. The analogy of machine, body and workshop was developed at once: “not only the mechanical connection of the solid members of the bodies of men” but also, “in the form of a connected map or plan, the organization of an extensive factory, or any great public institution, in which a vast number of individuals are employed, and their duties regulated (as they generally are or ought to be) by a consistent and well-digested system”. It is for this reason that the term “system” requires further historical analysis. The panoptic gaze which revealed the order of the factory system and the mechanism of the body also rendered the workforce and its resistance rather hard to make out. [49]

Touring the Factory System

“You wish to make yourself acquainted with the state of affairs in England. You drop a remark or two as to the condition of the workers. The manufacturer understands you, knows what he has to do. He accompanies you to his factory in the country. The presence of the employer keeps you from asking indiscreet questions. You begin to be converted from your exaggerated ideas of misery and starvation. But…if you should desire to see the development of the factory system in a factory town, you may wait long before these rich bourgeoisie will help you!” Friedrich Engels, 1845. [50]

Babbage’s survey of machinery and manufacture took its place in a vast genre of such works, texts such as James Kay Shuttleworth’s Moral and physical conditions of the working classes (1832), Andrew Ure’s Philosophy of Manufactures (1835), Peter Gaskell’s Artisans and Machinery (1836), Robert Vaughan’s Age of Great Cities (1843), William Cooke Taylor’s Factories and the Factory System (1844) and, of course, Friedrich Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), which were both products of well-publicised tours of the new factory system and also producers of intelligence about the factory system which flowed from the steam-presses in the 1830s and 1840s.

These publications emerged at a novel cultural moment which saw a tense encounter between literary tourists and the violent changes of industrial society. “I went, some weeks ago, to Manchester, and saw the worst cotton mill”, Babbage’s friend Charles Dickens noted in November 1838. “And then I saw the best. Ex uno disce omnes. There was no great difference between them”. Babbage’s predicament appears in its relation to manufacture at least twice in Dickens’ fictions: notoriously in Little Dorrit (1857), in the guise of the frustrated inventor Daniel Doyce, a victim of government circumlocution and the evils of patent laws, and, more tangentially, in Hard Times (1850), the novel which Dickens always promised to write against the industrial interest after his Manchester visit, in which the utilitarian Thomas Gradgrind inhabits an “Observatory” stocked with parliamentary reports and statistical tables amidst the nightmarish industrial cityscape of Coketown. Dickens’ description of this Observatory – “a stern room, with a deadly statistical clock in it, which measured every second with a beat like a rap upon a coffin-lid” bears a remarkable similarity to Babbage’s account of his Difference Engine in his Economy of Machinery, in which the tabulation of the values of polynomial functions using the summation of constant differences was analogized to “three clocks placed on a table side by side, each having only one hand and each having a thousand divisions instead of twelve hours marked on the face”. [51] Faced with easy satire and stern moralising, the genre to which Babbage’s Economy belonged steered an uneasy course between sensational journalism, sober but politically charged parliamentary reportage and the analyses of political economists, and the incendiary imagery of gothic horrors and unimaginable power. Often stunned by the unprecedented formation of industrial capital and labour power, and lacking a reliable vocabulary with which to analyse or account for the rapidity of population growth, economic concentration and worldwide trade networks, these writers produced accounts which were as significant for their omissions as the details which they contained.

As Maxine Berg notes, “the factory system itself was a term which frequently concealed more than it revealed”. [52] Babbage’s tours were no exception. Babbage often appealed to the traditional romanticised imagery with which the factory tourists all larded their stories. Visiting the blast furnace of an ironworks at Leeds he reported that “the intensity of the fire was peculiarly impressive. It recalled the past, disturbed the present and suggested the future…Candour obliges me to admit that my speculations on the future were not entirely devoid of anxiety, though I trust they were orthodox”. It was characteristic that such pictures drew attention away from conditions of labour towards the orthodoxies of apocalyptic. Nasmyth described the Coalbrookdale forges in exactly the same terms: “the workmen within seemed to be running about amidst the flames as in a pandemonium, while around and outside the horizon was a glowing belt of fire, making even the stars look pale and feeble”. At least as important, however, was vigilance in restricting access to the workplace. In Bradford, for example, seeking information about labour co-operatives, Babbage was bluntly refused access to the secret codes of the local trades unions. At exactly the same moment, in 1833, agitators such as the Owenite James Morrison reckoned that while “these ceremonies [are] so many relics of barbarism”, it was necessary to preserve proletarian ritual to recruit members to the new socialist unions. The seclusion of the workplace was at least as important for the managers. In London, Babbage self-consciously reported the “inconvenience” which tourists posed to managers: “when the establishment is very extensive, and its departments skillfully arranged, the exclusion of visitors arises, not from any illiberal jealousy, nor, generally, from any desire of concealment….but from the substantial inconvenience and loss of time throughout an entire series of well-combined operations which must be occasioned even by short and casual operations”. He also made much of the problem of public access to his own workshop. In 1835 he told one aspiring tourist of the calculating engine that “if I were to admit the numerous claimants I should not have one moment left in which to finish it”. Even as strenuous a journalist as Harriet Martineau, who printed reports in Dickens’ magazine about the Birmingham glass-works which supplied the Crystal Palace, was discouraged by the managers’ instructions to suppress the news that female labour was used instead of men. It was very much in the interests of the artisans’ culture of the workplace to maintain the closure of their world in the name of the custom of their trade. The very lack of systematisation of the rituals which surrounded the workplace made it rather opaque to the bourgeois tourist, evangelising missionary or government inspector, and thus promoted the conflicting images of the newly systematic and transparent factory and the ancient, secretive and subversive workshop. [53]

The system was, by definition, visible to the instructed viewer. Orthodox authors of factory tours routinely appealed to platitudes about the systematic character of the industrial economy. It was thus that the very term “factory system” was produced through these texts. The writers exploited an exceptionally powerful account of the production of systems developed in eighteenth century Scotland by philosophers such as David Hume, Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson. Smith had famously argued that the benevolent “invisible hand” which truly guided the economy was apparent to the wise philosopher, even if obscured from economic and self-interested agents themselves, subject as they were to the tyranny of the division of labour. As culture, so nature. James Hutton, Smith’s literary executor, had argued very similarly that events in earth history, such as earthquakes or volcanic explosions, might seem random or miraculous to the uneducated or superstitious observer, but to the enlightened philosophic naturalist they could be accounted as elemental parts of a rational and providentially planned system of earth history. [54] In an early essay by Smith which Hutton published in 1795 it was argued that “when we enter the work-houses of the most common artizans, such as dyers, brewers, distillers, we observe a number of appearances, which present themselves in an order that seems to us very strange and wonderful. Our thought cannot easily follow it, we feel an interval betwixt every two of them, and require some chain of intermediate events to fill it up and link them together”. Smith argued that artisans themselves would never see the need for such a systematic chain and that casual observers would merely be astonished by the conduct of the workshop. In good Humean spirit, Smith reckoned that only philosophic observers, “those of liberal fortunes, whose attention is not much occupied either with business or with pleasure”, would construct systems which made sense of the conduct of everyday labour. Significantly, Smith made the analogy between such explanatory systems and the machines they were designed to explain:

“Systems in many respects resemble machines. A machine is a little system, created to perform, as well as to connect together, in reality, those different movements and effects which the artist has occasion for. A system is an imaginary machine invented to connect together in the fancy those different movements and effects which are already in reality performed.” [55]

The Moral Economy of the Factory System

By the 1820s the programme of political economy and philosophy of mind promulgated among the Scottish elite was dominated by the Edinburgh professor Dugald Stewart, Adam Smith’s earliest academic expositor and a primary source and personal support for Babbage’s own work on analysis and economics. Under Stewart’s leadership, reformers urged the close relationship between the design of machine systems and the systematic gaze to which they should be subject. In the new colleges and mechanics institutes, the new periodicals and Benthamite professional committees, this model of intelligence and vision remained a crucial topic of debate for the designers and observers of the early nineteenth century factory system. [56]

A locus classicus of “Scotch knowledge” applied to the factories was The Philosophy of Manufactures produced in 1835 by the Scottish consulting chemist Andrew Ure, a veteran of reformist Glaswegian technical education. His disastrous performances as lecturer to Glasgow artisans prompted their secession from his courses, the establishment of independent mechanics’ institutes and his own permanent alienation from the workers’ movement and sustained support for the “Proprietors of our great Factories”. In 1830 he arrived in London from Glasgow. His Philosophy, distributed through the same useful knowledge network as Babbage’s Economy, was the first work to include the phrase “factory system” in its title. In a survey of what he baptised the “moral economy of the factory system”, Ure spelt out the point that such information about factory economy and machinery was often lacking amongst the mill-owners themselves. “Such complex mechanisms, like the topography of an irregular city, are most readily comprehended by the inspection of a plan, in which the mutual bearings and connections of the parts are analytically shown”. Ure made the modish Scots analogy between the “organic systems” of manufacture, mechanical, moral and commercial, and “the muscular, the nervous and the sanguiferous systems of an animal”. His systematic analysis, which Marx famously castigated as “his apotheosis of large-scale industry”, depended on a tour taken after being advised by his physician “to try the effects of travelling with light intellectual exercise”. His philosophic survey was ultimately a carefully-judged polemic on the openness of the factory system and the systematic expropriation of manual labour by industrial and self-acting machinery. When he had finished his survey he even tried, unsuccessfully, to gain access to Babbage’s workshops. Babbage was told that Ure had “drawings of the most delicate parts of the machinery at Manchester, etc., some of which machinery nobody has hitherto been permitted even to see, but the proprietors have nobly sacrificed the vulgar prejudice in favour of secrecy in order to promote science”. This moral, and this philosophic, pose, came to dominate the observers of the factory system from the 1830s on. [57]

Such observers were liberally supplied with handbooks. Literary companions were produced as a skilful mixture of travel diary and tourist guide. Readers were repeatedly instructed on the right mode of deportment when on tour in the manufacturing districts. Representative was the work of the Irish journalist William Cooke Taylor, a well-connected client of the Christian economist Richard Whateley, Dugald Stewart’s principal interpreter south of the border. Cooke Taylor was a notable propagandist for free trade and the manufacturing interests of Manchester, and an amateur ethnographer, the author of a treatise on The Natural History of Society (1840), in which class struggle was explained in terms of mutual ignorance and a devotee of the statistical movement – he attended its debates at the same British Association meeting in Manchester where Bessel and Jacobi discussed the Analytical Engine with Babbage. In his Factories and the Factory System of 1844, a work dedicated to the Tory premier and reluctant free trader Robert Peel, Cooke Taylor noted the contrast between hasty visions of the industrial sublime and philosophical meditation on the systematic benefits of the factory. “It is not surprising that many false notions should prevail respecting the influence of machinery; the tourist, visiting a factory district for the first time, cannot contemplate without wonder and even some emotions of involuntary fear the …. mighty steam-engine performing its functions with a monotonous regularity not less impressive than the enormous force which it sets in motion. His earliest impression is that fire and water – proverbially the best servants and the worst masters – have here established despotic dominion over man, and that here matter has acquired undisputed empire over mind”. The prosody was significant and owed much to Scottish philosophical discourse. Gothic imagery was linked with intemperate confusion and, above all, hideous materialist power. Such errors, which Cooke Taylor reckoned had bred unfortunate evangelical efforts to limit and control factory conditions, could only be corrected by “time and patience, repeated observation, and calm reflection”. The philosophic gaze would see that “the giant, steam, is not the tyrant but the slave of the operatives, not their rival but their fellow-labourer, employed as a drudge to do all the heavy work, leaving to them the lighter and more delicate operations”. Under Cooke Taylor’s wizardry, steam power was fetishised as human labour, and human labour transformed into a form of delicate leisure. [58]

These careful transformations were hammered home in the tour guides produced in the 1830s and 1840s. A handbook for visitors to Manchester, the “metropolis of manufactures”, produced in 1839, counselled all tourists to read Ure thoroughly and then obtain letters of introduction to the mills run by Fairbairn and Nasmyth, the bastions of mass-production engineering and the deployment of machine tools on a large scale. Amongst almost one hundred various machine firms in the city, walking through Fairbairn’s ironworks, or travelling on a specially-built train through Nasmyth’s Bridgewater foundry, a “gratifying treat”, would give the appropriate sense of wonder together with the understanding of regular system. “The visitor should take a walk among the mills, and whatever his notions may be respecting their smoke and steam and dust, he will be compelled to indulge in feelings of wonder at their stupendous appearance”. But in troubled times such feelings, as Cooke Taylor also stressed, should be immediately tempered by the sense of regular order. The Bridgewater Foundry, for example, was established in 1836, where major strikes of Lancashire engineers soon erupted in protest against harsh wage rates and the destruction of the apprentice system. From summer 1838, Chartist demonstrations in Manchester demanding the enfranchisement of the working class commanded more than fifty thousand marchers. In contrast, the ideal tourist would expect to see Nasmyth’s “straight-line system” of throughput and the widespread application of self-acting machine tools. At Fairbairn’s works “in every direction the utmost system prevails, and each mechanic appears to have his peculiar description of work assigned with the utmost economical subdivision of labour”. Once again, the power of mind over matter was much lauded. “It is by means of these admirable adaptations of human skill and intelligence that we are giving to the present age its peculiar and wonderful characteristic, namely the triumph of mind over matter”. [59]

This triumph was at once a claim about the machine tool system, and thus the control of matter by human intelligence, and a claim about labour discipline, and thus the control of the workforce by its masters. Ure stressed the relation between “the automatic plan” and “the equalization of labour”. “On the handicraft plan, labour more or less skilled, as usually the most expensive element of production – Materiam superabat opus; but on the automatic plan, skilled labour gets progressively superseded…. The grand object therefore of the modern manufacturer is, through the union of capital and science, to reduce the task of his work-people to the exercise of vigilance and dexterity”. It was precisely for this reason that in his tours Ure judged the factory as a form of laboratory, a potentially utopian site devoid of strife and replete with scientific truth. “The science of the factory” was at once a means of disciplining labour and an object-lesson in thermal physics, “better studied in a week’s residence in Lancashire than in a session of any university in Europe”. The Manchester guide explained that the self-acting principle applied to slide control in machine lathes “is that which enables a child or the machine itself to operate on masses of metal and to cut shavings off iron as if it was deprived of all hardness and so mathematically correct than even Euclid himself might be the workman!” In teaching inquirers how to interpret the relation between labour unrest and mechanization, Nasmyth also struck the Euclidean theme. “Those wonderful improvements in automaton machinery that produce you…the piston rod of a steam engine of such an accuracy as would make Euclid’s mouth water to look at” were immediately prompted by the “intolerable annoyance resulting from strikes”. The tour guides agreed. “The frequent and insufferable annoyances which engineers have experienced from trades unions” produced “those admirable contrivances which are enabling mechanicians to perform such wonders in overcoming the resistance of the material world”. [60] In their accounts of this resistance, a characteristic series of themes were developed in the literature of factory tourism. The apparently overwhelming power of the works should rightly be understood as labour discipline within a system of division and co-ordination, producing geometrical precision out of mere manual skill in despite of proletarian resistance.

Intelligence in the Factory System

“I regard the Factory System as un fait accompli….The Factory System originated in no preconceived plan – it sprang from no sudden exercise of wisdom, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, but it was formed and shaped by the irresistible force of circumstances. Those who are called the fathers of the Factory System were neither such demons as it has been sometimes the fashion to describe the millowners, nor yet were they perfect angels; they were simply men of great intelligence, industry, and enterprise” William Cooke Taylor, 1844. [61]

The familiar tropes of precision, discipline and class struggle were matters of considerable debate. Thus Engels summarised what he judged the farcical and sinister performances of factory tourism: “You come to Manchester….You naturally have good introductions to respectable people. You drop a remark or two as to the condition of the workers”. Engels brilliantly satirised the “easy, patriarchal relation” which tourists would see: “you see what the bourgeoisie promises the workers if they become its slaves, mentally and morally…Dr Ure sings a dithyramb upon the theme”. Engels’ critique hinged on the contrast between the gaze of the bourgeois philosopher, which he reckoned sightless, and a more penetrating analysis which saw behind the factory’s scenes. This was why the question of intelligence was so central in the political production of the factory system, the intelligence gathered about the works and the intelligence embodied within them. The factory system was not an inevitable consequence of the development of power machinery in the textile trades, but, instead, machines were designed to fit new forms of discipline and labour processes within the workshops. Arkwright’s new spindles were only licensed in units of a thousand or more so that he could maintain control over the technique, thus spawning large-scale textile enterprises. Manchester strikes in the cotton trade in the 1820s prompted the development of self-acting mules which would give more control of the production process to the employers. Ure characteristically lapsed into the imagery of Olympus and of Frankenstein to describe Richard Roberts’ new mule as “the Iron Man sprung out of the hands of our modern Prometheus at the bidding of Minerva – a creation destined to restore order among the industrious classes”. The comment was picked up by Marx as an archetype of the disciplinary function of the machine and of “the spirit of the factory”. Uneven developments in the implementation of such techniques as Roberts’ mule show that the automatic system depended on the extent to which it fitted managerial demands. As William Lazonick has argued, overlookers preferred less mechanical methods for winding yarn onto spindles because such methods yielded much greater intelligence about the conduct and quality of labour. [62] Contemporary analysts would hesitate between the attribution of productive success and labour discipline to the machines themselves, and thus to the logic of the system, or to the human workforce, and thus to the skill of proletarians and engineers alike. The development of these new social formations, as Engels claimed, involved an apparently paradoxical relation between machinery and human intelligence. He opened his analysis with a crude picture of pre-industrial life dominated by machine-like agricultural labour. “The industrial revolution has simply carried this out to its logical end by making the workers machines pure and simple, taking from them the last trace of independent activity, and so forcing them to think and demand a position worthy of men”. [63]

The two central political issues of the revolutionary decade of the 1830s were those of the intelligence to be attributed to the working class and of the possibility of representing the new factory regime and its associated system as a natural, and providential, rather than artificial, and thus corrupt, formation. These issues were hard to tease apart. Apologists repeatedly emphasised the inevitability and the virtue of the factory system. Cooke Taylor reckoned that “factories are a result of the universal tendency to association which is inherent in our nature” and that “the factory system is not only innocent in itself but a necessary element in the progress of civilization and a most efficient means of promoting human happiness.” In a fashion characteristic of the Scottish philosophy of mind, these remarks referred the co-ordination and discipline of the work-force to principles inherent in human consciousness. Eighteenth century associationism, it was claimed, reached its apotheosis in the cotton works. Thence it was easy to argue that the apparent evils of the factory system were entirely external to its logic. Thus while Cooke Taylor blamed “the want of intelligence in the ruling power….and not the factory system, which does not possess any means for self-legislation”, the eminent reformist physician James Kay Shuttleworth, whose revelations about the health of the manufacturing towns supplied countless journalists with scare stories, commented that the evils affecting the Mancunian working class “result from foreign and accidental causes. A system, which promotes the advance of civilization and diffuses it all over the world….founded on the benefits of commercial association, cannot be inconsistent with the happiness of the great mass of the people”. [64] The systematic character of the factories was precisely what allowed them to represented as virtuous, and this virtue was allegedly achieved automatically.

The crisis of proletarian intelligence in the factory system emerged as a problem of automatism. “The factory system has a tendency within itself to correct many of the evils”. If the factory were not merely the product of an automatic law of moral progress but the consequence of the adoption of the automatic system of manufacture, it was still necessary but difficult to represent the inmates of the factory as themselves possessed of intelligence. The puzzle of the thinking machine was the very stuff of this debate. No doubt this was why the images of the modern Prometheus and of Athena springing fully-clad from the mind of Zeus were so common. Defining the site of intelligence was a key political task. Critics reiterated their suspicion that automatic machinery and factory discipline mechanized the proletariat. Cooke Taylor addressed the puzzle directly. “I am willing to confess that the mechanical processes which require a continuous and unvarying repetition of the same operation…have a tendency to degrade the workman into an automaton”. He conceded that “there is a tendency in the use of machinery to materialize the thoughts”. But in drawing a picture of the balance between the necessary division of labour and the combination of tasks required within the factory system, he urged that “such combination requires no small exercise of mind and no conceivable adaptation of wood and iron will produce a machine that can think”. Nasmyth told the parliamentary commissioners that automatic machinery prompted workers’ intellectual development, just because under benevolent management removed the need for hard work. Challenged that under the division of labour “the labourer becomes part of the machine instead of an entire machine”, Nasmyth replied that “some of our modern machines are most interesting, and after a time the men begin to feel it…the mere looking at anything absolutely correct or true in geometrical form, I think, has in itself a tendency to improve the mind”. [65]

The suspicion, however, was that this vaunted intellectual improvement flowed from the master-machines, and thus from their masters. Ure characteristically and frankly celebrated this subordination. The Manchester guidebook quoted him approvingly: “the benignant power of steam summons around him his myriads of willing menials, and assigns to each the regulated task, substituting for painful muscular effort upon their part the energies of his own gigantic arm”. There was thus an unresolved contradiction between stress on the subordination, and thus mechanization, of workers’ intelligence, and on the co-ordination, and thus cerebration, of their labour. A notorious example appeared in Ure’s attempts to define the term “factory”. On the very same page of his Philosophy of Manufactures he defined the factory both as “a vast automaton composed of various mechanical and intellectual organs….all of them being subordinated to a self-regulated moving force”, and also as “the combined operation of many orders of work-people…in tending with assiduous skill a system of productive machines”. Marx immediately picked up this striking contradiction between automatism and skill and associated it closely with Babbage’s account of the division of labour in the machine system. “These two descriptions [by Ure] are far from being identical. In one, the combined collective worker appears as the dominant subject, and the mechanical automaton as the object; in the other, the automaton itself is the subject, and the workers are merely conscious organs”. The “automatic workshop” posed in an unprecedently acute form the challenge of situating its intellectual and thus governing principle: within the skilful workforce, as Cooke Taylor hinted, within the managerial regime, as Nasmyth so often claimed, or within the machines, as Ure and Babbage boasted. [66]

The Labour of the Head

This problem of the geography of intelligence depended on the fetishisation of the machines and the reification of the labour power exerted around them. As Raphael Samuel has demonstrated, mid-Victorian industrial mechanization was accompanied by the preservation, intensification and expansion of skilled manual labour throughout the economy. “The mid-Victorian engineer was still characteristically a craftsman, an artisan or mechanic rather than an operative or hand”. [67] The representation of this dual process of the intensification of skill and the subordination of mechanization involved a remarkable balancing act amongst the commentators on the factory system. In the report of his Lancashire tour during the Chartist general strike of 1842, in which almost every cotton works was closed, Cooke Taylor premised that “the diffusion of the Factory System has created a larger demand than previously existed for intelligence and contrivance” among the workforce, and deduced that the machines themselves could not, or should not, be granted tyrannic power. “The operatives are stringently ruled by their own consent…So strange a combination of perfect despotism with perfect freedom never before existed, and to have produced such a state is one of the noblest triumphs of morality and intelligence”. [68] The problem remained. Whose intelligence had produced this splendid state of voluntary servitude and supreme skill? Protagonists of the cotton masters had no doubt – it flowed from the machines themselves. Thus Edward Baines, a veteran lecturer against the Chartists on the benefits of rapid automation, argued in his history of the cotton industry that “all the precision, power and incessant motion belong to the machines alone, and the work-people have merely to supply them with work”. The embodiment of skill within the automatic system was used to distract attention from the labour power exerted by the workforce itself. The most hostile critics of the machine economy, such as the Liberal Manchester medic Peter Gaskell, countered that it followed that any worker would be “reduced to a mere watcher or feeder of his mighty assistant”, and that “the struggle carrying on between human power on the one hand, and steam aided by machinery, is gradually approaching a crisis”. [69]

The terms of this critical struggle provided the vocabulary for all early Victorian accounts of the relation between skill, labour power and the machine. For the political economists, on whom Babbage drew so much, the property of skill was switched from its traditional place as an aspect of the customary life of the artisan, and transferred as a species of mental capital to the factory system itself. The claim that skill was a property of the artisan collective body had long warranted various forms of working-class resistance to mechanization and deskilling. The more heroic achievements of early Victorian engineering, including the Difference Engine, might be attributed solely to their named authors, such as Babbage, the managerial entrepreneur, but many artisans retained and expressed their sense of the skilful labour which they had devoted to these projects. The socialist Thomas Hodgskin, editor of the Mechanics’ Magazine, lectured at the London Institute in 1826 that “the enlightened skill of different classes of workmen” had indeed produced higher improvements in machinery but that it was wrong to attribute “the productive power of this skill” to “its visible products, the instruments”, and even worse that “the mere owners….who neither make nor use them imagine themselves to be very productive persons”. Six years later in a London pub Hodgskin challenged Babbage on the Finsbury hustings about the fate of the public money which had been poured into the Difference Engine. [70] In response to such demands for recognition of artisanal skill, the Ricardian economists John McCulloch and Nassau Senior both saw artisan skill as a product of the intensity of the division of labour and not a quality imminent in, nor belonging to, the workforce itself. Richard Jones, Christian economist and close ally of William Whewell, argued that capital alone contributed “the formation of the human agency by which the continuity of labour is secured; the maintenance of the intellect which enlightens its application [and] the employment of power which resides either in a higher order of moving forces or in mechanical contrivance”. According to Jones and his colleagues, manufacture’s “sovereign power over the material world” was entirely dependent on “the eye of a superior enforcing everywhere steady and conscientious labour”. [71]

These claims were highly consequential for the politics of intelligence. Intelligence just was the warrant of humanity’s power over matter. Under the new orthodoxies of political economy, the surplus value extracted from the machines was the product of the intelligence of capital made real in the force of steam-driven engines. On this showing, “intelligence” itself was easily identified with just those qualities displayed by manufacturing capital and the subordinate “servants of the machine”, notably foresight and vigilance. So when Whewell and Jones debated the right model of value in the 1840s, the Cambridge mathematician reckoned that in a cotton mill “the value of its produce must equal the value of the moving power plus the value of the mechanism”. These analysts used the term “labouring force” to describe the former value, thus decisively shifting their model towards a general theory of machinery. Jones agreed: “we can have no measure of the power…employed in production unless we are familiar with the greater or less degree of perfection of the machinery and implements”. The value of the factory system was therefore entirely to be located in the array of mechanisms deployed in the workshops and its intelligence was to be referred to the planning and the discipline with which these machines were managed. [72]

The aim of this polemic was to make the identity of intelligence and capitalist machine management self-evident. Socialist, radical and plebeian critics sought, in contrast, to make it nonsensical or disastrous. This made the problem of workers’ intelligence vital in political debate. Trades union newspapers argued that “continued improvements in machinery” might increase the demand for manual labour but destroyed demand for “the labour of the head”. Lecturers at the Mechanics’ Institutes insisted that “if the body have lost its value, the mind must get into business without delay”. Chartist pamphleteers announced that “the Duke of Wellington could have gained ten Waterloo battles easier than he could have learned to form one single nail to the perfection attained by some poor men in the forlorn and sooted smithy”. [73] The pervasiveness of the language of machine intelligence was most marked in the more sophisticated socialist analyses, for in these texts claims for the liberation of the proletariat from the subordination of factory discipline simultaneously used, and assumed, the image of the human body as “living machinery”. So when the pre-eminent socialist campaigner Robert Owen promulgated his New View of Society in 1816, he appealed to mill-owners’ own interests in tending their workforce just as carefully as their “inanimate mechanisms”: “the more delicate complex living mechanism would be equally improved by being trained to strength and activity”, Owen charged, “that its mental movements might not experience too much irritating friction, to endeavour by every means to make it more perfect”. Where the Lanark utopian judged that manufacturers would immediately understand the rationality of social improvement because they saw their workers as living machines, Engels reckoned that in Manchester the process which mechanized the very bodies and minds of the workforce would also radicalize their politics despite the capitalists’ power. Machine systems helped divide the body into specialised, monstrous capacities. “No activity…claims the operative’s thinking powers”. Engels straightforwardly rejected the meliorist claims of Cooke Taylor, Ure and their colleagues that machine superintendence was a form of leisure. It was rather a form of tedium. “The operative is condemned to let his physical and mental powers decay”, Engels added; “if the operatives have nevertheless not only rescued their intelligence but cultivated and sharpened it more than other workingmen, they have found this possible only in rebellion against their fate and the bourgeoisie”. [74]

Such remarks indicate the need to legitimate the discourse on the factory system produced in the 1830s and 1840s and its polemical vocabulary of machine intelligence. The processes of automation and co-ordination which had spawned the factory system had made the problem of the place of intelligence urgent. Proponents of machinofacture reckoned that the factory system was evidently a consequence of intelligent reason and thus providential and virtuous. They situated this intelligence in the complex relation between the fixed capital of the steam-driven engines and the mental capital of the millowners. The workforce itself was only judged a producer of value to the extent that it matched precisely the capacities of the machines. The qualities attributed to this intelligence were just those required from this form of superintendence, anticipation and meticulous scrutiny. This was the definition of intelligence which Babbage embodied in his machines and the sense of intelligence which he reckoned those machines displayed. He even claimed that these were the virtues of divinity.

The Apotheosis of Machine Intelligence

“Innumerable are the illusions of Custom, but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous….Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seen it twice, or two hundred, or two million times? There is no reason in Nature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine, for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to the Steam-Engine, a power whereby Cotton might be spun, and money and money’s worth realised” Thomas Carlyle, 1831. [75]

It was, perhaps, inevitable that Babbage should ultimately teach the supreme value of machines possessed of foresight and memory by attributing these powers to the Deity. Natural theology was the indispensable medium through which early Victorian savants broadcast their messages. The dominant texts of this genre were the Bridgewater Treatises produced in the early 1830s by eminent divines and natural philosophers under the management of the Royal Society’s presidency. The treatise produced by William Whewell, then mathematics tutor at Trinity College Cambridge, was among the most successful of these works and included a claim about the relation between mathematics, automatism and atheism which Babbage decided he had to answer. His machine philosophy was here assailed from a perspective in complete contrast to those of the radical artisans. Whewell, a moderate evangelical and follower of Coleridgean politics, argued that whereas the great scientific discoverers were men of faith, because their acts of induction would inevitably prompt them to identify divine intelligence in the creation, mathematical deductivists might falsely hold that the laws of the world could be spun out by analysis and that the world itself might seem to be an automatic system. Whewell maintained a consistent hostility to the implications of mechanised analysis: “we may thus deny to the mechanical philosophers and mathematicians of recent times any authority with regard to their views of the administration of the Universe”. Worse was to follow. Whewell brutally denied that mechanised analytical calculation was proper to the formation of the clerisy. In classical geometry “we tread the ground ourselves at every step feeling ourselves firm” but in machine analysis “we are carried along as in a railroad carriage, entering it at one station and coming out of it at another…..it is plain that the latter is not a mode of exercising our own locomotive powers…It may be the best way for men of business to travel but it cannot fitly be made a part of the gymnastics of education”. [76]

These remarks were direct blows to Babbage’s programme. He called the reply to Whewell he produced in 1837 the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise and labelled it “a fragment”. It contained a series of sketches of his religious faith, his cosmology and his ambitions for the calculating engines. It amounted to a confession of his faith that the established clerisy was incompetent, dangerous and innumerate. Babbage had shown that memory and foresight were the two features of intelligence represented in his machines. He now showed, using resources from his calculating engines and from Hume’s notorious critique of miracles and revelation, that these features of machine intelligence were all that was needed to understand and model the rule of God, whether based on the miraculous work of the Supreme Intelligence or on His promise of an afterlife. “Foresight” could be shown to be responsible for all apparently miraculous and specially providential events in nature. Throughout the 1830s Babbage regaled his guests with a portentous party trick. He could set the machine to print a series of integers from unity to one million. Any observer of the machine’s output would assume that this series would continue indefinitely. But the initial setting of the machine could be adjusted so that at a certain point the machine would then advance in steps of ten thousand. An indefinite number of different rules might be set this way. To the observer, each discontinuity would seem to be a “miracle”, an event unpredictable from the apparent law-like course of the machine. Yet in fact the manager of the system would have given it foresight. Whewell’s Bridgewater Treatise appeared at the start of March 1833. Less than two months later Babbage had already worked out an experiment using the Difference Engine to print the series of even integers up to ten thousand and then increase each term in steps of three. The sudden discontinuity was both predictable to the analyst and yet surprising to the audience. Babbage drew the analogy with divine foresight, whether in the production of new species or in miraculous intervention. In May 1833, therefore, Babbage was ready to show a mechanical miracle.

His onlookers were almost always impressed. The dour Thomas Carlyle was predictably sceptical, and thundered his complaint about Babbage’s analogy between thought and steam power. But as early as June 1833 Lady Byron and her daughter “both went to see the thinking machine (for such it seems) and were treated to Babbage’s miraculous show of apparently sudden breaks in its output. “There was a sublimity in the views thus opened of the ultimate results of intellectual power”, she reported. Two years later George Ticknor was treated to a lecture of three hours on the topic of programmed discontinuities: “the whole, of course, seems incomprehensible, without the exercise of volition and thought”. Here, then, was the theological equivalent of the systematic gaze. In answer to Whewell’s boast that only induction might reveal the divine plan of the world, and that machine analysis could never do so, Babbage countered that the world could be represented as an automatic array only visible as a system from the point of view of its manager. The world-system was a macroscopic version of a factory, the philosophy of machinery the true path to faith, and the calculating engines’ power of “volition and thought” demonstrated to all. [77]

The mechanical metaphor for miracles, creations and extinctions was, of course, profoundly influential on the actualist naturalists among Babbage’s friends, including Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin. In the Ninth Treatise, Babbage reproduced his own views on crustal elevation and stratigraphy and two crucial letters from John Herschel on the uniformity of earth history and the production of life. He sent copies to figures of political eminence, including both the new Queen Victoria and the Piedmontese premier Cavour. He also sent the text to the gentlemen of science. Lyell predicted that “some people would not like any reasoning which made miracles more reconcilable with possibilities in the ordinary course of the Universe”, while the American mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch told Babbage that “when you carried me from the simple machine made by a man to the grand machine of the Universe I wish I could express to you one half of the enthusiasm I felt….I want no priestcraft, but I want high feelings always to exist in men’s minds in regard to God”. [78] Babbage was not content with making mechanizable foresight responsible for all apparently miraculous and specially providential events. Mechanizable memory was to be associated with the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments. “We must possess the memory of what we did during our existence in order to give them those characteristics. In fact, memory seems to be the only faculty which must of necessity be preserved in order to render a future state possible”. Babbage even managed to offer a material cause for the preservation of memory, for since all sound, and thus all speech, was preserved in aerial vibrations, the memory of all previous consciousness would be preserved in the atmosphere. However hypothetical, with this model Babbage managed to show that just those features of intelligence displayed in his machine were also required for religion. Without memory, there could be no heaven nor hell, and without foresight, no providence. [79]

The apotheosis of the intelligent machine was an integral part of Babbage’s ambitious programme. This programme has been used here to illuminate the complex character of systematic vision in the Industrial Revolution. In the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, the system was coextensive with the universe, and Babbage explained that its order and logic would only be visible from a privileged point of view. In his surveys of the factories and workshops, Babbage set out to reveal the systematic character of the machine economy by pointing out the rationale of the production, distribution and deployment of power in the workshops of industrial Britain. In his project to build intelligent calculating engines, he attempted to represent himself as the intellectual manager of the complex labour relations of the machine-tool industry, initially disastrously, and then as part of his overall vision of a newly rational system of automatic precision engineering. In the setting of early Victorian society, the connections between these spheres of theological, political and technological work cannot be seen as merely metaphorical. These techniques helped make a new social order and a new form of knowledge. The systematic gaze was designed to produce the rational order it purported to discover. This is to place Babbage’s project alongside those of Bentham, whose panoptic schemes have been associated with the production of the docile body, and of Smiles, whose hagiographies cleverly connected the self-fashioning of the Victorian engineers with the transformations they wrought on the material world. [80] A third, and highly suggestive, contemporary is Henry Mayhew, the surveyor of the unproductive bodies of the London poor in a four volume work of 1861 subtitled A Cyclopaedia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work. In Mayhew’s ghastly and obsessive stories, the apparent nomadic disorder of the diseased bodies of the London streets is inexorably revealed as systematic and possessed of its own rationality, and thus, paradoxically, its own productivity. Mayhew cites Babbage directly at this key point in his work – the discussion of waste. In Babbage’s Economy of Machinery, the reader is regaled with details of the admirable system for slaughtering horses at the factories in Paris. Even the rats which live off rotting horse carcasses could be systematically caught, killed and sold. With an exhaustive and exhausting tabulation of data, Babbage showed that a twelve shilling horse carcass could produce more than four pounds of income. Mayhew went one better, by linking the statistics of dead horses to the entire economy of productive waste and waste- sellers on the London streets. As Catherine Gallagher has remarked, Mayhew here effects the “conversion of economic into physiological categories”. [81] This interconversion holds the key to the systematic vision. Under Babbage’s productive gaze, the powers of the body were simultaneously rendered mechanical and thus profitable, or wasteful and thus consigned to oblivion.

Footnotes

Thanks to Billy Ashworth, Bob Brain, William Ginn, Iwan Morus, Otto Sibum and Richard Staley for their generous help, and to the librarians at the Cambridge University Library, the British Library and the Royal Society for help with manuscripts in their possession.

[1] Henry Colebrooke, “Address on presenting the Gold Medal of the Astronomical Society to Charles Babbage”, Memoirs of the Astronomical Society 1 (1825), 509-12, pp. 509-10; Babbage to Herschel, 27 June 1823, Royal Society HS 2.184.

[2] Herschel to Babbage, 25 October 1814, Royal Society HS 2.31; H.W.Buxton, Memoir of the Life and Labours of the Late Charles Babbage, ed. R.A.Hyman ([1880] Cambridge, MA.: M.I.T. Press, 1988), p. 46.

[3] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), pp. 195-228; Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) pp. 55-64; Adrian Desmond, The Politics of Evolution (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989).

[4] John R. Searle, “Minds, Brains and Programs”, in Rainer Born, ed., Artificial Intelligence: the case against (Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1987), 18-40 (originally in Behavioural and Brain Sciences 3 (1980), 417-24).

[5] H.M.Collins, Artificial Experts (Cambridge, MA.: M.I.T. Press, 1990), pp. 64-5.

[6] Steven Shapin, “The Invisible Technician”, American Scientist 77 (1989), 554-63; Howard Becker, Art Worlds (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).

[7] Karl Marx, Capital Volume One ( [1867] Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1976), p. 493 n.4; “Speech at the Anniversary of the People’s Paper” [April 14 1856] in Selected Works, ed. V.Adoratsky , 2 vols. (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1942), 2: 428; Grundrisse, Notebook 6 [February 1858], ed. Martin Nicolaus (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), pp. 692-3. For Marx as a systems theorist see Thomas P. Hughes, “The Order of the Technological World”, History of Technology 5 (1980), 1-16, pp. 5-7 and Raniero Panzieri, “The Capitalist Use of Machinery”, in Phil Slater, ed., Outlines of a Critique of Technology (London: Ink Links, 1980), 44-68.

[8] Ada Lovelace, “Sketch of the Analytical Engine by L.F.Menabrea”, Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs, 3 (1843), 666-731, pp. 689-90 (translation of L.F.Menabrea, “Notions sur la machine analytique de M. Charles Babbage”, Bibliotheque universelle de Geneve 41 (1842), 352-76, p. 376).

[9] Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (London: Longmans, 1864), pp. 53-74; Buxton, Memoir of Babbage, pp. 80-102; Anthony Hyman, Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 123-35; Michael Lindgren, Glory and Failure: the Difference Engines of Johann Mueller, Charles Babbage and Georg and Edvard Scheutz (Cambridge, MA.: M.I.T.Press, 1990), pp. 52-59.

[10] For these plans see Babbage, Passages, pp. 112-41; Hyman, Charles Babbage, pp. 164-73; for Ada Lovelace’s role see Dorothy Stein, Ada: a Life and a Legacy (Cambridge, MA.: M.I.T.Press, 1985), pp. 108-20 (who plays down her originality) and Betty Alexandra Toole, Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers (Mill Valley, CA.: Strawberry Press, 1992), pp. 194-260 (who emphasises it).

[11] Babbage, Passages, p.114.

[12] Babbage, Passages, pp.129-35; Lovelace/Menabrea, “Sketch of the Analytical Engine”, p. 675. For Piedmontese science policy, Plana and Menabrea see Pietro Redondi, “Cultura e scienza dall’illuminismo al positivismo”, in Gianni Micheli, ed., Storia d’Italia: Scienza e tecnica nella cultura e nella societa dal Rinascimento a oggi (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), 685-814, pp. 766-76.

[13] Buxton, Memoir of Babbage, p.216 n.8; Lovelace/Menabrea, “Sketch of the Analytical Engine”, pp. 675, 689, 692, 723. For the ambitions for a new science see Toole, Ada, pp. 209-16.

[14] Lovelace/Menabrea, “Sketch of the Analytical Engine”, pp. 696, 706; Babbage, Passages, pp. 306-8. Passages was dedicated to Victor Emmanuel, then King of unified Italy. Babbage was an enthusiastic correspondent of his premier, Cavour.

[15] Hyman, Charles Babbage, pp. 82-3; Maxine Berg, The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 162. For the Ricardian critique see [J.R.McCulloch], “Babbage on Machinery and Manufactures”, Edinburgh Review 56 (1833), 313- 32, p.326; Biancamaria Fontana, Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society: the Edinburgh Review 1802-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 140-6 .

[16] Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures 4th ed. (London: Charles Knight, 1835), preface (1832), p. iii.

[17] Babbage, Economy of Machinery, p. 195. The first reference to Prony is in Babbage to Davy, 3 July 1822, published as A Letter to Humphry Davy (London: Booth, 1822), p.8. The gift from Didot in 1819 is recorded at the front of Babbage’s copy of the sine tables, Cambridge University Library MSS ADD 8705.37. For other responses see [Dionysius Lardner], “Babbage’s Calculating Engines”, Edinburgh Review 59 (1834), 263-327, p. 275.

[18] Babbage, Passages, pp. 59-63 and 114-116.

[19] Babbage, Passages, pp. 123-9 and The Exposition of 1851, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1851), pp. 184-5.

[20] Babbage, Passages, pp. 120-2.

[21] Babbage, Passages, p. 67 and Exposition, p.188.

[22] Babbage, Economy of Machinery, p. 118. For Babbage’s notes on his own tours, compiled for the book, see Cambridge University Library MSS ADD 8705.25, p. 10.

[23] Babbage, Exposition, p.171. For political economy and the science of progress in the 1830s see Simon Schaffer, “The Nebular Hypothesis and the Science of Progress” in J.R.Moore, ed., History, Humanity and Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

[24] Babbage, Economy of Machinery, pp. 120, 175. See Richard M. Romano, “The Economic Ideas of Charles Babbage”, History of Political Economy 14 (1982), 385-405, p. 391. For Marx’s response to the Babbage principle see Karl Marx, Capital: Volume One (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p.469: “the collective worker now possesses all the qualities necessary for production in an equal degree of excellence, and expends them in the most economical way”.

[25] Babbage, Economy of Machinery, pp. 54, 250-1; Buxton, Memoir of Babbage, p. 194.

[26] Babbage, Economy of Machinery, pp. 379, 388; Hyman, Babbage, p.86; Buxton, Memoir of Babbage, pp. 215, 111. For Babbage on honours see Exposition, pp.220-49 and for the Bonapartist connexion see Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (London: Fellowes, 1830), pp. 25-27.

[27] [Francis Place], in Trades’ Magazine and Mechanics’ Weekly Gazette, 49 (June 1826), 779-80, cited in Gregory Claeys, “The Reaction to Political Radicalism and the Popularisation of Political Economy in early Nineteenth Century Britain”, in Terry Shinn and Richard Whitley, eds., Expository Science (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985), 119-136, p. 129. Here Place summarised the socialist views on productive labour which he rejected.

[28] Babbage, Passages, pp. 17-18, 365-7, 425-7. See Hyman, Babbage, p.175.

[29] Hyman, Babbage, p. 192; James Nasmyth, Autobiography, ed. Samuel Smiles (London: John Murray, 1883), pp. 142-3, 134; Carolyn Cooper, “The Portsmouth System of Manufacture”, Technology and Culture 25 (1984), 182-225, p. 213. For Watkins’ models see Watkins to Babbage, 15 January 1834, British Library MSS Add 37188 f.160.

[30] Hyman, Babbage, p.79.

[31] E.P.Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), pp. 889, 915; John Rule, The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England (London: Longman, 1986), pp. 357-63.

[32] E.P.Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd”, Past and Present 38 (1967) and Customs in Common ((London: Merlin, 1991), chapters 4 and 5; Foucault, Discipline and Punish, part 3 and “The Eye of Power”, in Colin Gordon, ed., Michel Foucault: Power/Knowledge (Brighton: Harvester, 1980), chapter 8. For customary skill see John Rule, “The Property of Skill in the Period of Manufacture”, in Patrick Joyce, ed., The Historical Meanings of Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 99-118.

[33] Babbage to Wellington, 23 December 1834, British Library MSS ADD 40611 f.181.

[34] Babbage, “The science of number reduced to mechanism” (1822) in Buxton, Memoir of Babbage, p. 65.

[35] Buxton, Memoir of Babbage, p.86.

[36] William Fairbairn, Treatise on Mills and Machines (London, 1861), p. v; Samuel Smiles, Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers (London, 1863). The Life of Clement is chapter 12.

[37] K.R.Gilbert, “Machine-Tools”, in C.Singer et al., eds., History of Technology Volume 4 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1958), 417-41; A.E.Musson, “Joseph Whitworth and the Growth of Mass Production Engineering”, Business History 17 (1975), 109-49, p. 115.

[38] “Autobiography of Thomas Wood” in John Burnett, ed., Useful Toil: Autobiographies of Working People (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 310; Nasmyth, Autobiography, p.125.

[39] Buxton, Memoir of Babbage, pp. 81-2, 97; Hyman, Babbage, pp. 125, 130-2; Nasmyth, Autobiography, p.130. For the move to Dorset Street, see Babbage to Clement, 18 May 1832, British Library MSS Add 37186 f.400. For Clement’s refusal to give bills, see Clement to Babbage, 18 November 1829, British Library MSS Add 37184, f. 419.

[40] Hyman, Babbage, pp. 124, 128 and Jarvis to Babbage, February 1831, British Library MSS ADD 37185 f.419. The best discussion of the fight with Clement is William Ginn, Philosophers and Artisans: the relationship between men of science and instrument makers in London 1820-1860 (PhD thesis, Kent, 1991), pp. 157-69.

[41] For state standardisation, see Julian Hoppit, “Reforming Britain’s Weights and Measures”, English Historical Review (1993), 82-104; for the fiscal-military state see John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989).

[42] Babbage to Wellington, July 1834, in Buxton, Memoir of Babbage, p. 104; Jarvis and Clement to Babbage, in Hyman, Babbage, pp. 131-2.

[43] Wright to Babbage, 18 June 1834 and 13 January 1839, British Library MSS ADD 37188 f.390 and 37191 ff. 99-100; compare Hyman, Babbage, pp. 66, 107.

[44] Babbage, “Notes for Economy of Manufacture”, University Library Cambridge MSS Add 8705.25 p. 10; Babbage, “Report on the Calculating Machine”, 1830, British Library MSS ADD 37185 f. 264 ; Nasmyth, Autobiography, pp. 148-9, 179. Compare Ginn, Philosophers and Artisans, p. 167, on the uniqueness of artisan skill.

[45] John Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), pp. 224-5; Ian Inkster, Science and Technology in History (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 82-83.

[46] Babbage, Economy of Machinery, p. 67; Charles Hotzapffel, Turning and Mechanical Manipulation, 5 vols. (London, 1843-1884), 2: 984-91; Nasmyth to Babbage, 22 June 1855 and Babbage to Whitworth, July 1855, British Library MSS ADD ff. 249, 366. The cartoon is in de Morgan to Babbage, 21 October 1839, British Library MSS ADD 37191 f. 256.

[47] Cooper, “Portsmouth System”; Peter Linebaugh, “Technological Repression and the Origin of the Wage”, The London Hanged (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), chapter 11.

[48] Cooper, “Portsmouth System”, pp. 213-14; Linebaugh, London Hanged, pp. 399-401.

[49] Babbage, “On a Method of Expressing by Signs the Action of Machinery”, Philosophical Transactions 116 (1826), 250-65 and draft in Cambridge University Library MSS ADD 8705.21; [Lardner], “Babbage’s Calculating Engine”, pp. 318-319. For Lardner’s collaboration on mechanical notation with Babbage, and its publicity in Paris and Berlin, see Babbage to Dupin, 20 December 1833 and Babbage to Humboldt, December 1833, British Library MSS ADD 37188 ff. 117, 123.

[50] Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, ed. Eric Hobsbawm ([1845] London: Granada, 1982), p.214.

[51] Charles Dickens (1838) cited in Stephen Marcus, Engels, Manchester and the Working Class (New York: Norton, 1985), p. 31; Doyce in Little Dorrit, Book 1 chapter 10 and Gradgrind’s Observatory in Hard Times, Book 1 chapter 15. Babbage describes the three clocks in Economy, p.198.

[52] Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures 1700-1820 (London: Fontana, 1985), p.229.

[53] Babbage, Passages, pp. 230-2; Economy, pp. 115-16, 269-71; Babbage to Evans, British Library MSS ADD 37189 f. 18; Nasmyth, Autobiography, p.164. On workshop secrecy see Clive Behagg, “Secrecy, Ritual and Folk Violence: the Opacity of the Workplace in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century”, in R.D.Storch, ed., Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth Century England (London: Croom Helm, 1982), 154-79, pp. 156, 159.

[54] For Smith’s invisible hand see A.L.Macfie, “The Invisible Hand of Jupiter”, Journal of the History of Ideas 32 (1971), 595-9; for Hutton’s system see R.Grant, “Hutton’s Theory of the Earth”, in L.Jordanova and R.S.Porter, eds., Images of the Earth (Chalfont St Giles: British Society for History of Science, 1979), 23-38.

[55] Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. W.P.D.Wightman, J.C.Bryce and I.S.Ross ([1795] Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 44, 50, 66.

[56] For Stewart’s role see Anand C.Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment and Early Victorian English Society (London: Croom Helm, 1986), pp. 22-28; Pietro Corsi, “The Heritage of Dugald Stewart: Oxford Philosophy and the Method of Political Economy 1809-32″, Nuncius, 2 (1987), 89-144; Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 38-41, 170. For Babbage’s close alliance with Stewart see Hyman, Babbage, p.55; Buxton, Memoir of Babbage, p. 350. In 1821 Babbage testified to the “influence which [Stewart's] works on the Philosophy of Mind made in directing the course” of his own : Babbage to Helen Stewart, April 1821, British Library MSS ADD 37182 (thanks to Billy Ashworth for this source).

[57] W.V.Farrar, “Andrew Ure and the Philosophy of Manufactures”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 27 (1973), 299-324, p. 309; Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures (London: Charles Knight, 1835), pp. ix, 42-44, 55-66 ; Hilton, Age of Atonement, p. 198; Karl Marx, Capital: Volume One (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p.470; Evans to Babbage, 16 February 1835, British Library MSS ADD 37189 f.17. For Ure’s organic systems theory see Boyd Hilton.

[58] William Cooke Taylor, Factories and the Factory System (London: Jeremiah How, 1844), p.11. For his presence at the BAAS see Cooke Taylor, Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire, 2nd ed. (London: Duncan and Malcolm, 1842), pp. 223; for his ethnography see Christopher Herbert, Culture and Anomie: Ethnographic Imagination in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 61-64.

[59] Manchester as it is (Manchester: Love and Barton, 1839), pp. 201-2, 214-17, 210. For Nasmyth on the strikes see Nasmyth, Autobiography, pp. 222-8. For Manchester and machine tools see A.E.Musson, “Joseph Whitworth and the Growth of Mass-production Engineering”, Business History 17 (1975), 109-49, p. 113. For Chartist demonstrations see Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists (Aldershot: Wildwood House, 1984), ch.3.

[60] Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures, pp. 20-21, 25; Manchester as it is, pp. 217, 32-33; Nasmyth’s parliamentary evidence 1867-8, in Maxine Berg, ed., Technology and Toil in Nineteenth Century Britain (London: CSE Books, 1979), p. 159.

[61] Cooke Taylor, Factories and the Factory System, pp. i-ii.

[62] Berg, Age of Manufactures, p. 243; Tine Bruland, “Industrial Conflict as a source of technical innovation: the development of the automatic spinning mule”, Economy and Society 11 (1982), 91- 121; Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures, p.367; Marx, Capital, p.563; William Lazonick, “Industrial Relations and Technical Change: the case of the self-acting mule”, Cambridge Journal of Economics 3 (1979), 231-262. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) was subtitled “the modern Prometheus”.

[63] Engels, Condition of the Working Class, pp. 214-15, 39. Compare Marcus, Engels, pp. 135-7, 178- 99.

[64] Cooke Taylor, Factories and the Factory System, pp. 1, 5, 77; James Kay Shuttleworth, Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester (London, 1832), p. 47.

[65] Cooke Taylor, Tour in the Manufacturing Districts, pp. 140, 126, 139 and Factories and the Factory System, p.3; Nasmyth’s testimony in Berg, Technology and Toil, p.158.

[66] Andrew Ure, Dictionary of Arts, in Manchester as it is, p.207; Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures, p.13; Marx, Capital, p.544: he had already discussed this passage from Ure in Poverty of Philosophy ([1847] Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1978), p.138 and Grundrisse ([1858] Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 690, where it is linked with Babbage’s Economy of Machinery.

[67] Raphael Samuel, “The Workshop of the World: Steam Power and Hand Technology in mid-Victorian Britain”, History Workshop Journal, 3 (1977), 6-72, p. 40.

[68] Cooke Taylor, Tour, pp. 116, 123-4. For the strike see Mick Jenkins, The General Strike of 1842 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980), chapter 2.

[69] Edward Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain (London, 1835), p.460 and Peter Gaskell, Artisans and Machinery (London: Parker, 1836), pp. 7-9. For Baines see Berg, Machinery Question, pp. 103-4, 196-7; for Gaskell see Engels, Condition of the Working Class, p. 98.

[70] Berg, Machinery Question, p.172; Hyman, Babbage, p.84.

[71] Berg, Machinery Question, pp. 126-8. On the “property of skill” see Peter Linebaugh, “Labour History without the Labour Process”, Social History, 7 (1982) and Rule, “The Property of Skill in the Period of Manufacture”.

[72] Whewell to Jones, 14 February 1843 in Isaac Todhunter, ed. William Whewell: an Account of his Writings, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1876), 2: 312-13; William Whewell, ed., Literary Remains (London: Longmans, 1859), p.25. See Berg, Machinery Question, pp. 130-133; Philip Mirowski, More Heat than Light (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 126; M.Norton Wise and Crosbie Smith, “Work and Waste”, History of Science (1989).

[73] Official Gazette of the Trades Union (August 1834) in Berg, Technology and Toil, p.84; James Martineau at Liverpool, in Berg, Machinery Question, p.158; Humphry Price, A Glance at the Present Times chiefly with reference to the Working Men (London, 1838), pp. 3-5. Price was a Kidderminster priest who worked for Chartism in the west country.

[74] Robert Owen, A New View of Society ([1816] London: Dent, 1927), p. 9; Engels, Condition of the Working Class, pp. 169, 204.

[75] Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus ([1833] London: Collins, 1931), p. 232.

[76] William Whewell, Astronomy and General Physics Considered with reference to Natural Theology (London: Pickering, 1834), p. 334 and Of a Liberal Education in General (London: Pickering, 1845), pp. 40-41. See Richard Yeo, “William Whewell, Natural Theology and the Philosophy of Science in mid-nineteenth-century Britain”, Annals of Science 36 (1979), 493-516.

[77] Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1838), pp. 32-43; Babbage’s first experiment with the Difference Engine, 18 May 1833, Cambridge University Library MSS ADD 8705.38 p.38. For the date of Whewell’s Treatise and his intention to single out William Rowan Hamilton as a notable exception to the irreligion of mathematicians, see Whewell to Jones, 2 February 1833 and Whewell to Hamilton, 18 March 1833, in Todhunter, Whewell, 2: 154, 162.

[78] Lady Byron to King, 21 June 1833, in Doris Langley Moore, Ada Countess of Lovelace (London: John Murray, 1977), p.44; George Ticknor, Life, Letters and Journals (London, 1876).

[79] Lyell to Babbage, May 1837, in K.Lyell, Life, Letters and Journals of Charles Lyell, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1881), 2: 9-10; Bowditch to Babbage, 21 February 1835, British Library MSS ADD 37189 f.28. For the Treatise and actualism see W.F.Cannon, “The Problem of Miracles in the 1830s”, Victorian Studies 4 (1960), 5-32.

[80] Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 108-19 and Passages, p.405.

[81] Foucault, “The Eye of Power”; for Smiles on self-fashioning and system building see Thomas Parke Hughes, “Introduction”, in Smiles, Selections from Lives of the Engineers (Cambridge, MA.: M.I.T.Press, 1966), pp. 9-25.

[82] Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 4 vols. (London: Griffin, Bohn, 1861-2), 2: 6-9 citing Babbage, Economy of Machinery, pp. 10-11, 393-6. For Mayhew on the unproductive body see Catherine Gallagher, “The Body versus the Social Body in Malthus and Mayhew”, in C.Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur, eds., The Making of the Modern Body (Los Angeles: California University Press, 1987), 83- 106, p. 99; Herbert, “Mayhew’s Cockney Polynesia”, in Culture and Anomie, chapter 4.

Introduction

In a very well-known passage of Capital, Marx described labour as ‘a process between man and nature’ through which man ‘acts upon external nature and changes it, and in this way he simultaneously changes his own nature.’ Intelligence made the labour process distintively human. ‘What distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees,’ Marx argued, ‘ is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax.’ In this paper, we explore the relationship between intellectual and manual labour in the culture which Marx himself studied, the industrial-scientific complex of early nineteenth century England. Like him, we ask (a) how such labour processes change human capacities just much as they transform nature, (b) how different kinds of workers can be said to build structures in the mind and (c) how intelligence can be embodied in the labour process. My paper focuses on the work of Charles Babbage, whose designs for thinking machines, minature factories to process numbers launched in London between the 1820s and the 1850s, now figure so largely in the standard histories of computers. This is a story about automata because such devices, capable of self-government and intelligence, helped people understand the new factory system and also Babbage’s intelligent machines. And this paper is about the place of intelligence and its display, because geography was crucial for the politics of the machinery system. When Victorians defined where the intelligence of a system was, they were defining where the political control of theat system was vested. Marx’s parable of the architect and the bee is important, both becasue it draws our attention to the problem of thinking and unthinking labour, and because it reminds us that the place where thinking happens is a key aspect of any working machine. Marx was Babbage’s most penetrating London reader, and during debates with the city’s workers about mechanisation in 1856, he announced the ‘all our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.’ A year later, he observed that ‘it is the machine, which possess skill and strength in place of the worker, is itself a virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it.’ Within the ‘system of machinery, the automatic one is merely the most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system.’ What follows is an attempt to examine some implications of this ‘automatic system’ by taking the geography of automata very seriously indeed.

Calculator or Dancer?

‘They needed a calculator, but a dancer got the job’ (The Marriage of Figaro, 1784)

In the steam-punk metropolis of Gibson and Sterling’s Difference Engine, the sickly Keats runs a cinema, Disraeli is a gossip journalist unwillingly converted to using a keyboard, and fashionable geologists visit the Burlington Arcade to buy pricey mechanical trinkets, ‘outstanding pieces of British precision craftsmanship’. Above them looms Lord Babbage, his original calculating engines already outdated, his scheme for life peerages on merit become part of everyday politics. Babbage’s dreams doubtless deserve this treatment from the apostles of cyberfiction – he touted his schemes in pamphlets and exhibitions all over early nineteenth century London. It was a city apparently obsessed by displays of cunning engines, enthusiastic in its desire to be knowingly deceived by the outward appearance of machine intelligence, and Babbage heroically exploited the obsession in his lifelong campaign for the rationalisation of the world.

The enterprise of the calculating engines was certainly dependent on the city’s workshops, stocked with lathes, clamps and ingenious apprentices, and on government offices, stocked with ledgers, blue books and officious clerks – a heady mixture of Bleeding Heart Yard and the Circumlocution Office. But, as Gibson and Sterling see so acutely, it was also tangled up with the culture of the West End, of brightly lit shops and showrooms, of front-of-house hucksters and backroom impresarios. Put the Difference Engine in its proper place, perched uneasily between Babbage’s drawing room in wealthy Marylebone, the Treasury chambers in Whitehall, and the machine shops over the river in Lambeth, but at least as familiar in the arcades round Piccadilly and the squares of Mayfair, where automata and clockwork, new electromagnetic machines and exotic beasts were all put on show.

It was in the plush of the arcades that Babbage, barely eight years old, first saw an automaton. Some time around 1800 his mother took him to visit the Mechanical Museum run by the master designer John Merlin in Prince’s Street, just between Hanover Square and Oxford Street. A Liègeois in his mid-sixties, working in London for four decades, Merlin was one of the best-known metropolitan mechanics, deviser of new harpsichords and clocks, entrepreneur of mathematical instruments and wondrous machines. His reputation even rivalled that of Vaucanson, the pre-eminent eighteenth century designer of courtly automata. As he rose through fashionable society, Merlin hung out with the musical Burney family, figured largely as an amusing and eccentric table-companion, and ‘a very ingenious mechanic’, in Fanny Burney’s voluminous diaries, sat for Gainsborough, and used his mechanical skills to devise increasingly remarkable costumes for the innumerable masquerades then charming London’s pleasure-seekers. To help publicise his inventions, Merlin appeared at the Pantheon or at Ranelagh dressed as the Goddess Fortune, equipped with a specially designed wheel or his own newfangled roller-skates, as a barmaid with her own drink-stall, or even as an electrotherapeutic physician, shocking the dancers as he moved among them.

Merlin ingeniously prowled the borderlands of showmanship and engineering. He won prestigious finance from the backers of Boulton and Watt’s new steam engines. He opened his Mechanical Museum in Hanover Square in the 1780s. For a couple of shillings visitors could see a model Turk chewing artificial stones, they might play with a gambling machine, see perpetual motion clocks and mobile bird cages, listen to music boxes and try the virtues of Merlin’s chair for sufferers from gout. After unsuccessfully launching a plan for a ‘Necromancic Cave’, featuring infernal mobiles and a fully mechanized concert in the Cave of Apollo, he began opening in the evenings, charged his visitors a shilling a time for tea and coffee, and tried to pull in ‘young amateurs of mechanism’.

Babbage was one of them. Merlin took the young Devonshire schoolboy upstairs to his backstage workshop to show some more exotic delights. ‘There were two uncovered female figures of silver, about twelve inches high’. The first automaton was relatively banal, though ‘singularly graceful’, one of Merlin’s well-known stock of figures ‘in brass and clockwork, so as to perform almost every motion and inclination of the human body, viz. the head, the breasts, the neck, the arms, the fingers, the legs &co. even to the motion of the eyelids, and the lifting up of the hands and fingers to the face’. Babbage remembered that ‘she used an eye-glass occasionally and bowed frequently as if recognizing her acquaintances’. Good manners, it seemed, could easily be mechanized. But it was the other automaton which stayed in Babbage’s mind, ‘an admirable danseuse, with a bird on the forefinger of her right hand, which wagged its tail, flapped its wings and opened its beak’. Babbage was completely seduced. ‘The lady attitudinized in a most fascinating manner. Her eyes were full of imagination, and irresistible’. ‘At Merlin’s you meet with delight’, ran a contemporary ballad, and this intriguing mixture of private delight and public ingenuity remained a powerful theme of the world of automata and thinking machines in which Babbage later plied his own trade.

Merlin died in 1803, and much of his Hanover Square stock was sold to Thomas Weeks, a rival ‘performer and machinist’ who had just opened his own museum on the corner of Tichborne and Great Windmill Streets near the Haymarket. The danseuse went too. The show cost half-a-crown, in a room over one hundred feet long, lined in blue satin, with ‘a variety of figures inert, active, separate, combined, emblematic and allegoric, on the principles of mechanism, being the most exact imitation of nature’. Like Merlin, Weeks also tried to attract invalids, emphasising his inventions of weighing-machines and bedsteads for the halt and the lame. There were musical clocks and self-opening umbrellas, and, especially, ‘a tarantula spider made of steel, that comes independently out of a box, and runs backwards and forwards on the table, stretches out and draws in its paws, as if at will. This singular automaton that has no other power of action than the mechanism contained in its body, must fix the attention of the curious’.

Once again, seduction was an indispensable accompaniment of the trade in automata. One of the most famous automata of the early nineteenth-century, a ‘Musical Lady’, was originally brought to London in 1776 by the great Swiss horologist Jaquet-Droz. His London agent Henri Maillardet put her on show after the turn of the century at the Great Promenade Room in Spring Gardens behind Whitehall: ‘the animated and surprizing Motion of the Eye aided by the most eloquent gesture, are heightened to admiration in contemplating the wonderful powers of Mechanism which produce at the same time the actual appearance of Respiration’. The accomplished lady’s eyes really moved, her breast heaved. ‘She is apparently agitated’, a contemporary remarked, ‘with an anxiety and diffidence not alway felt in real life’. Such shows often turned to titillating effect modish materialist philosophies which, in the wake of enlightened theories of sensibility and mesmeric strategies for restoring health, sought to mechanize the passions, and especially those of women. Maillardet’s adverts put love on sale:

If the Poet speaks truth that says Music has charms Who can view this Fair Object without Love’s alarms Yet beware ye fond Youths vain the Transports ye feel Those Smiles but deceive you, her Heart’s made of steel For tho’ pure as a Vestal her price may be found And who will may have her for Five Thousand Pounds.

The neat connection between passion, exoticism, mechanism and money permeated the showrooms. Since the 1760s, London designers, especially Merlin and his erstwhile employer James Cox, had built extraordinary automata for the East India Company’s China trade, opened shops in Canton where mandarins could acquire mechanical clocks, mobile elephants and automatic tigers, and thus oiled the wheels of the booming tea business. Maillardet and his partners joined in the market. But this lucrative eastern commerce languished, as after American independence and a huge reduction in the tea duty, the British entrepreneurs found it ever harder to balance imports of the precious leaf. Bengal opium and Indian cotton were now used to help pay for Chinese tea, and successive delegations to the Chinese imperial court failed to impose what they tended to see as rational economic relations. Cox’s firm went broke, and, while Weeks never quite managed to revive it, he ruthlessly exploited the appealing orientalist gloss it gave his Haymarket show. The word ‘factory’, it’s worth remembering, was used for Company store-houses in the Indies before it was used to described workshops back in Europe, and the automata shifted between both these worlds. According to Weeks’ advertisements for his machines, ‘these magnificent specimens which constitute almost all the labour of a long life, and were all executed by one individual, were originally intended as presents for the east, they have, indeed, all the gorgeous splendour, so admired there, and we can fancy the absorbing admiration they would create in the harems of eastern monarchs, where their indolent hours must be agreeably relieved by these splendid baubles, which however are so constructed as to combine in almost every instance some object of utility’. The slippery move between images of langorous oriental baubles and honest utilitarian labour defines the significantly ambiguous place the automata occupied in a metropolis equally impressed by the mechanical ingenuity, excess wealth and eroticised luxury which all marked its new world-wide imperium. This was an apt stage for automatic Turks, mechanical elephants, and clockwork women.

The silver dancer never went on show at Weeks’ Museum, but stayed neglected in an upstairs attic. Blocked from the Chinese trade, and failing to win London audiences, Weeks’ Museum closed and its nonagenarian owner died in 1834. By now, Babbage was an engineer and entrepreneur in his own right, the heir to a fortune of over £100,000 from his banker father. Throughout 1834 he was in the toils of a disastrous dispute with his master-machinist Joseph Clement, a fight which soon ended with the abandonment of the Difference Engine project. At the start of the year, he presciently commissioned two demonstration models of the Difference Engine from the instrument-maker Francis Watkins, who also supplied electromagnetic and mechanical equipment to the new Adelaide Gallery of Practical Science, an exhibition of newfangled steam guns, clockwork model steamboats and telegraphic devices, in the Lowther Arcade just off the Strand and round the corner from Weeks’ old showrooms. And in the midst of these machine plans and troubles, Babbage also took the time to visit Weeks’ auction and buy, for £35, the long-lost silver lady. He painstakingly restored the automaton and put her on a glass pedestal in his Marylebone salon in the room next to the unfinished portion of the first Difference Engine.

What was proper to a machinist’s storeroom was slightly risqu/ in the drawing room of a gentleman of science – the naked dancer needed a dress. Though he commissioned a new robe from local dressmakers, Babbage initially made do with a few strips of pink and green Chinese crepe, a turban, a wrap and ‘a pair of small pink satin slippers, on each of which I fixed a single silver spangle’. She was a hit, drew amused if slightly off-colour jokes from his visitors, and provided Babbage with the chance to teach a portentous moral about the decline of the industrial spirit in England. ‘A gay but by no means unintellectual crowd’ of English guests could all too easily be entertained by the dancer’s ‘fascinating and graceful movements’. Only sterner Dutch and American inquirers would bother to visit the Difference Engine next door. Babbage ever after used the divergence to teach his audience about the sinister contrast between foreign seriousness and domestic triviality, between the easy charms of the silver dancer and the demanding challenges of the calculating engine.

Babbage worked hard to make, then exploit, this distinction between catchpenny and serious machines. He expostulated noisily and persistently against music machines, organ-grinders and steam-engines and published a long pamphlet, Street Nuisances (1864), describing the persecution he’d suffered in his once peaceful Marylebone home: ‘the neighbourhood became changed: coffee-shops, beer-shops, and lodging houses filled the adjacent small streets. The character of the new population may be inferred from the taste they exhibit for the noisiest and most discordant music’. Eventually ‘Babbage’s Act’ against street music became law: ‘a grinder went away from before my house at the first word’, reported Babbage’s friend the London mathematics professor Augustus de Morgan. And the barrier between popular machines and scientific ones had more than merely the advantages of domestic tranquility. The story of the silver dancer was partly designed to help contrast the appeal of fashion with the demands of manufacture. In the midst of his tortuous negotiations of 1834 about funding a new Analytical Engine, Babbage told the Duke of Wellington that the switch from the older difference-based design to the new mechanism was not to be damned as modish novelty. ‘The fact of a new superseding an old machine in a very few years, is one of constant occurrence in our manufactories, and instances might be pointed out in which the advance of invention has been so rapid, and the demand for machinery so great, that half-finished machines have been thrown aside as useless before their completion’. This was scarcely likely to mollify a penny-pinching administration, but throughout Babbage’s career he felt it necessary to explain to what he saw as an irredeemably puerile public how to spot the difference between the engines which could make them rich and intelligent and those which deluded them into the gaudy fantasies of tricksy parlour-games and theatrical delights. The inquisitive polymath Sophia Frend, later de Morgan’s wife, recalled that most of the audience for Babbage’s engine ‘gazed at the working of this beautiful instrument with the sort of expression, and I dare say the sort of feeling, that some savages are said to have shown on first seeing a looking-glass or hearing a gun’.

The obscure objects of desire embodied in the automata were never self-evidently distinct from any of Babbage’s projects. For example, like the automata of Cox, Merlin and Weeks, the Difference Engine apparently was also an object of fascination to the Chinese, and one visitor from China asked Babbage whether it could be reduced to pocket-size. Babbage replied that ‘he might safely assure his friends in the celestial empire that it was in every sense of the word an out-of-pocket machine’. Indeed, in the later 1840s, when all his engine schemes had run into the sand, he cast about for new ways of raising money to revive them, including writing novels, but was dissuaded because he was told he’d surely lose money on fiction. One such entirely abortive scheme involved designing an automaton ‘to play a game of purely intellectual skill successfully’. This was at least partly an attempt to assert the very possibility of building an automatic games-player. Babbage knew, at least at second-hand, of just how seductive gambling could be – his close friend Ada Lovelace, Gibson and Sterling’s dark lady of the Epsom motor-races, lost more than £3000 on the horses during the later 1840s. ‘Making a book seems to me to be living on the brink of a precipice’, she was told by her raffish gambling associate Richard Ford in early 1851.

The Games Machine

Babbage’s attention turned to the prospects of a games machine. In a brief memorandum, he demonstrated that if an automaton made the right first move in a game of pure skill with a finite number of possible moves at each stage, the machine could always win. Such a device, he reckoned, must possess just those faculties of memory and foresight which he always claimed were the distinctive features of his Analytical Engine, the features which made it intelligent. So Babbage began to design an automaton which could win at noughts-and-crosses, planning to dress it up ‘with such attractive circumstances that a very popular and profitable exhibition might be produced’. All his memories of Merlin, Weeks and the Regency world of mechanical wonders came into play. As he reminisced in his 1864 autobiography, ‘I imagined that the machine might consist of the figures of two children playing against each other, accompanied by a lamb and a cock. That the child who won the game might clap his hands whilst the cock was crowing, after which, that the child who was beaten might cry and wring his hands whilst the lamb began bleating’.

But there was, of course, a hitch. One point of his games machine was to raise money for the more portentous Analytical Engine, and Babbage soon discovered that though ‘every mamma and some few pappas who heard of it would doubtless take their children to so singular and interesting a sight’, and though he could try putting three shows on at once, nevertheless the mid-Victorian public simply weren’t interested any more. ‘The most profitable exhibition which had occurred for many years’, Babbage moaned, ‘was that of the little dwarf, General Tom Thumb’, Phineas Barnum’s famous midget money-spinner, displayed in 1844 before gawping London audiences at the self-same Adelaide Gallery where a decade earlier the Difference Engine models, steam guns and electromagnetic engines had drawn large audiences. According to London journalists the Adelaide ‘with its chemical lectures and electrical machines’ had by the later 1840s ‘changed its guise, and in lieu of philosophical experiments we have the gay quadrille and the bewildering polka’. So however apparently distinct, the fate of the automata shows and the calculating engines was remarkably similar, as metropolitan fashion switched away from the machines that could simulate human motions and emotions to the high life where the genteel tried these activities out for themselves.

Ultimately, Babbage’s Difference Engine suffered more or less the same end as a whole range of Victorian automata, ending its days as a museum piece. In 1842, when the Government finally abandoned the project, Babbage told them it should be carefully preserved and ‘placed where the public can see it, for example, the British Museum’. In the event, in January 1843 it was put behind glass in the very middle of the new Museum at King’s College London, alongside a vast collection of memorabilia and eighteenth-century scientific instruments made for George III. For two decades, as Babbage bitterly remarked, ‘it is remarkable that during that long period no person should have studied its structure’. The Engine was briefly brought out for the London International Exhibition of 1862 and put in what Babbage called ‘a small hole, closed in and dark’, where scarcely anyone could see it and, so he reckoned, it would have needed about 800 square feet of wall space to lay out all the diagrams required to explain its principles. Such exhibitions were increasingly devoted not to machines but to their products, and rapidly became the Victorians’ favourite sites for display of mechanically-produced commodities. Babbage was told that he could have no more space for his calculating engines because of the room required for an appealing display of children’s toys. Once again, he reflected, the British had revealed themselves to be more interested in entertaining tricks than thoughtful engineering.

This dismal fate was scarcely the sole link between the machine shows and Babbage’s engines. There was an even more intriguing one, since all these devices neatly captured the puzzle of mechanical passion, of the possibility that artifices could think and feel. In his essay on the games machine, interpolated in a chapter of his autobiography entitled ‘The author’s further contributions to human knowledge’, Babbage made the point in his characteristically pithy way. He asked his friends ‘whether they thought it require human reason to play games of skill. The almost constant answer was in the affirmative. Some supported this view of the case by observing, that if it were otherwise, then an automaton could play such games’. Babbage set out to show that an automaton could do just this. For example, there would always be occasions when the automaton was faced with two equally good moves. Then Babbage would program it so that a random number could direct the machine’s decision between them. ‘An enquiring spectator who observed the games played by the automaton might watch a long time before he discovered the principle upon which it acted’. In combination with his celebrated principles of foresight and memory, this principle of random moves programmed in advance governed Babbage’s stories about machine intelligence.

From the 1830s, his favourite party-trick, for those who got bored watching the silver dancer, was to program his Difference Engine to print out a very long series of unchanging numbers and then suddenly switch to a new series. Was this not exactly like a miracle? he would ask his guests. In summer 1833 Ada and her mother, Lady Byron, the Princess of Parallelograms, saw the trick. Lady Byron described the encounter to William King, a rather conventionally pious Cantab she’d persuaded to act informally as mathematics teacher for Ada. ‘We both went to see the thinking machine (for so it seems). The Machine could go on counting regularly 1,2,3,4 & c – to 10,000 – and then pursue its calculation according to a new ratio. There was a sublimity in the views thus opened of the ultimate results of intellectual power’. The miraculous counting game was obviously a crowd pleaser, the implications of the machine’s discontinuous outputs were allegedly clear and radical, and at least one of Babbage’s guests, Charles Darwin, soon picked up the hint. Darwin saw that if apparently inexplicable discontinuities could really be the result of a system of mechanical laws laid down in advance, then here was a useful analogue of the way new species could emerge entirely through natural law. Indeed, for Babbage and his allies, this was turned into a definition of what made machines intelligent. They could foresee, they could remember, and they could switch their behaviour in ways which seemed random but were really determined.

And in the epoch of the new factory system and Chartist strikes, this was also just how economic journalists lauded the new machines of automatic industry. In his oleaginous work of industrial reportage, A Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire (1842), the free-trader William Cooke Taylor described a Manchester spinning-mule which ‘recedes and then returns so gracefully that I was almost going to say the effect was picturesque. I can assure you that the brightness of the machinery, which looks like steel, and the regularity of its motions, produce a tout ensemble which has a novel and striking effect. It seems to me that the machines can do everything but speak’. These machines had been developed in Lancashire, following strikes in the cotton factories, to give employers more control over the production process. Cooke Taylor piously observed that in these factories ‘the human agents work with all the exactness of machinery. So strange a combination of perfect despotism with perfect freedom never before existed, and to have produced such a state is one of the noblest triumphs of morality and intelligence’. There was no mistaking the moral that the intelligence belonged to the system, not the operatives. In his notoriously eulogistic Philosophy of Manufactures (1835), published little more than a decade after Mary Shelley’s novel, the Scottish science writer Andrew Ure lapsed significantly into the imagery of her Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus to describe the new spinning mule as ‘the Iron Man sprung out of the hands of our modern Prometheus at the bidding of Minerva – a creation destined to restore order among the industrious classes’.

So machine intelligence was a central theme of the politics of manufacture, just as it was being worked out in the London showrooms and Babbage’s workshops. In his long drawn out contests with the engineers of the Lambeth machine shops, the dominant theme was precisely the kind of intellectual property represented by the calculating engines and the skills required for their construction. Babbage might try to keep street-organs and noisy proles away from his door, but he wanted the calculating engines indissolubly linked with his property, and even tried shifting the whole engine works from Lambeth to his own back yard. He told Wellington in 1834 that his ownership of the engines was complete, ‘for they are the absolute creations of my own mind’. But it had been a tradition of the machinists that all their tools belonged to the workmen, not the customers or masters, and it was thus an extremely sensitive issue as to which aspects of the calculating engines’ enterprise counted as tools, and which as finished work. It was not at all obvious to a master-machinist like Joseph Clement, the designer of remarkable new planing machines and facing lathes, that Babbage’s mind was the unique source of these engines’ value. The intelligence they embodied, therefore, was a prize contested by engineers, designers, proprietors and financiers, and intelligence’s place was a major aspect of the political geography of the industrial system.

Babbage’s most successful publication of the 1830s, a thorough survey of this geography, charted in great detail the ways in which mechanization automated the production process and insisted that the division of labour could be applied to mental just as much as to mechanical operations. Copying machines were one of his principal themes, and he explained them by describing such automata as the Prosopographus and the Corinthian Maid, machines shown in the Strand in the early 1830s which could apparently copy the likeness of any sitter. Babbage explained that such shows really relied on a concealed camera lucida where a backstage assistant using a pentagraph linked to the automaton’s own hand could quickly produce a reasonably accurate portrait of the customer. Here intelligence turned out to be the result of concealed skill in alliance with ingenious mechanization. In all these places, indeed, the puzzle of thinking engines was wrapped up with the problem of selective vision. Cooke Taylor aestheticized the cotton factory so that its intelligence seemed vested in the machinery, not the labour force. Ure saw the machines as the immediate intellectual offspring of the manufacturers, just as his idol Charles Babbage claimed that the Difference Engine was the unique product of his own mind. Clement saw his own workshop as a place of intelligent skill and so refused to move his workmen and their tools to Marylebone, where they would be under Babbage’s immediate gaze. There Babbage’s calculating engines looked miraculously prescient because of his party-goers’ ignorance of their original programs. And, inevitably, the point of the West End automata was to mimic the actions of mind by concealing the springs of their artful design. To see such devices as intelligent, it was necessary to ignore, or conceal, or divert one’s gaze from, the machinations which drove them and the human skill on which they all depended.

Babbage’s dancer was never just a gaudy trick. She was rather an alluring emblem of the aestheticized gaze of the impresarios of intelligence. The attribution of intelligence and reason to any machine depended on the perspective of the machine’s audience, and on the visibility of the labour on which its performance relied. Babbage’s friends told him that to play a game of skill needed human reason and so denied any automaton could do it unaided. They would always suspect that any automaton which could apparently play chess must somehow be accompanied by a rational human temporarily hidden from view. Babbage and his critics both had one spectacular and timely precedent, a notorious automaton chess-player, first shown in London in 1783-4 on Savile Row, and then again from 1818 at the showroom in Spring Gardens, where the charming Musical Lady also found her home. This chess-player was built at the end of the 1760s by an aristocratic Slovak engineer, Wolfgang von Kempelen, as an entertainment for Maria Theresa, and its subsequent career took it from central European court society to the more vulgar milieux of French and English showrooms.

Von Kempelen himself never took the device very seriously, and frankly confessed it relied on a blatant trick. He temporarily dismantled it in 1773. Before then, guests at his house in Bratislava, just downriver from the Habsburg capital, were shown upstairs through his workshop, stocked with tools and unfinished projects for steam engines, perpetual clocks, and especially his favoured scheme for a speaking machine, into his study, decorated with antiques, curiosities and prints. There, in the middle of the room, stood a large cabinet running on castors, and behind it an impressive full-scale model of a seated Turk smoking a pipe. On top of the cabinet was screwed a chessboard, the object of the Turk’s fixed attention. Von Kempelen would open both the front and the back of the cabinet, revealing an extraordinarily complex array of gearwheels, barrels and pulleys. The custom was to shine a candle into the cabinet to show that nothing could possibly be hidden, and the Turk’s torso and legs would also be stripped bare. Inanimate Reason (1784), the significantly-titled publicity sheet for von Kempelen’s machine, reported that ‘you see at one and the same time, the naked Automaton, with his garments tucked up, the drawer and all the doors of the cupboard open’. Then, after von Kempelen had wound up the automaton, giving it enough power to run for about a dozen moves, the games would begin, the Turk gracefully moving pieces with his left hand, nodding his head when giving check, tapping the table and replacing any piece if a false move was made by his opponent, and bowing to the spectators when the game ended, almost always with the Turk’s triumphant victory. The ritual of open display and brilliant chess never varied. ‘Never before did any mere mechanical figure unite the power of moving itself in different directions as circumstances unforeseen and depending on the will of any person present might require’, and nowhere else in Europe did the relation between intelligence, mechanism and concealment become such a matter of public interest.

The Mechanical Turk

Innumerable pamphlets followed the Turk’s progress across Europe to London in the mid-1780s, where, having already been used in Vienna to bemuse aristocratic visitors to the Imperial court, and in Paris to contest the mastery of the chess wizards at the Café de la Régence, it now rivalled the shows of Merlin and Maillardet in Mayfair. The Turk’s arrival in western Europe coincided precisely with that of another Viennese guru, Franz Mesmer – while von Kempelen had the ability to build an automaton which displayeé human intelligence, mesmeric s/ances seemed able to reduce the most rational humans to the condition of automata. Indeed, von Kempelen seems first to have built the Turk to distract attention from Viennese interest in the phenomena of animal magnetism. Enlightened philosophers drew the appropriately arrogant moral: ‘these days’, claimed a gossipy German periodical in 1783, ‘physics, chemistry and mechanics have produced more miracles than those believed through fanaticism and superstition in the ages of ignorance and barbarism’. Others simply reckoned that von Kempelen must be dealing with the devil. Like Mesmer, however, the Turk was also the target of committed exposés. ‘The machine cannot produce such a multitude of different movements, whose direction couldn’t be foreseen in advance, without being subject to the continual influence of an intelligent being’. Some London commentators immediately alleged the automaton contained a child, or a dwarf, inside the box, without ever quite managing to explain where the diminutive prodigy lay hidden, nor did the hostile stories which appeared in such profusion yet damage the enthusiasm of the automaton’s public.

On von Kempelen’s death in 1804, the Turk was soon bought by a brilliant Viennese musical engineer, Johann Maelzel, court mechanician for the Habsburgs and a close ally of one of their favoured composers, Beethoven. Maelzel swiftly saw the patronage he could win by trading on von Kempelen’s automaton, and the Turk became a temporary habitué of the new Napoleonic courts in Germany. E. T. A. Hoffmann, a fellow musician, found the figure of a mechanical Turk a suitably exotic subject for his pen, and in 1814 sent a Leipzig musical magazine a story entitled The Automata, in which he ‘took the opportunity to express myself on everything that is called an automaton’, teasingly hinting that the Turk might work by setting up a musical harmony with the mind of its audience. Hoffman used his story to debate the most up-to-date views of occultist German philosophies of nature, much devoted to the inner rhythms of human mental life, then turned his attention to the equally modish attempts to mechanize musical composition. Meanwhile, Maelzel threw himself into another lucrative mechanical project for regulating musical performance with a device he baptized the ‘metronome’. The metronome was, of course, a rather more potent means of mechanizing and standardizing artistic creativity than any mere chess-player would ever be: ‘an universal standard measure for musical time is thus obtained’, chorused the musical journalists, ‘and its correctness may be proved at all times by comparison with a stopwatch’. After furious patent suits with rival inventors, and complex negotiations with Beethoven, Maelzel established himself as the monopoly distributor of these newfangled musical timekeepers, re-purchased the Turk from the Bavarian court, and then, in 1818, set off on a marketing and publicity tour of Paris and London.

Maelzel’s London show was very carefully staged. In autumn 1818 at Spring Gardens, in a pair of candlelit drawing rooms equipped with sloping benches, he displayed the Turk alongside a fine mechanical trumpeter, and when he soon moved round the corner to a larger chamber in St James’ Street he added a moving diorama of the burning of Moscow, ‘in which Mr Maelzel has endeavoured to combine the Arts of design, mechanism and music so as to produce by a novel imitation of Nature a perfect facsimile of the real scene’, and a set of automatic rope dancers, ‘scarcely to be distinguished from those of a living performer’, moving ‘with the utmost and correctness without any apparent Machinery’. Maelzel also helped realize his metronomic dream of a completely automatic orchestra, the Panharmonicon of 42 mechanized musicians, for which Beethoven had specially composed his ghastly Battle Symphony, a composition rather likely to appeal to jingoistic British audiences. One London paper praised such an orchestra which ‘displayed none of the airs of inflated genius, but readily submitted to being wound up’.

The wind-up Turk, of course, occupied pride of place amidst these other wonders. Maelzel faithfully followed von Kempelen’s recipe, imitating precisely the ritual opening of the cabinet front then back, moving a candle round the interior, and winding up the mechanism at regular intervals. And his metropolitan audience faithfully reproduced their earlier enthusiasm for the show. Ever considerate to this public, Maelzel even announced that the Automaton would purposely make bad moves so as deliberately to lose if the company seemed bored with over-lengthy games, while the Turk’s opponents were ordered to move as fast as possible to alleviate the tedium. A pamphlet authored by a pseudonymous Oxford graduate alleged the whole trick relied on a hidden piece of wire or catgut: ‘it seems to be a thing absolutely impossible’, the Oxonian alleged, ‘that any piece of mechanism should be invented which possessing perfect mechanical motion should appear to exert the intelligence of a reasoning agent’. Unmoved by this futile revelation, during the summers of 1819 and 1820, when the London ‘season’ ended, Maelzel took his show to the provinces and to Scotland, with apparently equal success. Back in St James’ at the end of 1820, however, his nemesis was ready at last.

Robert Willis was an ingenious young Londoner, heir to a distinguished medical family – his father famously attended George III during the monarch’s madness. In later life Willis himself became, like Babbage, a pre-eminent Cambridge mathematician, then distinguished professor of applied mechanics and untiring surveyor of ecclesiastical architecture. He also produced one of the best mechanical analyses of the principles of speaking machines, including those von Kempelen had tried to build. During 1819, still a teenager, he patented a new mechanism for harp pedals and toured all the major instrument-shops, including high-class machinists such as Holtzapffel and Bramah, and John Newman’s works, supplier of equipment to many of the best scientific lecturers in the city. Early in the year he noticed a telling advert placed in the London papers by one ‘Monsieur Novoski’ of Knightsbridge Post Office, who offered to sell the secret of the chess-player for 2000 guineas. Willis took up the challenge at once. He bought copies of the games the Turk had played and won. He made sure to visit Maelzel’s show while it occupied the cramped space of Spring Gardens, ‘more favourable to examination as I was enabled at different times to press close up to the figure while it was playing’. Then he smuggled an umbrella into the room so as to measure ‘with great accuracy’ all the dimensions of the Turk’s celebrated cabinet. He went back to St James’ for the 1820 season, and by the autumn had completed an obsessively detailed analysis of just how the ‘automaton’ really worked.

Willis’ accurate umbrella and his command of wheel-work made all the difference. The chest, he demonstrated, was much larger than it seemed, giving more than enough room for a fully grown (and doubtless experienced) human chess player to fit inside. ‘Instead of referring to little dwarfs, semi-transparent chess boards, magnetism, or supposing the possibility of the exhibitor’s guiding the automaton by means of a wire or piece of catgut so small as not to be perceived by the spectators’, Willis’ Attempt to Analyze the Automaton Chess Player, finished in December 1820, proffered the simplest possible scheme of the Turk’s hidden intelligence. The noisy gear-wheels were there simply so that their sound would conceal any noise made by the concealed player. Even more influentially, he ponderously laid down the law of mechanism’s limits: ‘the movements which spring from it are necessarily limited and uniform, it cannot usurp and exercise the faculties of the human mind, it cannot be made to vary its operations so as to meet the ever-varying circumstances of a game of chess. This is the province of intellect alone’. Despite the care with which he drew the dramatic plates for his pamphlet, there was still some continuing debate about Willis’ story: for example, while he reckoned the hidden chessplayer put his arm inside that of the Turk, more reflective analysts guessed that the machine must use the kind of pentagraph which Babbage described in the case of drawing automata. These debates received their fullest publicity in the best-selling Letters on Natural Magic (1832) by the Edinburgh optical expert David Brewster. Maelzel himself left London, tried to sell the Turk in Paris, then went to the United States in 1825. Willis’ pamphlet was frequently reproduced there by newspapers eager to exploit public interest in the automaton. After Maelzel’s show had stunned Richmond and Baltimore, the local writer Edgar Allan Poe lifted Willis’s report directly from Brewster, brazenly passed it off as his own brilliant detective job in the Southern Literary Messenger (1836), then used it as a precedent for a whole series of rather more original, and certainly better-known, stories about the application of analysis to cunning mysteries, whether purloined letters or concealed bodies. Poe never forgot von Kempelen, nor his deceit, for in the midst of the California goldrush Poe teasingly announced that a New Yorker of that name, doubtless connected with the Slovak engineer, had discovered how to transmute lead into precious metal. If the Turk’s progenitor had this shadowy afterlife, its promoter Maelzel never came back to Europe – he died on board ship off Cuba in 1838 – and nor did the Turk, who went up in flames in Philadelphia scarcely fifteen years later.

Moralists found the story of the chess automaton irresistible. The pious drew the obvious implication that if a genius like von Kempelen had not been able to build a rational machine, what must be the skill of the divine Creator who had pulled off this trick? Others sang the praises of the Turk’s hidden managers, now revealed as William Lewis and Jacques Mouret, who’d played chess so well and under such apparently overwhelming disadvantages in Britain between 1818 and 1820. George Walker of the Westminster Chess Club, writing in Fraser’s Magazine in 1839, mourned Mouret’s ‘beautiful emanations of genius’ when the Frenchman ‘burnt out his brain with brandy’ and died in Paris ‘reduced to the extremest stage of misery and degradation’. It was a commonplace that such machines belonged at court, whether in the Orient of the Arabian Nights or the grandiose palaces of the Tzars. ‘To the half-bred savages of the north’, Walker sneered, ‘the exhibition could not fail to be striking’. Novels and reviews told how the Turk had conned the powerful and humbled the great: ‘even Bonaparte, who made automata of Kings and Princes at his will, was foiled in an encounter with the automaton chess player’. Later in the century, a successful French play put the Turk on stage in a victorious contest with Catherine the Great. It was rather the point, so populist writers explained, that self-styled experts, the politically powerful, and the superstitious mob, could all be deceived by a mechanism effortlessly unmasked in public prints directed at a new and confidently rational readership. ‘Had the gulled mob reasoned on the matter earlier’, Walker noted in dangerously republican terms, ‘King Automaton would have been speedily deposed from his high places’.

But the most telling lesson of the Turkish chess-player was the relationship between machine intelligence, technological progress and the puzzles of concealment. This was a moment when, as the Automaton’s admirers never hesitated to remark, ‘political economists amuse themselves and the public with the nicely-balanced powers of man as a propagating and eating animal and philosophers and divines often assure us that he is, in other and higher respects, but a machine of a superior description’. Correspondents from the London chess clubs predicted that ‘a man inside will most assuredly never again work the charm, but, advanced as science is during the present generation, a Brunel or a Stephenson could easily and successfully vary the deception’. And in the 1830s one economic journalist, describing the rapid growth and progress of automation in the Lancashire cotton industry, told the apocryphal story of the invention of the power loom, half-a-century earlier, by Edmund Cartwright. Cartwright had allegedly seen the Turk in London, trusted its purely mechanical origin, and thus been thoroughly convinced that a weaving machine could scarcely be harder to make than one which could play chess so well. Rather similar stories appeared in Poe’s favourite source, Brewster’s Natural Magic, which was dedicated to Brewster’s close friend Walter Scott and entirely devoted to teaching his fellow-citizens the inner secrets on which all apparently miraculous and surprising mechanical devices really depended. Part of the point was characteristically Presbyterian: gaudy tricks conned the ignorant into idolatry. Part, however, was economic. In his chapter on automata, Brewster devoted pages to von Kempelen’s chess player, summarised the other notorious stage-shows of the age, then moved straight to Babbage’s calculating engines themselves. ‘Those mechanical wonders which in one century enriched only the conjurer who used them, contributed in another to augment the wealth of the nation. Those automatic toys’, he concluded, ‘which once amused the vulgar, are now employed in extending the power and promoting the civilization of our species’. Apparently theatrical automata really had inspired the industrial revolution.

Surrounded by stories which made the intimate link between the plausibility of mechanizing intelligence and the reality of automatic manufacture, it was scarcely surprising that Babbage’s new calculating engines, first seriously proposed to the new Astronomical Society in 1820 and first publicized in a pamphlet of summer 1822, should raise in such a lurid way the puzzles of mechanical intelligence which the Turk had just dramatised. It was also rather predictable that his reflexions on the intelligence of calculating machines should eventually culminate in a detailed analysis of whether chess could be reduced to a program and an engine whose inner workings would be completely hidden from view behind a gaudy exterior. In his public letter to the President of the Royal Society, Humphry Davy, written barely eighteen months after Willis’ pamphlet on the chess automaton, Babbage conceded that his own plans for a machine to ‘substitute for one of the lowest operations of human intellect’ might ‘perhaps be viewed as something more than Utopian, and that the philosophers of Laputa may be called up to dispute my claim to originality’. He was, as usual, absolutely right.

The Chinese Room

Babbage and his collaborators never found it very easy to teach their audiences just where the intelligence of the calculating engines really was. This became even more true when the Analytical Engine was launched in the 1830s. At the end of 1837, Babbage composed a long memoir on its powers, noting that ‘in substituting mechanism for the performance of operations hitherto executed by intellectual labour, the analogy between these acts and the operations of mind almost forced upon me the figurative employment of the same terms’. Phrases like ‘the engine knows’, he confessed, were simply irresistible even though they might be misleading. And the lengthy Sketch of the Analytical Engine, a joint effort of the early 1840s by Ada Lovelace and Babbage’s Piedmontese admirer, the mathematician Luigi Menabrea, urged that ‘it is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine’. It was a slave which could only follow what it was ordered to do, could originate nothing, was not, in fact ‘a thinking being, but simply an automaton which acts according to the laws imposed upon it’.

But there were real dangers in the apparently innocent word ‘automaton’. Ada Lovelace, who in 1843 called herself ‘the High Priestess of Babbage’s Engine’, famously explained how it worked by comparing it with the best-known programmable machine of the automatic weaving system, the Jacquard Loom, a device whose introduction had almost completely destroyed the jobs of silk-weavers in London’s East End. ‘We may say most aptly’, she noted in the Sketch, ‘that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard Loom weaves flowers and leaves’. Lovelace never raised the problem of the substitution of weavers’ intelligence by a series of automatic program cards nor the consequent sufferings of London’s skilled unemployed. Instead, she directed her polite readers to the Adelaide Gallery, where they would see the Loom at work. But such galleries were scarcely likely to resolve the problem of exactly whether the engines could think. In fact, just as in Babbage’s reception rooms the Silver Dancer and the Difference Engine stood next door to each other, so at the Adelaide Gallery the Jacquard Loom ‘in daily operation’ stood in the next room to a splendidly automatic Chinese juggler. It was exactly in such places that the distinction between entertaining automata and rational engines was all too easily effaced, and it was there, too, that all the puzzles of mechanized intelligence were graphically put on show.

There is a tempting contemporary resonance to these stories of dancers, Turks, chess and calculating engines. The currently canonical way of telling whether a machine is intelligent explicitly involves deceiving an audience in a manner all too reminiscent of Maelzel’s shows at Spring Gardens. The so-called Turing test requires the construction of a hidden device which can produce outputs capable of convincing human judges that it is one of them. Alan Turing, brilliant Cambridge-trained mathematician and veteran of the secret wartime campaign to crack the German Enigma code, was a keen reader of Babbage and Lovelace and much concerned with the problems of automating chess. ‘One can produce paper machines for playing chess’, Turing wrote in 1948, ‘playing against such a machine gives a definite feeling that one is pitting one’s wits against something alive’. In 1950, after a debate at Manchester University on the possibility of making intelligent machines, he wrote a paper proposing what he called an ‘imitation game’, in which a man and a machine would both feed typed answers to a judge concealed in a different room. Turing’s own life was soon destroyed by homophobic persecution, so it is intriguing that his first version of the imitation game involved judging which of two invisible respondents was a man, which a woman. In the later test of human and machine, if the judge could not tell which was the man, then the computer would pass the intelligence test. Turing’s 1950 paper explicitly discussed Lovelace’s ideas about whether the Analytical Engine could be truly intelligent, while in an earlier version he proposed, like Babbage, programming random elements into the computer so as to increase its capacity for innovative intelligence. Turing over-optimistically predicted that by our century’s end computers should have developed so much that they would win a five-minute game at least 3 times in 10, and public computer competitions, funded by a manufacturer of portable disco dance floors and directed by a behaviourist psychologist, are run nowadays in California on exactly the lines Turing set out.

The Turing test is about concealment and detection. Its appeal hinges on the place where intelligence is to be found inside a space to which access is forbidden. In a celebrated paper published in 1980, the philosopher John Searle argued against the conventional interpretation of the Turing test. He proposed a device of which von Kempelen would have been proud, a ‘Chinese room’ occupied by a human being completely devoid of intelligence about Chinese but supplied with a set of symbols and rules which would allow response to inquiries from outside the room. Searle envisaged that such a system might pass the Turing test by being indistinguishable from native Chinese speakers to anyone outside. But neither necessary nor sufficient conditions could be given for attributing intelligence to such a system. In response to the suggestion that while the room’s occupant might not possess intelligence about Chinese, yet the entire system might be said to do so, Searle countered that the enterprise of artificial intelligence ‘must be able to distinguish the principles on which the mind works from those on which non-mental systems work’, and to judge that a system is intelligent just because of its imputs and outputs would force us to attribute intelligence to a wide range of non-mental systems. The parable of the Chinese room dramatises the spatial mode of such debates, by insisting on a definition of the place where intelligence might be said to reside.

Here the geography of intelligence is not simply a matter of mundane showmanship, but also relies on the exoticism of distance and the esotericism of concealment. In many western myths of mechanical intelligence, with Chinese or Japanese, Turks or Nazis as their protagonists, aliens are automata, mindless subjects of tyranny; they build automata, because they possess fiendish cunning; and they conceal what they have done, because they desire to master us. In the world of Babbage’s Dancer, mechanical imitation seemed most at home in oriental climes of which rather little was supposed to be known and almost anything might be credited. In Turing’s world, as his brilliant biographer Andrew Hodges points out, intelligence meant secretive messages passed within a guarded coterie and the cryptanalysis of enemy codes as least as much as computers’ capacity to imitate human beings. At the end of Gibson and Sterling’s fantasy, the cunning orientals would inherit the Earth by mastering machine programming and British engines fail through dark conspiracies. There is, perhaps, a long-term political and aesthetic relationship between intelligent automata, orientalism and the covert. The tale of the automata and their impresarios confirms that the places whence machines come, where machines are put on show and the places within machine-systems where intelligence is supposed to reside raised, and still raise, delicate political and philosophical issues.

Most of these issues hinge on the problem of work and its visibility. Babbage never reconciled himself to the workforce on which he relied; von Kempelen exploited preconceptions about the role of skill; Turing explicitly ruled out any computational task which required the use of a body. Much is made of the collaborative work required from human beings to make their machines look expert and intelligent in a recent book by the sociologist Harry Collins, Artificial Experts (1990). ‘One of the reasons we tend to think a calculator can do arithmetic’, Collins suggests, ‘is the natural way we help it out and rectify its deficiencies without noticing. All the abilities we bring to the calculation – everything that surrounds what the calculator does itself are so widespread and familiar that they have disappeared for us’. This is the point of the tale of the Dancer and the Difference Engine. The intelligence attributed to machines hinges on the cultural invisibility of the human skills which accompany them. In Babbage’s devices, the skills which surrounded automatic mechanization were systematically rendered invisible. Then and only then might any machines seem intelligent. The moral about the politics and geography of serious trickery is certainly worth remembering. If such machines look intelligent because we do not concentrate on where their work is done, then we need to think harder about the work which produces values and who performs it.

Suggestions for further reading:

Richard Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1978)

C.M.Carroll, The Great Chess Automaton (New York: Dover Books, 1975)

Alfred Chapuis and Edmond Droz, Automata (London: Batsford, 1958)

H.M.Collins, Artificial Experts: Social Knowledge and Intelligent Machines (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1990)

Anne French, John Joseph Merlin: the Ingenious Mechanick (London: Greater London Council, 1985)

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine (London: Victor Gollancz, 1990)

Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: the Enigma (London: Hutchinson, 1983)

Anthony Hyman, Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)

The Changing Balance of Interests

The laws protecting intellectual property rights (IPRs) will play a key role in shaping the economy of the information superhighway, or the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) as it is now called in international circles. Although the technologies themselves are protected by patent rights, it is the details of copyright law that will structure the market.

According to legal theory in the USA, copyright was granted to serve the welfare of the public by promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. But in continental Europe, on the other hand, the author’s right was granted to protect the intrinsic human right of the individual author in works which he or she had created. In the final analysis however, the laws of copyright are not natural laws, but laws made by governments, at the national, the European and the international level. The same will hold true for the laws regulating traffic down the Information Superhighway.

In both legal philosophies, the law has traditionally balanced the interests of authors, investors and the public. But that balance is changing as the author’s right tradition of civil law countries is merged with the copyright tradition of common law countries. Both at the international level and in the European Union, harmonisation has been achieved by raising the minimum levels of national protection and by limiting the rights of natural authors.

Today, legal persons are increasingly recognised as authors. Neighbouring rights are almost as extensively protected as authors rights; and copyright now protects computer software and electronic databases, neither of which are truly in the literary or artistic domain. In addition, the term of protection has been extended far beyond that necessary to encourage science or the useful arts; and many works which were in the public domain have now been brought back into the marketplace, by giving them, like Lazarus, a new lease of life.

In some countries, employers own the rights of their employees, while in others, investors can require authors to waive their moral rights. Elsewhere, the provisions in the Berne Convention which guarantee freedom of information and encourage learning are being restrictively interpreted. Finally, the TRIPS Agreement requires GATS signatory states to augment civil sanctions for breach of copyright with criminal penalties.

Within the European Union the situation is even more complicated. In intra-Community trade, the provisions of the Treaty of Rome take precedence over those of the multilateral conventions. Each Member State must therefore afford equal protection to nationals of all other Member States in the European Union and European Economic Area, although once a work has been offered for sale on the European market, the right of authorisation in other Member States is exhausted. This does not apply however, if the work is performed, broadcast or communicated to the public. Finally, the exercise of copyright within the Union may also constitute a breach of competition policy, such as the abuse of a dominant position.

As a result, the simple humanist certainties of the theory of the author’s right have been twisted and deformed, almost beyond recognition; and the pragmatic policies of the original proponents of copyright have been highjacked by investors to afford themselves protection far beyond that necessary to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. The precedence given by the European Union to competition law, over the manner in which copyrights are exercised, may eliminate some of the most gross abuses by rights holders of their monopoly powers over protected works, but competition law is an insufficient guarantee of public welfare. As yet, there has been inadequate consideration at the European level of the impact of these changes on the public’s right to receive information and ideas, which is guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights; or on the needs of educators. Furthermore, it is unlikely that when the new intellectual property regime is agreed for the GII, the whole world will accept the supremacy of European competition law. It will therefore be necessary to return to fundamental principles when designing the new regime. Unfortunately this will not be easy, as many of the rules are already in place.

The Issues for the GII

In designing an IPR regime for the GII, the international community has to address two major challenges simultaneously. The first is conceptual, the second is administrative. At the heart of the intellectual challenge is the digital nature of the signals transmitted. This means that signals can exist in atom-sized packets, they can be transformed electronically, they can be copied without loss of quality and they, or the copies, can travel with the speed of light.

The ease with which a copy of a digital work can be copied, or transformed and the speed with which copies of digital works can be moved around the globe also poses administrative challenges. If a consumer acquires a copy of a work, is there any guarantee that it is authentic? Furthermore, if a deformed copy was supplied, or if an illegal copy was made, in which jurisdiction did the offence take place, and in which jurisdiction must any suit for infringement be brought? Finally, even if the international community can reach an agreement as to the appropriate jurisdiction in which an aggrieved consumer should bring a suit for the supply of deformed copies, or an aggrieved right holder should sue for illegal copying, the ease and speed with which works and their copies can travel between jurisdictions will mean that the minimum standards of protection become the de facto maximum standards of protection.

Paradoxically however, I believe that if the international community addresses these intellectual challenges with foresight and imagination they can be overcome. But in order to do so, old thinking and old structures will have to be replaced by new structures. Essentially there are five key issues. They are:

(a) the international dimension of the GII;
(b) the subject matter of protection;
(c) the appropriate right for protected works;
(d) the authenticity of the work; and
(e) the problem of enforcement.

One of the potentially most exciting aspects of the International Superhighway is its international reach. But it is precisely this international reach that may cause problems for the protection of intellectual property rights. If the international community persists with the traditional approach of setting down minimum standards of protection for national laws, there is a grave danger that a two tier system will be established for the GII. On the one hand, there will be an international structure, like the present internet, where there will effectively be no protection of IPRs. On the other hand, there will be a series of national superhighways down which protected works may travel, protected by the copyright law of the country concerned. Even if international links between national superhighways were established by bilateral treaties, it would still be necessary to decide in which jurisdiction any alleged offence occurred. If the European Union were to agree to such an approach, the opportunity of constructing a genuine European superhighway would be lost.

An alternative approach, would be to establish a new international law which protected all intellectual property rights on the GII. All member states would then compel their telecommunication operators to require all subscribers to obey these laws. The same law would then apply over all the GII. I submit that the new law should be distinct from, but related to the provisions set out in the Berne and the Rome Conventions. Furthermore, just as the protection afforded by the Rome Convention leaves intact and in way affects the protection afforded to literary and artistic works, so the new law should not affect the protection afforded by either the Berne or the Rome Conventions. I shall turn first to the protection afforded by these conventions.

The Subject Matter of Protection

Article 2(1) of the Berne Convention has a dual structure. It provides that:

“The expression ‘literary and artistic works’ shall include every production in the literary artistic and scientific domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression, such as …”

There then follows a long list of forms of works. In effect the list of different forms of expression, such as books, pamphlets and other writings, dramatic or dramatico-musical works, cinematographic works etc., constitutes a mandatory minimum requirement for signatory states. But in addition, many states have granted more extensive protection within their territory to other pseudo-literary works, such as compilations, which are not universally protected.

The TRIPS agreement also requires the protection of computer programs as literary works and the protection of databases if the way in which the data is selected or arranged constitutes an intellectual creation. In this, the TRIPS agreement echoes article 2(5) of the Berne Convention, which requires signatory states to afford protection to collections of literary and artistic works (but not data) “which by reason of the selection and arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual creations.” However, the TRIPS Agreement does not protect the data and any other material the database may contain, although in some states they may enjoy protection per se. As a result, negotiations are currently under way to establish a Protocol to the Berne Convention which, among other things, would afford protection to computer programs and to databases which constituted intellectual creations by reason of the selection, coordination or arrangement of data or other material. However some countries, notably the USA, also want to protect compilations of data or unprotected materials as literary or artistic works. Even though the US Supreme Court has already required originality in the selection and arrangement of materials in order to justify the protection of compilations, the US Government is still concerned “that many factually-oriented databases may be denied copyright protection or that courts may determine infringement in ways that severely limit the scope of copyright protection for databases.” But at the present time, it therefore seems unlikely that the international community will accept the suggestion of the United states to protect collections of data or other unprotected materials as literary or artistic works.

One of the key difficulties for the international community is to agree a standard of originality. In general, the Anglo-American or common law system requires a relatively low level of originality for protection, whereas in continental countries, the civil-law system requires a relatively high level of originality. In some countries, database owners may also call on unfair competition laws to defend their interests. The solution of the European Union has been to propose a sui generis right of unfair extraction, although individual Member States still have different unfair competition laws.

This caution by the international community in extending the subject matter of protection is wise. For the advent of digitisation means that it is necessary for the international community to draw a clear distinction between protected works and unprotected information. Because information can be digitised, it does not follow that it should be protected. Conversely, even if a protected work, such as a cinematograph film, can be stored or transmitted in digital form, it is more than mere information, and should continue to be protected. But in establishing the GII, there will need to be international agreement as to which packets of digitised information are protected and which are not. Under the present system, the answer varies according to the details of the national jurisdiction under which protection is claimed.

The extent of protection may involve the interplay of at least three elements in a national law, none of which are precisely defined in the Berne Convention. They are the subject matter protected, the level of originality and the protection afforded by unfair competition law. There are thus essentially two options for the international community when it establishes the GII. The first is to continue with the present system. If so, the GII will be regulated by linked national jurisdictions, and thus as a series of linked national networks, analogous to the system developed for terrestrial goods and services. The second would be to establish a new international regime for the GII which would address its specific problems by putting in place new internationally agreed definitions of the subject matter to be protected, the level of originality demanded for protection and the nature of unfair competition in the supply and consumption of digitized works. The simplest way to achieve this would be to establish a separate international jurisdiction to protect IPRs on the GII, above and beyond national jurisdictions. If the international community were unable to agree on this, the European Union could establish its own autonomous European regime.

The increasing ease with which digitised works can be distributed has led to renewed pressure for the introduction of a distribution right. The proposal for a distribution right was rejected by the Stockholm Conference in 1967. At that time, the view was that a right of distribution followed from the reproduction right, and it was therefore unnecessary to specify it separately. Furthermore, in many countries the right was deemed to be exhausted after the first sale of the work. The current proposal is to include a general distribution right in the Protocol to the Berne Convention which would be restricted to the distribution of physical and tangible copies.

As for digital transmissions, when the work is transmitted in non-tangible form, there are currently two proposals at the international level. The first would be to interpret extensively the current provision for a right to communicate a work to the public. The point at issue here is that the right to communicate the work to the public has traditionally been thought to be the right to communicate the work to many members of the public simultaneously, as for example in a cable system. But other countries consider that this right covers the right to communicate the work on a one-to-one basis. By applying this right in conjunction with the right of reproduction, and possibly the right of distribution, the right owner could prevent illegal copying at the recipient end of the network.

The other possible approach would be to extend the right of distribution to include digital transmissions. Either way, as the Committee of Experts on a Possible Protocol to the Berne Convention has already recognised, it would be necessary for there to be international agreement on the appropriate norms.

A key difference between these two approaches is that the digitised distribution right for the work would be a new right, whereas the right to communicate the work to the public is an old right. This difference will be crucial in establishing the transitional arrangements from the old regime to the new regime. The policy issue at stake here is which will better promote the progress of science and the useful arts, the extensive re-interpretation of an old right or the introduction of a new right? If the international community extensively re-interprets the right to communicate the work to the public as a de facto digital distribution right, then the effect will simply be to create a new market for old works, not to encourage new investment for a new market. If the international community adopts this approach it will be the old rights owners, who already dominate the old markets, who will be the principal beneficiaries. But if a digitised distribution right is adopted however, it will be a new right. This would permit the right to be restricted to new works. If the international community wishes to encourage investment for new works on the GII, it would seem sensible not to extend the new right to old works, but to restrict it to works which are published after it has been introduced, thus encouraging new investment for the GII. Regrettably however, the European Union has already taken the opposite view. The Rental Right Directive awards a distribution right to all works which were still protected on 1 July 1994. This is simply creating a new market for old works, and new revenues for old rights holders.

A particular variant of the distribution right is the rental right. In the TRIPS agreement, authors of computer programs, cinematograph works and phonogram producers were granted a right to prohibit the commercial rental of their works. States need not provide a rental right for cinematograph works however, unless rental practices have led to “widespread copying of such works which is materially impairing the exclusive right of reproduction.”

The current proposals for a Protocol to the Berne Convention go further. They propose to introduce a rental right, not merely for audiovisual works, phonograms and computer programs, but also for any other literary or artistic work, such as writings, graphic works or databases, when the copy is in a digital format. The European Union has already gone even further by awarding a rental right to all authors, except those of buildings and applied art. Like the digital distribution right, the rental right would be a new right and if the international community has a genuine desire to encourage the production of new works on the GII, it would seem unwise to extend the right to already published works. As with the distribution right however, the European Union has already adopted the opposite approach.

Linked to the general question of the distribution right is the issue of a right of importation. This would allow a right owner to prevent the importation into one country of a work which had been circulated in another. As yet there is no international agreement on the wisdom of introducing a right of importation. Those countries resisting the introduction of such a right have argued that once copies of a work were placed on the market the right of distribution should be internationally exhausted; and that for a right owner to control the importation of copies of works would be an unacceptable restriction on the free circulation of goods and cultural products, as it might restrict the flow of cultural goods across national borders by requiring that licenses for the use of works were negotiated on a country by country basis. Those countries which advocated the introduction of a right of importation argued that investors required the security of dividing markets territorially, that the long-term effect of allowing parallel importation would be to concentrate the international distribution system in the hands of a few major entities that can afford global presence to the detriment of small entities that sought to promote alternative markets. The absence of a right of importation would end the current system of supply from a plurality of sources; and it might contribute to illegal copying by allowing the piracy of lawfully -made copies of works which were intended for markets where the risk of unauthorised copying was less.

At the heart of these discussions by the Committee of Experts on a Possible Protocol to the Berne Convention lies a deepening international debate in intellectual property and trade circles. Broadly speaking, net importers of products embodying intellectual property rights favour the international exhaustion of rights. In Australia, for instance, three successive enquiries carried out by the Price Surveillance Authority concluded that the right of importation had forced Australian consumers to pay higher prices for books, sound recordings and computer software than consumers in other countries, and had the effect of restricting the availability of copies to customers. Not surprisingly however, net exporters of products embodying intellectual property rights, such as the USA, favoured an importation right. Within the European Union, an importation right would be exhausted once the work had been put onto the European market.

These discussions concerned the sale of physical and tangible goods, not the provision of services. As yet there has been no proposal at the international level to introduce a right of digital importation. If there were, the concept of a Global information infrastructure would be dead in the water. What would emerge would be a series of interlocking national information infrastructures. But if a right of importation were introduced for physical and tangible goods alone, two separate systems of international distribution would be put in place. One for physical and tangible goods which, except in the European Union would be divided nationally. The second for digitised goods and services, would be genuinely international. One of the outstanding issues still to be resolved, is whether a right owner should be able to use the proposed new importation right to prevent the importation and circulation of works which have been transmitted overseas in digital form via the information superhighway.

The Authenticity of the Work

One of the key differences between works which are stored or transmitted in digitized form is the ease in with which they can be transformed, or as their rights owners would say, deformed. A key aspect of consumer protection on the information highway will therefore be to ensure that the version of the work which is rented, or bought, is genuine and complete. This will be particularly important as the consumer, or perhaps more properly the subscriber, will be paying to see or hear the work before it can be inspected. In effect, the work will be electronically shrink-wrapped.

One obvious way to tackle this problem would be to rethink the role of the author’s moral right, and in particular the right of integrity. The moral rights of authors have been virtually ignored in the headlong rush to international harmonisation. The USA has been allowed to ratify the Berne Convention even though its domestic laws afford virtually no protection for an author’s moral rights. In the United Kingdom an author can be required by a publisher to waive his or her moral rights. Under the TRIPS Agreement, although member states have to comply with the substantive provisions of the Berne Convention, they are under no obligation to protect the moral rights of authors. Finally, in the European Union, all four copyright directives are silent on moral rights.

Until recently, common law countries have had a sound economic argument for denying authors their right of integrity. If the rationale of copyright law was to serve the welfare of the public by promoting the progress of science and the useful arts, in most cases this required a marriage of labour and capital – the author and the investor. It would therefore be unwise to grant a right of integrity to the author, as it would be likely to discourage investment, for if the investor wanted to modify a work in order better to satisfy the needs of the consumer, the assertion by the author of a right of integrity could prevent this.

It must be remembered however, that this argument only holds good so long as two conditions pertain. The first is that the investor can retain control over the integrity of the work once it has been put onto the market. This will now be difficult to enforce once a work is digitised. The second is that the consumer can inspect the work before purchasing it – by browsing through a book for instance. In some fields of exploitation, such as film exhibition, consumers have traditionally had no means of knowing whether or not they were seeing the integral version of a work, they have relied on the retailer, here the cinema exhibitor. But in others, such as television transmission, neither the investor nor the consumer has been able to prevent the work being interrupted by advertising commercials.

One way to overcome these difficulties would be to augment the author’s right of integrity with a new right of integrity for a work when it was digitally transmitted. This right would be owned by the person making the arrangements for the production of the work, that is the producer. It would therefore encourage, not just the labour to create the work, but also the investment necessary to produce the work. In addition, it would provide the consumer with a guarantee of authenticity.

The Problem of Enforcement

I have indicated above, that if the GII is to be international, it will be necessary to harmonise the separate national provisions for the subject matter to be protected, the level of originality demanded for protection and the laws of unfair competition when establishing the GII. And that the best way to achieve this would be to establish a new international jurisdiction for the information superhighway. I now want to consider the separate, but additional, problem of enforcing those conditions.

One of the major problems with the Berne and Rome Conventions was that there was no international mechanism for ensuring that national legislation in all member countries did indeed afford adequate protection for rights holders. This was one of the main reasons why the TRIPS agreement was included in the GATS. The dispute mechanism administered by the WTO was effectively superimposed over those of the domestic courts in all countries, in order to guarantee to rights holders the protections afforded by the Berne and the Rome Conventions. But this is a messy approach for three main reasons. First, the dispute mechanism cannot be invoked by an individual right holder, only by a national government. Second, there is a grave danger that a nation’s general trade policy will become embroiled in disputes over intellectual property rights. And third, the procedure is awfully slow and cumbersome. Although this approach has enabled the developed world to bring into line nations offering inadequate protection for intellectual property rights by threatening them with trade sanctions, these arrangements would be unusable for resolving IPR disputes on the GII.

The TRIPS agreement also laid down new international norms for enforcing IPRs. No doubt these will be taken into account when establishing the enforcement provisions for the GII. However, the international community will also need to reach a common view on three further key issues if they are to resolve IPR disputes on the GII.

First, jurisdiction. If an alleged offence occurs on the Superhighway, in which jurisdiction does it take place? If there is an unauthorised extraction from a database, does the offence take place in the jurisdiction where the database is located? Or is it in the jurisdiction in which the digitised information is finally stored? If a digitised signal is intercepted unlawfully, does the offence occur in the jurisdiction through which the signal was passing when it was intercepted, or does the offence not occur until the illegally intercepted signal is copied onto the interceptor’s own computer?

Second, extradition. What, if any, arrangements will be made for the extradition of the alleged offender to face trial in the appropriate jurisdiction? What defence can an alleged offender offer in order to prevent extradition? If found innocent, will the defendant be given the right to receive adequate compensation for extradition, as well as for wrongfully suffered injuries, as provided in the TRIPS agreement?

Third, enforcement. What remedies can courts impose? Can courts in one jurisdiction order the seizure of alleged offending copies in a second jurisdiction? Can a preliminary injunction be served in one jurisdiction against an alleged offender living in another jurisdiction? Can a court in one jurisdiction enforce a guilty party who is living in another jurisdiction to desist from repeating the offence?

Clearly whatever system is set up, will have to balance the rights of defendants with those of rights holders. Yet the more international the dimensions of the alleged offence, the more difficult it will be to protect the interests of both parties. These problems of jurisdiction, extradition and enforcement would be far easier to solve if a new international jurisdiction was established for the GII.

In future, users of the GII will effectively become subscribers to an international network. The rules of the network, including rules of enforcement, would therefore be established by international body which would be set up by governments. Subscribers will each have their own e-mail address, or subscriber reference. Writs of alleged offences could be served electronically, by the network management body, and the accused could also submit any defence electronically to the court responsible for the enforcement of network justice, without having to appear personally. Injunctions could be served and enforced electronically, and any fines could be added to the offender’s network charges. In the last resort, an offender could be banned from the network. For non-network offences, national courts would retain jurisdiction.

Conclusion

I have indicated above, that if the GII is to be international, it will be necessary to harmonise the separate national provisions for the subject matter to be protected, the level of originality demanded for protection and the laws of unfair competition when establishing the GII. And that the best way to achieve this would be to establish a new international jurisdiction for the information superhighway. I now want to consider the separate, but additional, problem of enforcing those conditions.

I have tried to show in this paper that in order to establish an international GII, rather than a series of linked national networks, it would be sensible to introduce a new system of protection for copyrights on the GII. This would augment the current provisions of the Berne and the Rome Conventions, augmented by the TRIPS agreement.

The new system would establish a common legal system for protecting these new rights. This would include an internationally agreed definition of the subject matter of digitised information protected, the level of originality required for protection and the details of a new law on unfair competition. Ideally, this new system would be established on a global basis, but if not, the European Union could establish an autonomous supranational system in Europe. Digitised information would remain free and unprotected unless it fell within the subject matter specifically protected by the international community.

In order to encourage investment for new works for the GII, the new rights of distribution or rental should only to extend to new works. In this regard, the international community should not follow the precedent set by the European Union. In addition, the progress of science and the useful arts on the GII could also be encouraged, the distortion of digitised works discouraged and the rights of consumers protected, by giving investors in new works a right of integrity in the digitised transmission of those works.

The GII could also be centrally administered as a self-regulating jurisdiction set up by the international community. Procedures would then be put in place to balance measures for the enforcement of IPRs, with the rights of defendants.

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Common sense for the digital age

Information technology has no destiny – it simply mediates social relations between people.

Cyberspace is not a consensual hallucination, it is a construction site created by human labour.

People create their own technology, but not in circumstances of their own choosing.

Cyberspace is where the imaginary can become real.

Artist-engineers must create virtual spaces fit for human habitation.

The desire for union with the machine is fear of the flesh.

Po-mo is retro.

The electronic marketplace – spend in private.

The electronic agora has yet to be built.

Your taxes built the Net – thank the agencies of the state for their visionary planning.

The information superhighway is a Keynesian jobs creation scheme.

State, corporate and DIY – mix ‘n’ match the path to the digital future.

Information doesn’t want to be free – but people do.

Technology is not the issue.

Turn On, Log In and Drop Out!

As with any other law, the Telecommunications Reform Act will face the problem of enforcement. The ‘War on Drugs’ hasn’t stopped Americans from voraciously consuming billions of dollars of illegal chemicals every year. There must be similar doubts about the practicality of the censorship measures in the new Act. Is the American state really going to be able to prevent its citizens saying fuck to each other in their private e-mails? How will it prevent people logging-on to Web sites in other countries with a less hypocritical attitude towards adult sexuality? The development of hypermedia is the result of the convergence not only of radio and television broadcasting, but also of other types of less censored media, such as printing and music. Why should the Net be subject to broadcasting-style restrictions rather than those applied to printed material? A long political battle is now beginning to find an acceptable level of legal controls over the new forms of social communications.

Yet, at this crucial moment, one of the leaders of the principal cyber-rights lobbying group – the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – has been gripped by an attack of ideological hysteria. In bizarre act of presumption, John Perry Barlow, the EFF’s co-founder, has issued a Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. In this manifesto, he casts himself as the new Thomas Jefferson calling the people to arms against the tyranny of Bill Clinton: ‘the great invertebrate in Washington’. Claiming to speak ‘on behalf of the future’, he declares that the elected government of the USA has no right to legislate over ‘Cyberspace, the new home of the Mind’. Because ‘we are creating a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live’, Barlow asserts that cyberspace exists outside the jurisdication of the American or any other existing state. In cyberspace, only Net users have the right to decide the rules. According to Barlow, the inhabitants of this virtual space already police themselves without any interference from Federal legislators: ‘you do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society with more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.’ Users of the Net should therefore ‘reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers’ and ignore the censorship imposed by the Telecommunications Reform Act.

It is too easy to laugh at this Declaration as a high tech version of the old hippie fantasy of dropping out of straight society into a psychedelic dreamworld. In sci-fi novels, cyberspace has been often poetically described as a ‘consensual hallucination’. Yet, in reality, the construction of the infobahn is an intensely physical act. It is flesh and blood workers who spend many hours of their lives developing hardware, assembling PCs, laying cables, installing router systems, writing software programs, designing web pages and so on. It is obviously a fantasy to believe that cyberspace can be ever be separated from the societies – and states – within which these people spend their lives. Barlow’s Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace therefore cannot be treated as a serious response to the threat to civil liberties on the Net posed by the Christian fundamentalists and other bigots. Instead, it is a symptom of the intense ideological crisis now facing the advocates of free market libertarianism within the online community. At the very moment that cyberspace is about to become opened up to the general public, the individual freedom which they prized in the Net seems about to be legislated out of existence with little or no political opposition. Crucially, the lifting of restrictions on market competition hasn’t advanced the cause of freedom of expression at all. On the contrary, the privatisation of cyberspace seems to be taking place alongside the introduction of heavy censorship. Unable to explain this phenomenon within the confines of the Californian Ideology, Barlow has decided to escape into neo-liberal hyper-reality rather than face the contradictions of really existing capitalism.

Cyberspace – the Final Frontier

The ideological bankruptcy of the West Coast libertarians derives from their historically inaccurate belief that cyberspace has been developed by the ‘left-right fusion of free minds with free markets’ (Louis Rossetto, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine). As Andy Cameron and I showed in our article, Californian Ideology, neo-liberalism has been embraced by the West Coast version of Kroker and Weinstein’s virtual class as a way of reconciling the anarchism of the New Left with the entrepreneurial zeal of the New Right. Above all, this weird hybrid has relied on projecting old myths about the American revolution onto the process of digital convergence. According to Wired Magazine, the development of hypermedia would create a high tech ‘Jeffersonian Democracy’ – the eighteenth century will be reborn in the twenty-first century.

In his Declaration, John Perry Barlow consciously mimics the rhetoric of the Founding Fathers’ Declaration of Independence of the United States. Once again, free-spirited individuals are standing up to an oppressive and corrupt government. However, these revolutionary phrases from the past contain within them many reactionary aspirations. Back in 1776, Jefferson expressed the national dream of building a rural utopia in the wilderness of America. The winning of independence from Britain was necessary so that Americans could live as independent, self-sufficent farmers in small villages. Jefferson’s pastoral vision rejected city-life as the source of corruption – which he saw in the rapidly expanding conurbations of contemporary Europe. But, as America itself began to industrialise, the pastoral dream had to be displaced westwards towards the frontier. Even after the Indian wars had ended, the Wild West remained a place of individual freedom and self-discovery in American mythology. Jefferson had become a cowboy.

By its name, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is therefore invoking not just the cowboy myths of the last century, but also the pastoral fantasies of the writer of the original Declaration of Independence. When American government agencies first decided to crack down on hackers, a group of old radicals decided to defend the new generation of cyberpunks. Out of this act of solidarity, the EFF emerged as the political lobby group of the West Coast cyber-community. Using libertarian arguments, it campaigned for minimal censorship and regulation over the new information technologies. But, the EFF was never just a campaign for cyber-rights. It was also a leading cheerleader for the individualist fantasies of the Californian Ideology. According to the tenets of this confused doctrine, hippie anti-authoritianism is being finally realised through the fusion of digital technologies with free market liberalism. However, this inevitable rebirth of Jeffersonian Democracy now seems to have been postponed. Above all, the lobbying work of the EFF appears to have been frustrated – the repressive measures in the Telecommunications Reform Act passed with almost no opposition in the legislature or from the executive. At this moment of crisis, Barlow has embraced the wildest fantasies of the West Coast anarcho-capitalists. Once encryption is widely available, they believe that free-spirited individuals will be able to live within a virtual world free from censorship, taxes and all the other evils of big government. Unable to face the social contradictions of living within the digital city, Barlow has decided to join the virtual cowboys living on the electronic frontier.

If This is the Electronic Frontier, Who Are the Indians?

It is no accident that Barlow mimics Jefferson for this retro-futurist programme. Unlike Europeans who fantasied about rural utopias, Jefferson never rejected technology along with the city. On the contrary, the ‘sage of Monticello’ was an enthusiastic proponent of technological innovation. Crucially, he believed that it was possible to freeze the social development of the United States while simultaneously modernising its methods of production. The proponents of the Californian Ideology follow a similar logic. They wish to preserve cyberspace as the home of rugged individuals and innovative entrepreneurs while at the same time supporting the commercial expansion of the Net. For them, the development of the new information society can only take place through the realisation of the eternal principles of liberalism revealed by the Founding Fathers. Yet, like all other countries, the United States exists within profane history. Its political and economic structures are the result of centuries of contradictory social processes, not the expression of sacred truths. Its leaders were complex human beings, not one-sided ‘men of marble’.

This dialectical reality can be most easily seen by looking at the lives of those Founding Fathers – Jefferson, Washington and Madison – invoked by Barlow in his Declaration. On the one hand, they were great revolutionaries who successfully won national independence and established constitutional government in America. Yet, at the same time, they were vicious plantation-owners who lived off the forced labour of their slaves. In other countries, people have come to terms with the contradictory nature of their modernising revolutionaries. Even Chinese Communist Party now admits that Mao Zedong’s legacy contains both positive elements, such as the liberation of the country from colonialism, and negative features, such as the massacres of the Cultural Revolution. In contrast, Barlow – and many other Americans – can never acknowledge that their beloved republic wasn’t just created by hard-working, freedom-loving farmers, but also through the slavery of millions of Africans and the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of indigenous peoples. The plantation economy of the Old South and the extermination of the First Nations are the equivalents of the Irish Famine, the Holocaust and the Gulag Archipelago in American history. But, these contradictions of the real history of the USA are too painful to contemplate for Barlow and other believers in the ahistorical truths of liberal individualism. Jefferson must remain as an unsullied portrait chiselled into the face of Mount Rushmore.

Yet, in understanding contemporary debates over the future of the Net, it is important to remember the contradictory nature of historical precedents glibly invoked by the Californian Ideology. Back in the early nineteenth century, the spread of the new industrial technologies freed no slaves. On the contrary, the invention of the cotton gin and mechanical spinning machines actually reinforced the archaic and brutal institutions of slavery in the Old South. Nowadays, the libertarian rhetoric of individual empowerment through new information technologies is similarly used to hide the reality of the growing polarisation between the largely white virtual class and the mainly dark-skinned underclass. If interpreted with a European sense of irony, Jeffersonian Democracy can be an appropriate metaphor for the dystopian present found in the inner cities of the USA!

The First Electronic Frontier

Because the liberal principles of Jeffersonian Democracy exist outside real history, Barlow and other Californian ideologues cannot recognise the temporal dynamics of really existing capitalism. Although new frontiers may be opened up by enterprising individuals, the original pioneers are quickly replaced by more collective forms of organisation, such as joint-stock companies. For instance, the free-spirited cowboys of the Wild West soon ended up as employees of agri-businesses financed by the industrialised East. A similar process occured in the first electronic frontier in American history: radio broadcasting. Back in the early 1920s, radio was initially developed by an enthusiastic minority of amateurs and entrepreneurs. With few restrictions over broadcasting, almost anyone could either set up their own station or rent airtime on somebody else’s. Yet, once cheap radio receivers became widely available, the airwaves were rapidly taken over by the corporate networks provided by NBC and CBS. This process of monopolisation was consolidated by the Federal government through the 1927 Radio Act which restricted broadcasting to the holders of licences granted by a state-appointed regulatory body. Not surprisingly, conservative politicians seized the opportunity to silence political and cultural radicals, especially from the Left. However, this imposition of censorship encountered little popular disapproval. On the contrary, most voters supported the Radio Act because the licencing system ensured that the popular programmes of the national networks could be heard clearly without interference from other stations. The democratisation of the availability of radio broadcasting had ironically removed most opportunities for participation within the new media.

The key question now is whether the new electronic frontier of cyberspace is condemned to follow the same path of development. Contrary to Barlow’s assertion that cyberspace is not a ‘public construction project’, the principal obstacle to the expansion of the Net in the USA is the problem of who pays for the building of the fibre-optic grid. Given that they refuse to provide state investment, the Democrats and Republicans have had to use the new Telecommunications Reform Act to create a regulatory framework friendly to the large corporations which possess the capital needed for the construction of the infobahn. Above all, both parties have given their blessing to the growing number of mergers between companies operating within the converging sectors of the media, computing and telecommunications. Because it has lost its competitive edge in its traditional Fordist industries, the American economy now relies heavily on companies at the centre of the process of digital convergence, such as the Hollywood studios, Microsoft and AT&T. Far from encouraging a Jeffersonian Democracy composed of small businesses, the Telecommunications Reform Act has cleared the way for the emergence of American ‘national champions’ which have sufficent size both to build the infobahn at home and to compete successfully abroad against their European and Asian rivals.

For many on the Left, these multi-media corporations are the greatest threat to free speech on the Net. As happened in radio – and later television – broadcasting, the desire to attract a mass audience can be a far more effective method of inhibiting political radicalism and cultural experimentation than any half-baked censorship provisions tacked onto the end of a Telecommunications Reform Act. The Neo-Luddite pessimists have their worst fears confirmed when corporate leaders openly proclaim their aim to transform the Net into ‘interactive television’. In this scenario, the new forms of sociability existing within contemporary cyberspace would be replaced by the passive consumption of pop entertainment and biased information provided by multi-media corporations. Despite their disingenuous protests against the anti-pornography provisions in the new Act, these corporations cannot be too sad to see the introduction of regulations which would turn the Net into a safe – and therefore profitable – form of family fun.

In this vision of the future, Jeffersonian Democracy is simply neo-liberal propaganda designed to win support for the privatisation of cyberspace from the members of the virtual class. By promiscuously mixing New Left and New Right together, the Californian Ideology attracts those individuals who hope that they’re smart – or lucky – enough to seize the opportunities presented by the rapid changes in the technological basis of social production. But, while they’re being sold the dream of making it big as cyber-entrepreneurs, most digital artisans are, in reality, denied the employment security previously enjoyed by workers in Fordist industries. Far from being self-sufficent pioneers on the electronic frontier, many end up living hand-to-mouth from one short-term corporate contract to another. Similarly, the privatisation of cyberspace also threatens community uses of cyberspace. As more commercial money is spent on providing online services, it becomes increasingly difficult for amateurs to create Web sites of sufficient quality to attract large number of users. Yet, as happened in 1920s radio broadcasting, many people will happily accept corporate control over cyberspace if they are provided with well-produced online services. According to the Neo-Luddites, the democratisation of the availability of the Net is removing most opportunities for meaningful participation within cyberspace.

Cyberspace is Social

The current controversy in the USA over the Telecommunications Reform Act has cruelly exposed the limitations of the Californian Ideology. Barlow may dream of escaping into the hyper-reality of cyberspace, but he is simply trying to avoid facing the political and economic contradictions of really existing capitalism. Far from producing an electronic frontier composed of many small businesses, the commercialisation of cyberspace is creating the conditions for the concentration of capital on a global scale. Given the huge costs of building a national broadband network, only very large corporations can mobilise enough investment to carry out this infrastructure project. Within this emerging oligopoly, innovative entrepreneurs will still achieve public prominence as either leaders of big businesses or as sub-contractors of the multi-media corporations. But their individual success will only be made possible through the huge collective effort to build the infobahn. The dynamics of digital convergence within really existing capitalism are pushing towards the ever increasing socialisation of production and communications, not the realisation of 18th century fantasies of individual self-sufficiency.

It is therefore rather one-sided for the EFF to direct its criticisms solely against the anti-pornography regulations contained within the new Telecommunications Reform Act. Freedom of expression on the Net is not only threatened by the state, but also by the market. As shown by the history of radio broadcasting in the USA, these two forms of censorship have often been imposed in parallel. Both politicians and corporations have a common interest in ensuring that middle America is not disturbed by any radical political and cultural ideas emanating from new forms of mass communications. Therefore, any meaningful campaign for digital rights has to fight for freedom of expression against both state and market forms of censorship. The development of the Net offers a way of overcoming the political and economic restrictions on free speech within the existing media. Everyone could have the opportunity not only to receive information and entertainment, but also to transmit their own productions. The problem is how this potentiality will be realised.

A campaign for hypermedia freedom can only be successful if it recognises the inherent contradictions within this fundamental right of citizens. The political rights of each individual are circumscribed by the rights of other citizens. For instance, in order to protect children, the state has a duty to restrict the freedom of speech of paedophiles on the Net. Because ethnic minorities have the right to live in peace, the democratic republic should try to prevent violent fascists from organising online. But, apart from these minimal restrictions, citizens do have the right to say what they like to each other. A democratic state certainly has no mandate to impose a narrow religious morality on all its citizens regardless of their own beliefs.

Similarly, a campaign for digital rights must also recognise the economic contradictions within hypermedia freedom. Because they use amateur labour, community hypermedia projects can happily exist within the hi-tech gift economy. But, if digital artisans are to be paid for their work, some form of commodity exchange will have to be created within the Net. However, the dominance of the free market will inhibit the free circulation of ideas. Therefore demands for digital rights have to engage with the economic contradictions of hypermedia freedom. Above all, they cannot take absolutist positions over the shape of the information economy. On the contrary, the development of cyberspace has so far been carried out through a hybrid of public, private and community initiatives. All sectors have played an important role in the construction of the infobahn. But, in the new Telecommunications Reform Act, Americans now face the problem of the wrong type of government action, rather than too much state intervention. While it seems all too eager to impose moral censorship on Net users, the Federal government has simultaneously shirked its duty to ensure that all citizens can have access to online services. While the corporations may possess the resources to build the broadband network, the state should use its powers to prevent any section of society being excluded from cyberspace for lack of resources.

Contrary to the predictions of the pessimists, it is possible to win the struggle against both the political and economic censorship of cyberspace. Although the state can – and should – prosecute the small minority of paedophiles and fascists, the resources needed to spy on everyone’s email and Web sites will make the imposition of moral puritanism very difficult to enforce. Even with sophisticated censorship programs, the sheer volume of Net traffic should eventually overwhelm even a well-funded surveillance body. While it might just about be possible to regulate the output of thousands of radio and television stations, the sheer cost of employing humans to vet the many millions of users logging onto a global network of online services would be prohibitive. The social nature of hypermedia is the best defence of the individual’s right of freedom of expression.

Similarly, the corporation’s ambition to buy up the whole of cyberspace will also be checked by the social basis of the process of convergence. For instance, the recent trials of interactive television have been commercial failures. As Andy Cameron points out in Dissimulations, the corporate cheerleaders are trapped within a category mistake: they’re trying to impose the form of earlier media onto the new hypermedia. Above all, interactivity can’t be restricted to clicking through a series of menu options. Most people want to meet other people within cyberspace. Unlike the existing electronic media, the Net is not centred on the one-way flow of communications from a limited number of transmitters. On the contrary, hypermedia is a two-way form of communications where everybody is both a receiver and a transmitter. The multi-media corporations will undoubtedly play a leading role in building the infrastructure of the infobahn and selling information commodities over the Net, but they will find it impossible to monopolise the social potential of cyberspace.

Over recent years, the advocates of the Californian Ideology have been claiming that 18th century liberal individualism would be miraculously reborn through the process of digital convergence. Yet, now online services are becoming available to the mass of the population, the collective nature of the new information society is becoming increasingly obvious. Within politics, electronic democracy will be at the centre of the relationship between representatives and their voters. Within all sectors of the economy, the infobahn will soon become the basic infrastructure for collaborative work across time and space. Crucially, this socialisation of politics and economics will be the best protection for individual freedom within cyberspace. Far from having to escape into a neo-liberal hyper-reality, people can utilise the new digital technologies to enhance their lives both inside and outside cyberspace. The electronic agora is yet to be built.

Advanced copies of Imaginary Futures are now available for editorial review purposes from Pluto Press. If you are a member of the press, please contact lisa@imaginaryfutures.net to request a copy for review.

The Lost Utopia

The Net is haunted by the disappointed hopes of the Sixties. Because this new technology symbolises another period of rapid change, many contemporary commentators look back to the stalled revolution of thirty years ago to explain what is happening now. Most famously, the founders of Wired appropriated New Left rhetoric to promote their New Right policies for the Net. [2] Within Europe, a long history of class-based politics and compulsive theorising makes such ideological chicanery seem much more implausible. However, this does not mean that Europeans are immune from embracing digital elitism in the name of Sixties libertarianism. Ironically, this bizarre union of opposites is most evident in writings inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

Although these two philosophers were overt leftists during their lifetimes, many of their contemporary followers support a form of aristocratic anarchism which is eerily similar to Californian neo-liberalism. By doing so, the Deleuzoguattarians have unwittingly exposed the fatal weaknesses within what appears to be an impeccably emancipatory analysis of the Net. Trapped within the precepts of their sacred creed, the disciples of Deleuze and Guattari can’t even grasp why the spread of the Net really is such a subversive phenomenon.

At the end of the century, the superficiality of post-modernism is no longer fashionable among radical intellectuals. Because the Soviet Union has collapsed, the European avant-garde can return to its old obsession with Leninism. Instead, TJs look back to the libertarian spontaneity of May ‘68. [3] Even after decades of reactionary rule, the folk memory of the Sixties still remains an inspiration for the present. The democratic ways of working, cultural experimentation and emancipatory lifestyles initiated in this period survive – and even flourish – within the DIY culture of the Nineties. [4] However, belief in the overthrow of capitalism is no longer credible. Therefore contemporary European intellectuals have turned social transformation into theoretical poetry: a revolutionary dreamtime for the imagination.

The cult of Deleuze and Guattari is a prime example of this aesthetisation of Sixties radicalism. Above all, their most famous book – A Thousand Plateaus – now provides the buzzwords and concepts for a specifically European understanding of the Net. In contrast with the USA, a vibrant techno-culture has been flourishing across the continent for over two decades. Pioneered by computer-generated dance music, this digital aesthetic now embraces fashion, art, graphic design, publishing and video games. When it emerged in Europe, the Net was at first seen as a place for social and cultural experimentation rather than as a business opportunity. Unlike the Californian ideology, the writings of Deleuze and Guattari do seem to provide theoretical metaphors which describe the non-commercial aspects of the Net. For instance, the rhizome metaphor captures how cyberspace is organised as an open-ended, spontaneous and horizontal network. Their Body-without-Organs phrase can be used to romanticise cyber-sex. Deleuze and Guattari’s nomad myth reflects the mobility of contemporary Net users as workers and tourists.

D&G now symbolises more than just Dolce & Gabbana. Within the rhizomes of the Net, the Deleuzoguattarians form their own subculture: the techno-nomads. These adepts are united by specific ‘signifying practices’: computer technologies, techno music, bizarre science, esoteric beliefs, illegal chemicals and cyberpunk novels. There even is a distinctive Deleuzoguattarian language which is almost incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Above all, these techno-nomads possess a radical optimism about the future of the Net. While all that remains of hippie ideals in Wired is its psychedelic layout, the European avant-garde and its imitators still champions the lost utopia of May ‘68 through the theoretical poetry of Deleuze and Guattari. The revolution will be digitalised.

The Politics of May ‘68

Far from deterring an audience educated in structuralism, the hermetic language and tortured syntax used within A Thousand Plateaus are seen as proofs of its analytical brilliance. However, this idiosyncratic Deleuzoguattarian discourse is causing as much confusion as elucidation among their followers. For instance, the Rhizome.Com web site blandly announces that: ‘rhizome is…a figurative term…to describe non-hierarchical networks of all kinds.’ [5] At no point does this web site explain either the political meaning of this peculiar concept or how its principles might be applied within the Net. On the contrary, rhizome is simply a hip European phrase borrowed to celebrate the disorganised nature of the New York cyber-arts scene.

Yet, Deleuze and Guattari were not simply avant-garde art critics. The two philosophers were ‘soixante-huitards’: supporters of the May ‘68 revolution.[6] Deleuze and Guattari championed the most radical expression of Sixties politics: anarcho-communism. As its name suggests, anarcho-communism stood for the destruction of both state power and market capitalism. Society would be reorganised as a direct democracy and as a gift economy. The appeal of anarcho-communism did not derive only from its abstract theory, but also from its concrete practice. During the Sixties, anarcho-communists led the search for radical solutions to the historically novel problems facing young people. With the arrival of consumer society, the traditional Left policy of unrestricted modernisation appeared to have reached its limits. Once almost everyone had annual rises in income and mass unemployment had disappeared, the problems of everyday life took on increasing importance, such as restraints on sexual and cultural freedom.

Above all, many people now wanted a say in the decisions which effected them. They were no longer willing to accept leadership from above without some form of dialogue. Responding to these historically specific circumstances, young militants rediscovered and updated anarcho-communism not just as a theory, but also as a practice. Unlike their parents’ parliamentary parties and trade unions, the New Left could articulate their contemporaries’ demands for more participation. Instead of others deciding their lives for them, young people wanted to do things for themselves.

‘[Anarcho-]communism is not a new mode of production; it is the affirmation of a new community.’ [7]

The Romance of ‘Schizo-Politics’

Like other gurus of the New Left, Deleuze and Guattari believed that the state itself was the source of all oppression. According to their foundation myth, the state and its allies had been using top-down tree-like structures to subjugate people ever since the dawn of agrarian civilisation. Described as a process of ‘territorialisation’, they claimed that the media, psychoanalysis and language were the primary ‘machinic assemblages’ used by the state to control everyday life in the modern world. In contrast with Marxist analyses, Deleuze and Guattari believed that economics was only one manifestation of the state’s primordial will to dominate all human activity.

Facing the transhistorical enemy of the state was a new opponent: the social movements. Deleuze and Guattari thought that the traditional style of left-wing politics was now obsolete. As part of the ‘guaranteed’ sector of the economy, private and public sector workers not only had been bought off by the system, but also had their desires manipulated by the family, the media, the dominant language and psychoanalysis. Like much of the post-’68 New Left, the two philosophers instead looked to social movements of youth, feminists, ecologists, homosexuals and immigrants to ‘deterritorialise’ the power of the state. As part of the ‘non-guaranteed’ sector, people in these movements were excluded from the system and were therefore supposedly eager to fight for the revolution. [8]

In A Thousand Plateaus, the nomads poetically symbolised the ‘molecular’ social movements which were making the anarcho-communist revolution against the ‘molar’ tyranny of political power. Far from trying to seize political power, nomads used their mobility to avoid the ‘territorialised’ control of the authoritarian state. Similarly, the social movements formed a multiplicity of hippie tribes which were autonomous from all centralising and hierarchical tendencies, especially those supported by the mainstream Left. Along the ‘lines of flight’ mapped out by the New Left, the oppressed would escape from the control of the authoritarian state into autonomous rhizomes formed by the social movements. In A Thousand Plateaus, the rhizome became the poetic metaphor for this nomadic vision of direct democracy.

For Deleuze and Guattari, the overthrow of political power was only the beginning of the anarcho-communist revolution. They believed that political domination was only made possible through personal repression. The anarcho-communist revolution therefore had to liberate the libidinal energies of people from all forms of social control. The individual ‘delirium’ of schizophrenics prefigured the chaotic spirit of collective revolution. This meant that radicals not only had to detonate a social uprising, but also personally live out the cultural revolution. The New Left revolutionary was symbolised as the Body-without-Organs: a person who was no longer ‘organised, signified, subjected’ by the rationality of the state. [9] Such individuals were forerunners of the new type of human being who would emerge after the anarcho-communist revolution: a hippie equivalent of Nietzsche’s Superman. For Deleuze and Guattari, anarcho-communism was therefore not just the realisation of direct democracy and the gift economy. In their ‘schizo-politics’, the revolution would destroy bourgeois rationality so each individual could become a holy fool.

‘[The Fool]…is the vagabond who exists on the fringe of organised society, going his own way, ignoring the rules and taboos with which men seek to contain him. He is the madman who carries within him the seeds of genius, the one who is despised by society yet who is the catalyst who will transform that society.’ [10]

The Moment of Community Radio

Within the exuberant writings of the Deleuzoguattarians, there is a curious – and revealing – omission. They almost never mention Guattari’s claim in the Eighties that the Minitel system was about to replace top-down mass media with bottom-up ‘post-media’. [11] The reason for this absence must be found in the close similarity between Guattari’s Minitel utopia and his earlier dreams about the revolutionary potential of community radio. Paradoxically, it is Guattari’s anarcho-communist adventure within radio which provides the answer to why his contemporary disciples have developed such a curious affinity with the aristocratic ideology of Wired.

After May ‘68, many members of the New Left believed that producing alternative media was the most effective and fun way of putting their revolutionary theory into practice. In both Italy and France, the nationalised radio and television corporation had disseminated propaganda from the ruling conservative parties for decades. During the Seventies, New Left activists challenged this monopoly by setting up pirate radio stations. As the regulations against unlicensed broadcasting collapsed, thousands of ‘free radios’ emerged first in Italy and later in France. Although most were commercial, a minority were run by New Left activists.

According to Guattari, community radio stations were the only alternative to the domination of the airwaves by mindless ‘disco radios’. He wanted radio broadcasting to be used to create an electronic form of direct democracy which could replace the corrupt system of representative democracy. Instead of elected politicians, people would directly express their own opinions on the programmes of the community radio stations. The community radio stations supposedly prefigured the imminent reorganisation of the whole of society around direct democracy after the anarcho-communist revolution. Even this ultra-left utopia didn’t go far enough for Guattari. The ultimate aim of a ‘free radio’ was the subversion of bourgeois rationality and repressive sexuality within everyday life. When people were able to express their own views over the airwaves, Guattari hoped that the ‘delirium’ of desire would be released within the population. [12]

In the early-Eighties, Guattari was the leader of Fréquence Libre, a community radio station licenced to broadcast across Paris. However, it soon became obvious that turning Deleuzoguattarian theory into practice was impossible. Far from encouraging audience participation, the sectarian politics of the two philosophers actually discouraged people – including many on the Left – from getting involved in their community radio station. Guattari and his colleagues were more interested in lecturing the audience rather than engaging in discussions with them. This revolutionary elitism even extended the musical policies of the station. When some rappers approached Fréquence Libre about the possibility of making some programmes, the station refused to let any hip-hop crews on-air until their lyrics had been politically vetted! After they’d alienated most of their potential activists and audience, Guattari’s ‘free radio’ encountered growing difficulties in raising sufficient cash and recruiting enough volunteers to operate the station. Eventually, Fréquence Libre went bankrupt and its frequency was sold to pay its debts. Guattari’s attempts to turn theory into practice within the ‘free radio’ movement had ended in tragedy. [13]

From Stalin to Pol Pot

Techno-nomad TJs are attracted by the uncompromising theoretical radicalism expressed by Deleuze and Guattari. However, far from succumbing to an outside conspiracy, Fréquence Libre imploded because of the particular New Left politics which inspired A Thousand Plateaus and the other sacred texts. Unwilling to connect abstract theory with its practical application, the techno-nomads cannot see how Deleuze and Guattari’s celebration of direct democracy was simultaneously a justification for intellectual elitism. This elitism was no accident. Because of their very different life experiences, many young people in the Sixties experienced a pronounced ‘generation gap’ between themselves and their parents. Feeling so isolated, they believed that society could only be changed by a revolutionary vanguard composed of themselves and their comrades. This is why many young radicals simultaneously believed in two contradictory concepts. First, the revolution would create mass participation in running society. Second, the revolution could only be organised by a committed minority. [14]

The New Left militants were reliving an old problem in a new form. Back in the 1790s, Robespierre had argued that the democratic republic could only be created by a revolutionary dictatorship. During the 1917 Russian revolution, Lenin had advocated direct democracy while simultaneously instituting the totalitarian rule of the Bolsheviks. As their ‘free radio’ experience showed, Deleuze and Guattari never escaped from this fundamental contradiction of revolutionary politics. The absence of the Leninist party did not prevent the continuation of vanguard politics. As in other social movements, Fréquence Libre was dominated by a few charismatic individuals: the holy prophets of the anarcho-communist revolution. [15]

In Deleuze and Guattari’s writings, this deep authoritarianism found its theoretical expression in their methodology: semiotic structuralism. Despite rejecting its ‘wooden language’, the two philosophers never really abandoned Stalinism in theory. Above all, they retained its most fundamental premise: the minds of the majority of the population were controlled by bourgeois ideologies. [16] During the Sixties, this elitist theory was updated through the addition of Lacanian structuralism by Louis Althusser, the chief philosopher of the French Communist party. [17] For Deleuze and Guattari, Althusser had explained why only a revolutionary minority supported the New Left. Brainwashed by the semiotic ‘machinic assemblages’ of the family, media, language and psychoanalysis, most people supposedly desired fascism rather than anarcho-communism. This authoritarian methodology clearly contradicted the libertarian rhetoric within Deleuze and Guattari’s writings. Yet, as the rappers who wanted to make a show for Fréquence Libre discovered, Deleuzoguattarian anarcho-communism even included the censorship of music. By adopting an Althusserian analysis, Deleuze and Guattari were tacitly privileging their own role as intellectuals: the producers of semiotic systems. Just like their Stalinist elders, the two philosophers believed that only the vanguard of intellectuals had the right to lead the masses – without any formal consent from them – in the fight against capitalism.

For young militants, the problem was how this committed minority could make a revolution without ending up with totalitarianism. Some of the New Left thought that anarcho-communism expressed their desire to overthrow both political and economic oppression. [18] However, even this revolutionary form of politics still appeared to many as tainted by the bloody failure of the Russian revolution. Had not the experience of Stalinism proved that any compromise with the process of modernity would inevitably lead to the reimposition of tyranny? Consequently, anarcho-communist thinkers increasingly decided that just opposing the oppressive features of economic development was not radical enough. Desiring a complete transformation of society, they rejected the transcendent ‘grand narrative’ of modernity altogether, especially those left-wing versions inspired by Hegel and Marx. According to these ultra-leftists, the whole concept of progress was a fraud designed to win acquiescence for the intensification of capitalist domination. While the mainstream Left still wanted to complete the process of modernisation, the New Left should instead be leading a revolution against modernity. [19]

Once anarcho-communism was transformed into an ahistorical ideology, the New Left’s opposition to economic development soon developed into a desire to abandon modernity altogether. Following the May ‘68 revolution, support for rural guerrillas resisting American imperialism soon became mixed up with hippie tribalism, concerns about environmental degradation and nostalgia for a lost peasant past. Disillusioned with the economic progress championed by the parliamentary Left, many on the New Left synthesised these different ideas into hatred of the mass urban society created by modernity. For them, a truly libertarian revolution could only have one goal: the destruction of the city. [20]

Deleuze and Guattari enthusiastically joined this attack against the concept of historical progress. For them, the ‘deterritorialisation’ of urban society was the solution to the contradiction between participatory democracy and revolutionary elitism haunting the New Left. If the centralised city could be broken down into ‘molecular rhizomes’, direct democracy and the gift economy would reappear as people formed themselves into small nomadic bands. According to Deleuze and Guattari, anarcho-communism was not the ‘end of history’: the material result of a long epoch of social development. On the contrary, the liberation of desire from semiotic oppression was a perpetual promise: an ethical stance which could be equally lived by nomads in ancient times or social movements in the present. With enough intensity of effort, anyone could overcome their hierarchical brainwashing to become a fully-liberated individual: the holy fool. [21]

Yet, as the experience of Fréquence Libre proved, this rhetoric of unlimited freedom contained a deep desire for ideological control by the New Left vanguard. While the nomadic fantasies of A Thousand Plateaus were being composed, one revolutionary movement actually did carry out Deleuze and Guattari’s dream of destroying the city. Led by a vanguard of Paris-educated intellectuals, the Khmer Rouge overthrew an oppressive regime installed by the Americans. Rejecting the ‘grand narrative’ of economic progress, Pol Pot and his organisation instead tried to construct a rural utopia. However, when the economy subsequently imploded, the regime embarked on ever more ferocious purges until the country was rescued by an invasion by neighbouring Vietnam. Deleuze and Guattari had claimed that the destruction of the city would create direct democracy and libidinal ecstasy. Instead, the application of such anti-modernism in practice resulted in tyranny and genocide. The ‘line of flight’ from Stalin had led to Pol Pot. [22]

The Antinomies of the Avant-Garde

Ironically, the current popularity of Deleuze and Guattari comes from their stubbon refusal to recognise the failure of the anti-modernist revolution. Even when Fréquence Libre went bankrupt, Deleuze and Guattari never questioned their ‘schizo-politics’. Instead, they transformed the historically specific politics of the New Left into theoretical poetry which existed outside history. The libidinal intensity of revolutionary failure was much preferable to the limited achievements of parliamentary reformism. [23] For ‘cutting edge’ TJs, it is now almost compulsory to sample from the theoretical poetry of Deleuze and Guattari. Yet, this New Left revival is taking place in very different circumstances from the revolutionary Sixties. However, the political irrelevance of Deleuze Guattari does not discredit their theoretical poetry among radical intellectuals. On the contrary, the defeat of the New Left has enabled their disciples to complete the transformation of anarcho-communism from the hope of social revolution into the symbol of personal authenticity: an ethical-aesthetic rejection of bourgeois society. Although defeated in reality, the ideals of May ‘68 can be used to imagine a revolutionary dreamtime for the Net.

The aestheticisation of revolutionary politics is a revered tradition of the European avant-garde. Back in the Twenties, the Surrealists perfected the fusion of artistic creativity with social rebellion. Inspired by Lenin, this avant-garde movement claimed that the consciousness of the majority of the population was controlled by cultural mediocrity and puritan morality. Therefore radical intellectuals had the heroic task of freeing the people from ideological domination. Their innovative art would undermine the repressive cultural norms of bourgeois society. Their bohemian way of living would challenge the dull conformity of everyday life under capitalism. In this interpretation of Leninism, cultural experimentation became the privileged expression of revolutionary politics. Whether from the tribal past or the science-fiction future, any vision of a more authentic life should be used to subvert the cultural philistinism of the bourgeois present. Innovative paintings, sculptures, photography, films and literature would be made “…in the service of the revolution.” [24]

The cult of Deleuze and Guattari is the latest manifestation of this European avant-garde tradition. The change in language disguises a continuity in practice. Just like its Surrealist predecessors, the contemporary avant-garde equates experimental art and bohemian lifestyles with social rebellion. Despite their involvement with radio and Minitel, Deleuze and Guattari hoped that the ‘line of flight’ from modernity would lead back to the tribal past. In contrast, their contemporary followers have no ambiquity about their relationship with modern technologies. Far from desiring the destruction of the city, radical intellectuals hope that the Deleuzoguattarian utopia will emerge from the hi-tech Net. Using intellectual alchemy, they transmute their gurus’ anti-modernist scriptures into a philosophy of hyper-modernism.

This aestheticisation of May ‘68 is made much easier by the poetical style of Deleuze and Guattari. As in modernist painting, the ‘realism’ of the text has been superseded by a fascination with the formal techniques of theoretical production. For Deleuze and Guattari, theory was a piece of literature expressing authentic emotion rather than a tool for understanding social reality. Having failed in practice, New Left politics could live on as theory-art. Following this example, techno-nomad TJs sample Deleuzoguattarian discourse to produce leftfield philosophy. Yet, as with Britpop bands, something is lost in these respectful homages to the past. In the sacred texts, the rational analysis of society had already been replaced by the literary celebration of irrational desires. The European avant-garde is now discarding the few remaining connections with practical politics. Using Deleuzoguattarian discourse, avant-garde intellectuals recreate the May ‘68 revolution as a theory-art project for the Net.

Yet, like the Leninist vanguard, the European avant-garde is haunted by the fatal contradiction between popular participation and intellectual elitism. In their theory-art, the techno-nomads use Deleuzoguattarian discourse to celebrate DIY culture. However, according to the sacred creed, most people – including members of the DIY culture – are brainwashed by semiotic ‘machinic assemblages.’ But, when illuminated by the teachings of Deleuze and Guattari, radical intellectuals can amazingly cast off the mental shackles of bourgeois rationality and experience the redemption of ecstatic immanence. Although many are called, only few can become true disciples of the esoteric doctrine.

This elitism is a hallowed tradition of the European avant-garde. For decades, radical intellectuals have adopted dissident politics, aesthetics and morals to separate themselves from the majority of ‘herd animals’ whose minds were controlled by bourgeois ideologies. [25] Despite their revolutionary rhetoric, avant-garde intellectuals fantasised about themselves as an artistic aristocracy ruling the philistine masses. Following this elitist custom, the Deleuzoguattarian champion nomadic minorities from the ‘non-guaranteed’ social movements against the stupified majority from the ‘guaranteed’ sector. Once again, the revolution is the ethical-aesthetic illumination of a minority rather than the social liberation of all people.

Earlier in this century, this dream of an artistic aristocracy sometimes evolved into fascism. More often, the avant-garde supported totalitarian tendancies within the Left. Nowadays, cultural elitism can easily turn into implicit sympathy with neo-liberalism. The European avant-garde – and its imitators – could never openly support the free market fundamentalism of the Californian ideology. Yet, as TJs cut ‘n’ mix, the distinctions between right and left libertarianism are blurring. On the one hand, the Californian ideologues claim that a heroic minority of cyber-entrepreneurs is emerging from the fierce competition of the electronic marketplace. On the other hand, the Deleuzoguattarians believe that this new elite consists of cool TJs and hip artists who release subversive ‘assemblages of enunciation’ into the Net. In both the Californian ideology and Deleuzoguattarian discourse, primitivism and futurism are combined to produce the apotheosis of individualism: the cyborg Nietzschean Superman.

‘…the possibility…to rear a master race, the future “masters of the earth”; – a new tremendous aristocracy…in which… philosophical men of power and artist-tyrants will…work as artists on “man” himself.’ [26]

The Hi-Tech Gift Economy

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the contemporary avant-garde must substitute itself for the missing political vanguard. The techno-nomads therefore remix Leninism into Deleuzoguattarian discourse: subversive theory-art ‘deterritorialises’ the semiotic ‘machinic assemblages’ controlling the minds of the majority. Lenin is morphed into Nietzsche. In the late-Nineties, revolutionary elitism can only be expressed in the words of May ‘68. Yet, important pioneers of the New Left were highly critical of this tradition of cultural elitism. For instance, the Situationists advocated transforming the social context of cultural production rather than the aesthetics of art. Instead of following the avant-garde elite, everyone should have the opportunity to express themselves. [27]

Above all, the Situationists looked for ways of living which were free from the corruptions of consumer capitalism. Despite their Hegelian modernism, they claimed that anarcho-communism had been prefigured by the potlatch: the gift economy of Polynesian tribes. Within these primitive societies, the circulation of gifts bound people together into tribes and encouraged cooperation between different tribes. This tribal gift economy demonstrated that individuals could successfully live together without needing either the state or the market. However, the Situationists believed that here could be no compromise between tribal authenticity and bourgeois alienation. After the social revolution, the potlatch would completely supplant the commodity. [28]

Following May ‘68, this purist vision of anarcho-communism inspired a generation of cultural activists. Emancipatory media supposedly could only be produced within the gift economy. During the late-Seventies, pro-situ attitudes were further popularised by the punk movement. From then to the present-day, the ‘cutting edge’ of music has remained participatory. Crucially, every user of the Net is now also participating within a gift economy. Without even thinking about it, people continually circulate information between each other for free. They cooperate together without the direct mediation of either politics or money. Far from being the privilege of intellectuals, anarcho-communism is the mundane activity of ordinary people within cyberspace.

From the beginning, the gift economy has determined the technical and social structure of the Net. Although funded by the Pentagon, the Net could only be successfully developed by letting its users build the system for themselves. Within the academic community, the gift economy has long been the primary method of socialising labour. Funded by the state or by donations, scientists publicise their research results by ‘giving papers’ and by ‘contributing articles’. Despite the dispersed nature of this educational gift economy, academics acquire intellectual respect from each other through citations in articles and other forms of public acknowledgement. The collaboration of many different scientists is only possible through the free distribution of information. [29]

From its earliest days, the free exchange of information has been firmly embedded within the technologies and social mores of cyberspace. Above all, the founders of the Net never bothered to protect intellectual property within computer-mediated communications. Far from wanting to enforce copyright, they tried to eliminate all barriers to the distribution of information. Within the commercial creative industries, advances in digital reproduction are feared for making the ‘piracy’ of copyright material ever easier. In contrast, the academic gift economy welcomes technologies which improve the availability of data. Users should always be able to obtain and manipulate information with the minimum of impediments. The design of the Net therefore assumes that intellectual property is technically and socially obsolete.

Even though the system has expanded far beyond the university, the Net remains predominantly a gift economy. From scientists through hobbyists to the general public, the charmed circle of users was slowly built up through the adhesion of many localised networks to an agreed set of protocols. Crucially, the common standards of the Net include social conventions as well as technical rules. The giving and receiving of information without payment is almost never questioned. Even selfish reasons encourage people to become anarcho-communists within cyberspace. By adding their own presence, every user contributes to the collective knowledge accessible to those already on-line. In return, each individual has potential access to all the information made available by others within the Net. Everyone takes far more out of the Net than they can ever give away as an individual. [30]

Despite the commercialisation of cyberspace, the self-interest ensures that the hi-tech gift economy continues to flourish. For most users, the Net is somewhere to work, play, love, learn and discuss with other people. Unrestricted by physical distance, they collaborate with each other without the direct mediation of money or politics. Unconcerned about copyright, they give and receive information without thought of payment. In the absence of states or markets to mediate social bonds, network communities are instead formed through the mutual obligations created by gifts of time and ideas.

The hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software development. For instance, Bill Gates admits that Microsoft’s biggest competitor in the provision of web servers comes from the Apache program. [31] Instead of being marketed by a commercial company, this program is shareware. Because its source code is not protected by copyright, Apache servers can be modified, amended and improved by anyone with the appropriate programming skills. Shareware programs are now beginning to threaten the core product of the Microsoft empire: the Windows operating system. Starting from the original software program by Linus Torvalds, a community of user-developers are together building their own non-proprietory operating system: Linux. For the first time, Windows has a real competitor. [32]

Beyond the Avant-Garde

The New Left anticipated the emergence of the hi-tech gift economy. People could collaborate with each other without needing either markets or states. However, the New Left had a purist vision of DIY culture. There could be no compromise between the authenticity of the potlatch and the alienation of the market. Fréquence Libre preserved its principles to the point of bankruptcy. Bored with the emotional emptiness of post-modernism, the techno-nomads are entranced by the uncompromising fervour of Deleuze and Guattari. However, as shown by Fréquence Libre, the rhetoric of mass participation often hides the rule of the enlightened few. The ethical-aesthetic committment of anarcho-communism can only be lived by the artistic aristocracy. Yet, the antinomies of the avant-garde can no longer be avoided. The ideological passion of anarcho-communism is dulled by the banality of giving gifts within cyberspace. The theory of the artistic aristocracy cannot be based on the everyday activities of ‘herd animals’.

Above all, anarcho-communism exists in a compromised form on the Net. Contrary to the ethical-aesthetic vision of the New Left, the boundaries between the different methods of working are not morally precise. Within the mixed economy of the Net, the gift economy and the commercial sector can only expand through mutual collaboration within cyberspace. The free circulation of information between users relies upon the capitalist production of computers, software and telecommunications. The profits of commercial Net companies depend upon increasing numbers of people participating within the hi-tech gift economy. Under threat from Microsoft, Netscape is now trying to realise the opportunities opened up by such interdependence. Lacking the resources to beat its monopolistic rival, the development of products for the shareware Linux operating system has become a top priority. Anarcho-communism is now sponsored by corporate capital. [33]

The purity of the digital DIY culture is also compromised by the political system. Because the dogmatic communism of Deleuze and Guattari has dated badly, their disciples instead emphasise their uncompromising anarchism. However, the state isn’t just the potential censor and regulator of the Net. Many people use the Net for political purposes, including lobbying their political representatives. State intervention will be needed to ensure everyone can access the Net. The cult of Deleuze and Guattari is threatened by the miscegenation of the hi-tech gift economy with the private and public sectors. Anarcho-communism symbolised moral integrity: the romance of artistic ‘delirium’ undermining the ‘machinic assemblages’ of bourgeois conformity. However, as Net access grows, more and more ordinary people are circulating free information across the Net. Far from having any belief in the revolutionary ideals of May ‘68, the overwhelming majority of people participate within the hi-tech gift economy for entirely pragmatic reasons. In the late-Nineties, digital anarcho-communism is being built by hackers like Eric Raymond: ‘a self-described neo-pagan [right-wing] libertarian who enjoys shooting semi-automatic weapons…’ [34]

Threatened by the banalisation of the hi-tech gift economy, the European avant-garde is surreptiously embracing the capitalist fundamentalism of the Californian ideology. For this convergence to take place, Deleuze and Guattari’s anathema against market competition must be skillfully abandoned. First, their adepts deny the wealth-creating powers of human labour. Then the work of living beings is subsumed within the mobility of dead matter. Finally, far from being condemned as a ‘machinic assemblage’ imposed from above, market competition is sanctified as the apotheosis of self-organising systems. As in the Californian ideology, this Deleuzoguattarian heresy believes that the market is a chaotic force of nature which cannot be controlled by state intervention. Abandoning any residual connections with the Left, these TJs instead celebrate the new aristocracy of nomadic artists and entrepreneurs who surf the ‘schiz-flows’ of the information society. In this bizarre remix, anarcho-communism becomes identical with neo-liberalism.

As a consequence, the techno-nomads have to ignore the major social transformation catalysed by the new information technologies: the widespread adoption of a new method of working. Rejecting the ‘economism’ of the Left, many TJs have replaced the creativity of human labour on the Net with a digital vitalism inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s theory-art. Denying the ability of people to determine their own destinies, these techno-nomads believe that information technologies are the semiotic forces determining culture, consciousness and even the conception of existence. However, there is nothing inherently emancipatory in computer-mediated communications. These technologies can also serve the state and the market. The Net was originally invented for the transmission of orders from the military hierarchy. In the future, electronic commerce will play a significant economic role and public services will increasingly be made available on-line.

At the same time, millions of people are spontaneously working together on the Net without needing coordination by either the state or the market. Instead of exchanging their labour for money, they give away their creations in return for free access to information produced by others. This circulation of gifts coexists with the exchange of commodities and funding from taxation. When they’re on-line, people constantly pass from one form of social activity to another. For instance, in one session, a Net user could first shop on an e-commerce catalogue, then look for information aon the local council’s site and then contribute some thoughts to a listserver for fiction-writers. Without even consciously having to think about it, this person would have successively been a consumer in a market, a citizen of a state and an anarcho-communist within a gift economy. The ‘New Economy’ of the Net is an advanced form of social democracy. [35]

The techno-nomads cannot comprehend the subversive impact of these everyday activities of Net users. As members of the avant-garde, they’re looking for the intensity of ethical-aesthetic ‘delirium’ within the flows of vitalist matter. For them, there can be nothing particularly special about the mundane activities of Net users who aren’t producing fashionable theory-art. Yet, at this particular historical moment, market competition is disappearing for entirely pragmatic reasons. While commodified information is closed and fixed, digital gifts are open and changeable. Instead of fixed divisions between producers and consumers, users are simultaneously creators on the Net. Obsessed with immanence of semiotic flows, the Deleuzoguattarians cannot appreciate the deep irony of this contingent moment in human history. This is the point in time when the old faith in the inevitable triumph of communism has completely lost all credibility. Yet, at this very moment, market competition is quietly ‘withering away’ within cyberspace.

Over the past few centuries, people within the industrialised countries have slowly improved their incomes and reduced their hours of work. Although still having little autonomy in their money-earning jobs, workers can now experience non-alienated labour within the hi-tech gift economy. From writing emails through making web sites to developing software, people do things for themselves without the direct mediation of the market and the state. As Net access spreads, the majority of the population are beginning to participate within cultural production. Unlike Fréquence Libre, the avant-garde can no longer decide who can – and cannot – join the hi-tech gift economy. The Net is too large for Microsoft to monopolise let alone a small elite of radical intellectuals. Art can therefore cease being the symbol of moral superiority. When working people finally have enough time and resources, they can then concentrate upon “…art, love, play, etc., etc.; in short, everything which makes Man [and Woman] happy. “ [36]

At such a historical moment, the European avant-garde is being made obsolete through the realisation of its own supposed principles. The techno-nomads celebrate digital DIY culture to distinguish themselves from the rest of society. Yet, far from being confined to a revolutionary minority, increasing numbers of ordinary people are now participating within the hi-tech gift economy. Rather than symbolising ethical-aesthetic purity, the circulation of gifts is a pragmatic way of working within cyberspace. Although it is impossible to predict the future of the hi-tech gift economy, one thing is almost certain. The intellectual elitism of Deleuzoguattarian discourse is being superseded by the emancipatory ‘grand narrative’ of modernity. As more and more ‘herd animals’ go on-line, radical intellectuals can no longer fantasise about becoming cyborg Supermen. As digital anarcho-communism becomes an everyday activity, there is no longer any need for the leadership of the cultural avant-garde. The time for the revolution of holy fools has passed. As has already happened within popular music, the most innovative and experimental culture will be created by people doing things for themselves. By participating within the hi-tech gift-economy, everyone can potentially become a wise citizen and a creative worker.

“…the word ‘creation’ will no longer be restricted to works of art but will signify a self-conscious activity, self-conceiving, reproducing for its own terms…and its own reality (body, desire, time, space), being its own creation.” [37]

Footnotes

[1] Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Pan, London 1947.

[2] See Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, ‘The Californian Ideology’.

[3] A TJ is a ‘theory-jockey’: Amsterdam slang for intellectuals who cut ‘n’ mix philosophies like DJs in a club.

[4] DIY stands for ‘do-it-yourself’. See Elaine Brass and Sophie Poklewski Koziell with Denise Searle (ed.), Gathering Force: DIY culture – radical action for those tired of waiting, Big Issue, London 1997.

[5] See the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section on Rhizome (was www.rhizome.com, now www.rhizome.org)

[6] “May ‘68 was a demonstration, an irruption, of a becoming in its pure state… Men’s only hope lies in a revolutionary becoming: the only way of casting off their shame or responding to what is intolerable.” Gilles Deleuze, ‘Control and Becoming’, Negotiations: 1972-1990, Columbia University Press, New York 1995.

[7] Jacques Camatte, The Wandering of Humanity, Black & Red, Detroit 1975.

[8] See Félix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: psychiatry and politics, Penguin, London 1994.

[9] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, Athlone Press, London 1988.

[10] Alfred Douglas, The Tarot. This Gnostic vision of human freedom is remarkably close to the liberating role of insanity championed by the two philosophers.

[11] See Félix Guattari, ‘Three Ecologies’, New Formations, Number 8.

[12] See Félix Guattari, ‘Les Radios Libres Populaires’ in Pascal Defrance (ed.), De la Necessité Socio-culturelles de l’Existence de Radios Libres Indépendantes; and his introduction to Collectif A/Traverso, Radio Alice, Radio Libre (translated in Molecular Revolution: psychiatry and politics).

[13] Jean-Paul Simard, Interview with Author, Fréquence Libre, April 1985; and Annick Cojean and Frank Eskenazi, FM: la folle histoire des radios libres, Grasset, Paris, 1986.

[14] The vanguard was a military term used for the advance guard who opened up the path for the main army. Applied to politics, this phrase emphasised the leadership role of radical intellectuals within revolutionary organisations.

[15] For a critique of New Left vanguardism, see Jo Freeman, ‘The Tyranny of Structurelessness’ in CS (ed.), Untying the Knot: feminism, anarchism & organisation, Dark Star/Rebel Press, London 1984.

[16] See V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?: burning questions of our movement, Foreign Language Press, Beijing 1975; and Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, Merlin, London 1968.

[17] See Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays, New Left Books, London 1971.

[18] Above all, anarcho-communism was seen as the heir of those Left Communists who had fought for direct democracy organised through the Soviets against the dictatorship of the Leninist party. See Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks & Workers’ Control: 1917-1921, Solidarity, London 1970; and Ida Mett, The Kronstadt Uprising 1921, Solidarity, London 1967.

[19] See Jacques Camatte, The Wandering of Humanity. Of course, a much diluted variant of this attack on oppressive ‘grand narratives’ later formed the ideological basis for the self-styled post-modernists.

[20] In classic New Left films like Weekend and Themroc, rebellion against a repressive and alienating urban society was symbolically represented through a return to primitive simplicity. Curiously, both films portrayed cannibalism as the ultimate expression of liberation from bourgeois morality!

[21] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.

[22] Apart from its emphasis on peasants rather than nomads, Khmer Rouge ideology was very similar to the anti-modernism espoused by Deleuze and Guattari. See Michael Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-1982, Allen and Unwin, Hemel Hempstead 1984.

[23] In contrast, most of their contemporaries gravitated towards either electoral politics or post-modern nihilism. See Jean-Pierre Garnier and Roland Lew, ‘From The Wretched Of The Earth To The Defence Of The West: an essay on Left disenchantment in France’, Socialist Register 1984: the uses of anti-communism, Merlin, London 1984.

[24] From 1930 to 1933, the Surrealists’ journal was called Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution. See Helena Lewis, Dada Turns Red: the politics of surrealism, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1990.

[25] According to Nietzsche, the culturally impoverished masses were ‘herd animals’ compared to the ‘eagles’ of the artistic world.

[26] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Vintage, New York 1968. Deleuze commended Nietzsche for the ‘positive task’ of inventing the reactionary concept of the Superman.

[27] See Ken Knabb (ed.), Situationist International Anthology, Bureau of Public Secrets, California 1981.

[28] See Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, Practical Paradise, London 1972. The Situationists discovered the tribal gift economy in Marcel Mauss, The Gift.

[29] See Warren O. Hagstrom, ‘Gift Giving as an Organisational Principle in Science’ in Barry Barnes and David Edge, Science in Context: readings in the sociology of science, The Open University, Milton Keynes 1982.

[30] See Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, ‘Cooking Pot Markets: an economic model for the trade in free goods and services on the Internet’.

[31] See Keith W. Porterfield, ‘Information Wants to be Valuable: a report from the first O’Reilly Perl conference’.

[32] See Eric C. Raymond, ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’.

[33] See Netscape Communications Corporation, ‘Netscape Announces Plans to Make Next-Generation Communicator Source Code Available Free on the Net’.

[34] Andrew Leonard, ‘Let My Software Go!’.

[35] Wired uses ‘The New Economy’ as a synonym for its neo-liberal fantasies about the digital future.

[36] Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’, Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY 1969.

[37] Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick NJ 1984.

THE HOLY FOOLS

a critique of the avant-garde
in the age of the Net

1: The Lost Utopia

The Net is haunted by the disappointed hopes of the Sixties. Because this new technology symbolises another period of rapid change, many contemporary commentators look back to the stalled revolution of thirty years ago to explain what is happening now. For instance, the editors of Wired continually pay homage to the New Left values of individual freedom and cultural dissent in their coverage of the Net. Yet, these old hippies no longer believe in political rebellion and collective provision. Instead, in their Californian ideology, they now claim that their youthful ideals will be realised through technological determinism and free markets. The politics of ecstasy have been replaced by the economics of greed. [1]

Within Europe, it is much more difficult to pull off the Californian scam of camouflaging New Right policies for the Net underneath New Left rhetoric. A long history of class-based politics and compulsive theorising makes such ideological chicanery seem much more implausible. Even post-modernists are much more attracted to pessimism and nihilism than to the reactionary modernism underpinning the Californian ideology. [2] However, this does not mean that Europeans are immune from embracing digital elitism in the name of Sixties libertarianism. Ironically, this bizarre union of opposites is most evident in the writings on the Net by avant-garde intellectuals inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

Although these two philosophers were overt leftists during their lifetimes, many of their contemporary followers support a form of aristocratic anarchism which is eerily similar to that promoted by Californian neo-liberals. The European avant-garde is rediscovering its elitist traditions through the cult of Deleuze and Guattari. By doing so, the Deleuzoguattarians haven’t just unwittingly exposed the fatal weaknesses within what appears to be an impeccably emancipatory analysis of the Net. Trapped within the precepts of their sacred creed, the disciples of Deleuze and Guattari can’t even grasp why the spread of the Net really is such a subversive phenomenon.

Inside the universities, alternative culture and the art world, the popularity of Deleuze and Guattari is the philosophical equivalent of current nostalgia for Sixties pop music. At the end of the century, the superficiality and detachment of post-modernism are no longer fashionable among radical intellectuals. However, because the Soviet Union has collapsed, the European avant-garde cannot return to its traditional obsession with the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Instead, contemporary activists, academics and artists look back to the libertarian spontaneity of the revolutionary Sixties. Just like pop musicians, TJs use samples from this heroic decade to prove their radical credentials. [3] At the peak of the Sixties revolutionary wave, it appeared that old structures were disintegrating and collective subjectivity was about to be realised. During a brief moment, the continent seemed to be on the verge of fundamental social transformation.

‘The movement [of May '68] was a rediscovery of collective and individual history, an awareness of the possibility of intervening in history, an awareness of participating in an irreversible event…It was a generalised critique of all alienations, all ideologies and of the entire organisation of real life…’ [4]

The great change never happened. Despite marches, strikes, riots, occupations and terrorism, the system was able to defeat the challenge from the New Left. During the Eighties and Nineties, even the social gains of the post-war settlement were being rolled back by triumphant capitalism. Yet, after decades of reactionary rule, the folk memory of May ’68 still remains an inspiration for the present. While ‘really existing socialism’ has imploded, the democratic ways of working, cultural experimentation and emancipatory lifestyles initiated in the Sixties have survived – and even flourished – into the harder times of the Nineties. From raves to environmental protests, the spirit of May ’68 lives on within the DIY culture. [5] Deprived of Leninism, contemporary European intellectuals wishing to revive the revolutionary traditions of the avant-garde are drawn to this legacy of the New Left. However, unlike their hippie mentors, these academics, artists and activists realise that the overthrow of capitalism is not imminent. Apparently unrealisable in practice, social transformation must be turned into theoretical poetry: a revolutionary dreamtime for the imagination.

The cult of Deleuze and Guattari is a prime example of this aesthetisation of Sixties radicalism. Their most famous book – A Thousand Plateaus – is a weird pot-pourri of anarchism, therapy, mysticism, art theory, musicology, bizarre science, imaginary history and drug references. Rejecting reasoned sociological arguments, Deleuze and Guattari created free association meditations written in their own inimitable language. As they explained in its opening pages: ‘a book…is a multiplicity – but we don’t know yet what the multiple entails when it is no longer attributed, that is, after it has been elevated to the status of a substantive.’ [6]

Despite this warning from its authors, A Thousand Plateaus has become a sacred text: the Kabbala of the techno-generation. This book provides the buzzwords and concepts for a specifically European understanding of the Net. It is the default setting for discussions on nettime and other on-line political-artistic forums. [7] Precisely because it comes from Europe, Deleuzoguattarian theory is now fashionable from New York to Tokyo. On the West Coast, Kevin Kelly and other Wired writers also use an eclectic mix of hippie rhetoric, weird science and pop culture to create the Californian ideology. [8] However, their hard-line neo-liberalism is irrelevant to most European intellectuals – and their imitators overseas. Instead of seeing the Net primarily as a business opportunity, avant-garde academics, artists and activists are much more excited by the cultural possibilities of new technologies. This is not just a reflection of the relative weakness of the European computer industry. For over two decades, a vibrant techno-culture has been developing across the continent. Pioneered by computer-generated dance music, this digital aesthetic now embraces fashion, art, graphic design, publishing and video games. When it emerged in Europe, the Net was not surprisingly pioneered by this already flourishing techno-culture. [9]

The conservative politics and culture of Wired could never provide a credible explanation of what was happening within this alternative scene. Looking for another approach, TJs have rediscovered the writings of Deleuze and Guattari. [10] Apparently free from the taint of both Leninism and neo-liberalism, these two philosophers seem to provide a theoretical framework for understanding the subversive potential of the Net. While all that remains of hippie ideals in Wired is its psychedelic layout, European cyber-enthusiasts – and their imitators – can still champion the lost utopia of May ’68 by using the theoretical poetry of Deleuze and Guattari. The revolution will be digitalised. [11]

2: Techno-Nomads@Rhizome.Net

A Thousand Plateaus has achieved such a cult status within the on-line community because Sixties radicalism did fundamentally shape the Net. Despite being funded by the US military, many of its most important aspects came from the hippie counter-culture. Above all, most Net users expect neither to pay for items downloaded nor to be paid for others accessing their sites. This DIY ethic was partially inspired by the New Left. Campaigning against the American invasion of Vietnam, the Yippie movement advocated not paying for any goods or services provided by corporations profiting from the war. Among activists involved in developing the early computer networks, this subversive attitude was expressed in the famous hacker slogan: ‘information wants to be free.’ [12] Although now threatened by state censorship and colonised by commercial interests, the content of the Net is still mainly produced through spontaneous collaboration between autonomous individuals within a hi-tech gift economy. People freely swap articles, music, software, pictures and any other form of intellectual labour which can be digitally recorded. On websites, on-line conferences, listservers, newsgroups and other virtual spaces, they can play, learn and work together outside the control of both state and market. [13]

Unable to comprehend any form of human sociability except money-commodity relations, the Californian ideology is completely useless for explaining why the hi-tech gift economy is such a fundamental aspect of cyberspace. In contrast, A Thousand Plateaus does seem to provide a credible alternative analysis of the Net. This book contains theoretical metaphors which illustrate how much of the Net’s content is produced without monetary incentives. It even has concepts which can be used to describe some of the more bizarre aspects of on-line culture, such as cybersex. Above all, this sacred text allows the European avant-garde of the late-Nineties to live within a revolutionary dreamtime inspired by the rebellious Sixties.

For the disciples of Deleuze and Guattari, the rhizome is the key concept found within A Thousand Plateaus. As a metaphor derived from plant roots, this phrase captures how cyberspace is organised as an open-ended, non-hierarchical, spontaneous and horizontal network. Not surprisingly, rhizome has been adopted a shorthand term for websites, listservers, IRC channels, bulletin boards, MOOs and other on-line conferences where people can come together inside the Net without needing the direct mediation of money. [14] One hip New York list server and web site has even adopted Rhizome as its name. [15] According to the Deleuzoguattarians, these non-commodified Net spaces are digital versions of other ‘Temporary Autonomous Zones’ liberated by DIY activists, such as squats, pirate radios, illegal raves and environmental protest camps. [16] Far from being the apotheosis of market competition, the Net is seen as heralding a new stage of human civilisation founded on rhizomic collaboration. [17]

The adepts of A Thousand Plateaus believe that the most utopian demands of May ’68 are about to be realised within cyberspace. Social movements will be able to organise themselves freely using the Net’s decentralised structure. [18] Cyber-feminists will use digital technologies to transcend patriarchal oppression. [19] Community media will be able to distribute their output without fear of censorship or other restrictions. [20] The limitations of representative democracy will be overcome through the creation of the ‘virtual agora’ – a real-time direct democracy made possible through mass participation in social decision-making using the Net. [21] As nations disappear and hierarchies collapse, Sixties radicalism will finally realised within cyberspace.

The appeal of A Thousand Plateaus lies in more than its poetic recapitulation of New Left communal utopias. In their holy book, Deleuze and Guattari also propagated the myth of the nomad to celebrate hippie tribalism. During the Sixties, many revolutionaries thought that rejecting the dull routines of everyday life was the most effective method of undermining corporate capitalism. Rather than becoming docile workers and contented consumers, ‘…the children of the ants are all going to be tribal people…’ [22] From crusties to cyberpunks, contemporary youth subcultures still retain this hippie belief in the redemptive power of bohemian lifestyles. European avant-garde intellectuals are particularly attracted by the nomadic version of this tradition. Being relatively privileged, they already enjoy greater mobility as employees and as tourists than most of the population of the continent. These academics, artists and activists are making business and forming friendships at conferences, openings, festivals, exhibitions and parties held across the continent and beyond. Now, in their imaginations, the disciples of Deleuze and Guattari can even be in motion when sitting in front of their computer screens. They are the ‘hunter-gatherers of CommTech’ – a cyber-tribe who follow the ‘flows’ across the open spaces of the virtual world. [23] Within the rhizomes of the Net, the Deleuzoguattarians are forming their own youth subculture: the techno-nomads. [24]

There is an eccentric flakiness in Deleuze and Guattari’s writings which fits well with the mood of the times. As in the Sixties, alternative culture has a simultaneous – and contradictory – fascination with mystical beliefs, such as New Age and UFO cults, and with scientific advances, such as quantum physics and genetic manipulation. Among the Californian ideologues, this strange combination of spiritual irrationalism and technical rationalism has been used to justify their neo-liberal analysis of the Net. Using A Thousand Plateaus, TJs have mixed a European version of mystical positivism as wacky as anything found on the West Coast. [25]

For instance, on-line dating isn’t simply a fun way of meeting new partners and trying to find romance. Someone who talks about sex on an IRC channel or in a MOO is supposedly transformed into a Body-without-Organs – an erotic mind freed by digital technologies from the restrictions of the flesh. [26] According to Pierre Lévy, the Net is forming a ‘collective intelligence’ out of our individual minds – a notion derived by combining neo-Platonist Islamic theology with chaos theory and quantum mechanics. [27] For both Manuel De Landa and Sadie Plant, the self-organising tendencies of the Net are derived from a process of chaotic ‘emergence’ which determines everything from hurricanes through living organisms to computer systems. [28] However, even these forms of mystical positivism are not irrational enough for Hakim Bey. Promoting his own incoherent mix of Sufism, acid, anarchism and cyberpunk, this guru openly denounces: ‘…all born-again knee jerk atheists & their frowsy late-Victorian luggage of scientistic vulgar materialism…’ [29]

The disciples of A Thousand Plateaus are the contemporary version of the European avant-garde. D&G now symbolises more than just Dolce & Gabbana. United by certain ‘signifying practices’, they form an intellectual version of the youth subcultures studied by many of them on Cultural Studies courses. [30] The techno-nomads love computer technologies, they’re fans of techno music, they’re excited by bizarre science, they’re sympathetic to esoteric beliefs, they’re part of the chemical generation and they adore cyberpunk novels. There even is a distinctive Deleuzoguattarian language which is almost incomprehensible to the uninitiated. [31] Above all, the techno-nomads possess a radical optimism about the future of the Net. Intoxicated by reading too much Deleuze and Guattari, these TJs are confident of being able to intervene within cyberspace to maximise its emancipatory social and cultural potential. The development of the Net won’t just undermine the power of the state, but also create a whole new libertarian way of living. The wired future is there for the taking…

‘What we want to do is what we can do: cut new channels, create new temporary autonomous zones, defuse cathecting power. More than any other writers, [Deleuze and Guattari] …have developed a coherent set of conceptual tools that help us understand our situation and act upon it.’ [32]

3: The Politics of May ’68

As the European universities and art world have long been dominated by French formalist philosophy, it is not entirely surprising that avant-garde intellectuals interested in the Net have elevated A Thousand Plateaus into a cult text. Since Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard and Virilio are no longer the latest thing, they have proclaimed Deleuze and Guattari as the philosophers of the moment. Although sometimes included within the inner circle of French post-structuralism, these two thinkers were until recently considered far too radical to receive official artistic or academic recognition. [33] However, in this current period of rapid social change symbolised by the Net, the subversive ideas contained within their writings now add to their fashionable appeal. The cynicism and detachment of the post-modernists was Eighties style. The techno-nomads need a more passionate approach for the end of the Nineties. Although they’re both dead, Deleuze and Guattari have become the philosophers of the cyber-millennium.

Far from deterring an audience educated in structuralism, the hermetic language and tortured syntax used within A Thousand Plateaus are seen as proofs of its analytical brilliance. Yet this idiosyncratic Deleuzoguattarian discourse has caused as much confusion as elucidation among their followers. Although the sacred texts are obviously inspired by Sixties radicalism, most of the techno-nomads seem blissfully unaware of what exactly are the theoretical and practical implications of its New Left politics. For instance, the Rhizome website blandly announces that: ‘rhizome is…a figurative term…to describe non-hierarchical networks of all kinds.’ [34] However, at no point does this web site explain either the political meaning of this peculiar concept or how its principles might be applied within the Net. On the contrary, rhizome is simply a hip European phrase borrowed to celebrate the disorganised nature of the New York cyber-arts scene. Some disciples have become even more befuddled by the strange rhetoric of A Thousand Plateaus. For example, Hari Kunzru claims that Deleuze and Guattari are on the same side as the Californian ideologues in the ‘libertarian-communitarian opposition’ within debates about the Net. Just like Wired, these two philosophers are supposedly champions of the ‘emergent properties’ of individual initiative against the evils of state domination. [35]

Such confusion is partially the consequence of political naiveté among many followers of Deleuze and Guattari. Because the two philosophers didn’t use stilted left-wing jargon, most of their followers have avoided understanding the specific political position which informs A Thousand Plateaus and the other sacred texts. Yet, Deleuze and Guattari weren’t just advocates of avant-garde art – and were certainly never apologists for neo-liberalism. Above all, these two gurus were ‘soixante-huitards’: supporters of the May ’68 revolution. [36] During their lifetimes, they were both participated with high-profile New Left initiatives. Deleuze was actively involved in the Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons – the anti-prisons movement led by Michel Foucault. Guattari was the leader of most influential community radio organisation in France. [37] Although it has confused their disciples, Deleuze and Guattari’s idiosyncratic discourse was inspired by their participation in these New Left campaigns. According to the two philosophers, the problem with the ‘wooden language’ of Leninism was that its lack of radicalism not its revolutionary aspirations. [38] In its place, they composed theoretical poetry to express the new subversive practices which developed following the May ’68 uprising against capitalism. Far from supporting Californian neo-liberalism, Deleuze and Guattari actually championed the most revolutionary form of New Left politics: anarcho-communism.

Like other members of their generation, Deleuze and Guattari wanted to escape from the rigid orthodoxies of Stalinism which had dominated the French Left since the rise of fascism. [39] Trying to find a radical alternative, they took their inspiration from an eclectic range of sources. Along with other young militants, the two philosophers participated in the rediscovery of revolutionary ideologies which had been discarded by their elders, such as anarchism, Trotskyism, Surrealism, council communism and Freudo-Marxism. [40] At the same time, these philosophers also drew on the new ideas and practices which were emerging from the ferment of the New Left, such as Maoism, structuralism, Situationism, urban terrorism, feminism, pacifism, gay rights, community media, psychedelic culture and the anti-psychiatry movement. Despite the profound contradictions between them, all these different currents were united in their disillusionment with the parliamentary parties and trade unions of the mainstream European Left. [41]

For Deleuze and Guattari, anarcho-communism was the most radical expression of New Left politics. As its name suggests, anarcho-communism stood for the destruction of both state power and market capitalism. After bureaucracy and money were abolished, society would be reorganised as a direct democracy and as a gift economy. Initially, anarcho-communists had believed that their utopia would be formed by workers’ councils based in the factories. But, after May ’68, they increasingly identified direct democracy and the gift economy with the social movements and community media created by New Left activists. [42]

The appeal of anarcho-communism did not only derive from its abstract theory, but also from its concrete practice. During the Sixties, anarcho-communists led the search for radical solutions to the historically novel problems facing young people. Because of the struggle against fascism and the development of Fordism, the babyboomer generation grew up in a period when the Left in Western Europe was dominated by Stalinist and Social Democratic parties. Although divided by the Cold War, both movements prioritised representative politics and economic growth over more radical concepts of human liberation. However, with the arrival of consumer society, the policy of unrestricted modernisation appeared to have reached its limits. Once almost everyone had annual rises in income and mass unemployment had disappeared, the problems of everyday life took on increasing importance, such as restraints on sexual and cultural freedom.

Above all, many people now wanted a say in the decisions which effected them. They were no longer willing to accept leadership from above without some form of dialogue. Responding to these historically specific circumstances, young militants rediscovered and updated anarcho-communism not just as a theory, but also as a practice. Unlike their parents’ parliamentary parties and trade unions, the New Left could articulate their contemporaries’ demands for more participation. Within the universities, factories, offices and cultural life, young people were no longer content to have others deciding their lives for them in return for the commodities of consumer society. Instead, they wanted to do things for themselves.

‘[Anarcho-]communism is not a new mode of production; it the affirmation of a new community. It is a question of being, of life…men and women…will not gain mastery over production, but will create new relations among themselves which will determine an entirely different activity.’ [43]

4: The Romance of ‘Schizo-Politics’

In their writings, the disciples of Deleuze and Guattari are invoking this revolutionary spirit of May ’68 to celebrate the libertarian aspects of the Net. Opposed to censorship or commercialisation within cyberspace, they instinctively seize on rhizomes, nomads and Body-without-Organs to attack their statist and capitalist enemies. Bored by the political apathy of post-modernism, the techno-nomads are excited by the subversive attitudes of their two gurus. However, the current aestheticisation of Sixties radicalism makes it difficult to understand the particular political position underpinning Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy. Because of their idiosyncratic language, the origins of their politics in the historically specific circumstances facing the New Left thirty years ago have been obscured. Yet, when read with knowledge of this past, the free association theoretical poetry of A Thousand Plateaus does reveal its rigid political line: anarcho-communism.

Like the traditional Left, Deleuze and Guattari also believed that modern society was the culmination of thousands of years of social conflict. However, the two philosophers rejected the policies for economic modernisation championed by both the Stalinist and Social Democratic parties. Growing up during the post-war boom, they thought that poverty and unemployment were no longer urgent social problems. Along with other anarcho-communists, Deleuze and Guattari didn’t just think that this strategy was a betrayal of the revolutionary heritage of the Left. Above all, they claimed that the reformism of the parliamentary parties had become ‘a historical absurdity’ after May ’68. [44]

While the mainstream Left still sought political power, the Deleuze and Guattari denounced the state itself as the source of all oppression. According to their foundation myth, the state and its allies had been using top-down tree-like structures to subjugate people ever since the dawn of agrarian civilisation. [45] Described as a process of ‘territorialisation’, they claimed that the media, psychoanalysis and language were the primary ‘machinic assemblages’ used by the state to control everyday life in the modern world. [46] For Deleuze and Guattari, economics was only one manifestation of the state’s primordial will to dominate all human activity. [47]

Facing the transhistorical enemy of the state was a new opponent: the social movements. Both Stalinists and Social Democrats believed that the organised working class was the principle enemy of capitalism. In contrast, Deleuze and Guattari thought that this traditional style of left-wing politics was now obsolete. As part of the ‘guaranteed’ sector of the economy, private and public sector workers not only had been bought off by the system, but also had their desires manipulated by the family, the media, the dominant language and psychoanalysis. [48] Like much of the post-’68 New Left, the two philosophers instead looked to the new social movements of youth, feminists, ecologists, homosexuals and immigrants to ‘deterritorialise’ the power of the state. Forming the ‘non-guaranteed’ sector, people in these movements were excluded from the system and were therefore supposedly eager to fight for the revolution. [49]

While the parliamentary Left wanted to unite all workers around common concerns which could be satisfied through reforms, Deleuze and Guattari advocated a ‘micro-politics of desire’ which resisted such homogenisation of individual needs by the state and its left-wing allies. [50] In A Thousand Plateaus, the nomads poetically symbolised the ‘molecular’ groups who were making this anarcho-communist revolution against the ‘molar’ tyranny of political power. Echoing the hippie fascination with American Indians, the two philosophers claimed that nomadic tribes had prefigured the small-scale and non-hierarchical organisations of the social movements. Far from trying to seize political power, nomads used their mobility to avoid the ‘territorialised’ control of the authoritarian state. [51] Inspired this example, the social movements should therefore reject all attempts to unify them behind the programmes for legislative reforms proposed by the Stalinist and Social Democratic parties. Instead, they should form a multiplicity of tribes which were autonomous from all centralising and hierarchical tendencies, especially those supported by the mainstream Left. [52]

Like other members of the New Left, Deleuze and Guattari advocated the replacement of the state by direct democracy. However, because they distrusted the organised working class, the abolition of political power was no longer to be achieved through the rule of the factory councils. Instead, the two philosophers believed that the bottom-up organisations of the social movements should supersede the top-down authority of the state. In A Thousand Plateaus, the rhizome therefore acted as a poetic metaphor for this updated vision of direct democracy. Along the ‘lines of flight’ mapped out by the New Left, the oppressed would escape from the control of the authoritarian state into autonomous rhizomes formed by the social movements. While the parliamentary Left was still committed to its arboreal, top-down organisations, the New Left was creating rhizomic, bottom-up movements which prefigured the anarcho-communist future. [53]

‘To…centred systems, the authors contrast acentred systems, finite networks of automata in which communication runs from any neighbourhood to any other, the stems and channels do not pre-exist, and all individuals are interchangeable, defined only by their situation at a given moment – such that the local operations are co-ordinated and the final global result synchronised without a central agency.’ [54]

According to Deleuze and Guattari, the overthrow of political power was only the beginning of the anarcho-communist revolution. As ultra-leftists, they didn’t just want to replace one type of social organisation with another more sophisticated form. Above all, they sought to create a fully libertarian way of living. Consequently, these two philosophers advocated the destruction of not only the state and the market, but also the family, the media, the dominant language and the asylum. The only truly free individuals were those who had freed themselves from the ‘common sense’ rationality of bourgeois society. In their critique of official psychiatry, the ‘delirium’ of schizophrenics was something to be celebrated rather than cured. Escaping from their oppressive lives under capitalism, the insane expressed their desires at an intensity which went beyond the social limitations imposed by conventional language. [55] Crucially, this meant that anarcho-communism could no longer be expressed through rational arguments used by the mainstream Left. Because language itself was a form of social domination, ‘schizo-politics’ had to be proclaimed through the ‘delirium’ of theoretical poetry. [56]

According to Deleuze and Guattari, political domination was only made possible through personal repression. The anarcho-communist revolution therefore had to liberate the libidinal energies of people from all forms of social control. The individual ‘delirium’ of schizophrenics prefigured the chaotic spirit of collective revolution. [57] This meant that radicals not only had to detonate a social uprising, but also personally live out the cultural revolution. The New Left revolutionary was symbolised as the Body-without-Organs: a person whose spontaneous desires were no longer ‘organised, signified, subjected’ by the rationality of the state. [58] Such individuals were forerunners of the new type of human being who would emerge after the anarcho-communist revolution. Liberated from the repressive culture of the old order, this post-revolutionary person would be the New Left equivalent of Nietzsche’s Superman: a sovereign individual who could constantly ‘… create new values which are those of life, which make life light and active.’ [59] For Deleuze and Guattari, anarcho-communism was therefore not just the realisation of direct democracy and the gift economy. In their ‘schizo-politics’, the revolution had to include the destruction of bourgeois rationality so each individual could become a holy fool.

‘[The Fool]…is the vagabond who exists on the fringe of organised society, going his own way, ignoring the rules and taboos with which men seek to contain him. He is the madman who carries within him the seeds of genius, the one who is despised by society yet who is the catalyst who will transform that society.’ [60]

5: The Moment of Radio Alice

After two decades of domination by neo-liberalism, it is not surprising that the followers of Deleuze and Guattari don’t wish to ‘come out’ as anarcho-communists. It is much easier to transform the two philosophers’ theoretical poetry into a revolutionary dreamtime about the Net. However, this fear of being overtly anarcho-communist has led to a curious – and revealing – omission among the exuberant writings of Deleuze and Guattari’s disciples. Although they eagerly adapt the poetical metaphors of A Thousand Plateaus to praise the Net, the techno-nomads almost never mention the enthusiasm of one of their holy prophets’ for the emancipatory potential of computer-mediated communications.

For, as well as being a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, Guattari was also a prominent community media activist. From the mid-Eighties onwards, he became one of the main proponents of the use of computer networks by the new social movements. Over a decade before the Net became popular in the USA, the French government had set up the world’s first public access computer network: Minitel. [61] Guattari thought that this proto-Net was a harbinger of a new ‘post-media’ civilisation. In his philosophical writings with Deleuze, the media had always been condemned for imposing capitalist subjectivity on people. In particular, Guattari detested television as a ‘hypnotic drug’ which stupefied its audience and cut them off from their fellow humans. [62] However, he believed that the domination of the mass media was almost over. Using a Minitel bulletin board, group Eros – an anti-psychiatry organisation – was already pioneering new interactive forms of communications among its members. [63] Following this example, other social movements would soon be forming their own ‘collective assemblages of enunciation’ over the public computer network. [64] Instead of being brainwashed by a few television channels, people would then be able to participate within a multiplicity of information spaces. According to Guattari, the New Left was imminently going to replace top-down, homogenising media with bottom-up, rhizomic ‘post-media’. [65]

Given the similarity of Guattari’s utopian vision of computer networks with their own, the absence of almost any mention of his enthusiasm for ‘post-media’ by the techno-nomads is indeed very strange. The reason must be found in their – conscious or unconscious – realisation that an examination of Guattari’s involvement within community media would reveal why their favourite philosophical duo do not really provide ‘a coherent set of conceptual tools’ for understanding the Net. This is because Guattari’s enthusiasm for media experiments by social movements was nothing new. In the late-Seventies and early-Eighties, he was a prominent guru of the community radio movement in both Italy and France. However, when the abstractions of the holy prophets were put into practice, they had disastrous consequences. This is why the techno-nomads have so far studiously avoided mentioning Guattari’s own writings about the impact of computer networks. Once these became known, it would be inevitable that people would then look for their origins in the embarrassing history of the application of Guattari’s theory as practice within the community radio movement. Crucially, it is this anarcho-communist adventure within community radio which – paradoxically – provides the answer to why the