<nettime> [more on] 90s Cyberculture [scotartt, sondheim, herman, murphy]

["nettime's_synthetic_system" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

Re: An Early History of 90s Cyberculture [wark, scotartt, garrin]
     "scotartt" <scot@systemx.autonomous.org>
Re: An Early History of 90s Cyberculture
     Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
     Nmherman@aol.com
     Robbin Neal Murphy <rnm7789@is9.nyu.edu>

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From: "scotartt" <scot@systemx.autonomous.org>
Subject: Re: An Early History of 90s Cyberculture [wark, scotartt, garrin]
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 15:07:41 +1100

> From: Paul Garrin <pg@lokmail.net>
> Subject: Re: <nettime> An Early History of 90s Cyberculture
> Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 01:35:21 -0500
>
> While insightful in many ways, I don't agree with your
> eulogy for counter culture.

No, well I mean yes, "counter culture" died at Altamont Speedway. Executed
by the Hell's Angels after a long illness, accompanied by the Rolling
Stones, it thoroughly keeled over and carked it with only a brief sigh of
resignation.

> Autonomy need not be "temporary", and whatever its state,
> it can not be achieved through romanticism and inaction--it
> requires work, committment, strategy and risk.

Au contraire, I disagree. Autonomy is always contingent. At any given
moment you are continually negotiating your autonomy with the forces of
nature, collective society, other individuals, Microsoft, corporations,
governments, state agents, and so on. Many of these, not just the state and
corporations, can wipe your autonomy clean at almost any instant! Autonomy
isn't an absolute, every day we all  bargain away certain parts of it in
exchange for needs and goals of our own. ["Lick my xxx and I will allow you
to xxx with me."] Some more than others. And most still have little or no
choice about major-impact autonomous choices, like where to live, or even
*to* live. But to even start with the notion of an autonomous 'counter
culture' that is free of critique is to embark on a romantic exercise from
the outset. I don't percieve the counter-culture to be separate
structurally from the culture it counters. The
spectacular-commodity-economy is produced just as much by the actions of
that which is 'counter' to merely its content or its gross methods.

Autonomy is not something that once won, is achieved forevermore, and
neither is it something entirely absent from most people's lives. There is
a give-and-take between even the most enlightened individuals. But there is
no ideal state of universal 'autonomy' which is in the pot o'gold o'er the
rainbow, it's the *striving* that's important. The amount of work,
committment, strategy and risk required is completely contingent on the
situation at hand. PLAY is usually the best activity anyway. Merely seeing
any measure of reflexivity on the process as somehow being inactive is just
a way to make your own motivations and cause-and-effect invisible to
yourself.

and finally;

"You'll be absolutely free,
 only if you want to be."
 - Mothers of Invention.

scot@autonomous.org

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Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 13:52:39 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Re: An Early History of 90s Cyberculture

Early television history is fascinating; there were a lot of expirimental
standards, some electronic and some mechanical; at times the viewer would
have to buy a special kit to receive the signal. Things became standard-
ized after wwii; even then, if I remember correctly, there were widely
varying color standards - down to two, again an electronic and a color
wheel (mechanical) one. And I don't think you could have, say, in the US
an Ernie Kovacs show at any other time - it was television looking at
itself. I also remember early video art and aesthetics and the exhilera-
tion one felt at being able to actually see oneself on the tube.

Early telephone history followed a different course, also resonant with
the Net - here, in spite of doctor's offices, etc. as primary users, one
sees a number of people, large percentage women, using the phone for com-
munal purposes. And this still occurs, intensifies; if TAZ survives at
this point, it's in the remake of the email list through sites such as
topica, that create the potential for temporary communities roving the
Net.

Alan

Internet Text at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt 
Partial at http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
Trace Projects at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm


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From: Nmherman@aol.com
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 11:49:58 EST
Subject: Re: An Early History of 90s Cyberculture

In a message dated 12/27/1999 11:51:18 PM Central Standard Time, 
sondheim@panix.com writes:

>  One might also look at the early his-
>  tory of the novel; in media there's very often an early flash-point of
>  self-reflexivity / conceptualism, followed by distributive (corporate,
>  etc.) swamping.

I agree with this observation.  Media as such, taken as technologies of 
representation, are similar to methods of military and economic production.  
When they are new, their concepts--their meaning and role within larger, less 
determined systems--are in flux and uncertain.  Television, for example, 
could have been used much differently that it is today.  (In Denmark in the 
mid 70's, for example, there were only one or two broadcasts per week; the 
main program was "Four O'Clock," a mildly entertaining Mr. Rogers-type show 
for kids.  The rest of the time Danish TV's showed a test pattern.)

The worst possible outcome for the internet is its potential conversion to 
"enhanced TV," under which most users become acclimated to a broadcast 
concept.  This conversion is already well underway, driven by corporate 
content (news and entertainment) and advertising revenue.  As passive and 
hierarchical concepts of any media become routine, all other potentials 
suffer not from technological incapacity but an environment of disuse.  The 
damage done is not a loss of technical power but a loss of perceptual and 
cognitive languages; this loss takes place mainly inside the audiences' 
heads.  (Hardware configurations like "WebTV," Microsoft's advertising 
project with Sony as its interface and content-provider, are an example of 
technological capacity moving backwards into a concept more friendly to 
conventional media use.)

For these reasons, it is critical that some kind of content be produced that 
takes as its raison d'etre the simple assertion of a utopian media concept.  
The faster the HTML mills take over, the sooner the internet will become mere 
television.  The resistance need not establish, i.e. offer as product, a 
perfect non-broadcast body of content--such an effort is of course impossible 
except as a satiric or ironic gesture--but the idea of such content has to be 
maintained.  In this sense, the self-reflexive and conceptually diverse phase 
of internet media can never be completed; it represents a dynamic and chaotic 
stasis exactly opposed to any corporatization of the medium itself; such work 
is always only a holding action.  The purpose of this anti-corporate content 
is merely to preserve a space for potential and transient diversity.  Its 
territory is that of conceptual freedom, which is to say, "utopia" or 
no-place.

Incidentally, it is the incorporation of new media into narratives like the 
self or the nation that implements the albeit fractured monument of 
broadcast.  Monotheism is another such narrative, first conceived as a means 
of bonding the written text to a centralized, administrative concept of BOTH 
production and reception.

No easy answers, I guess, for freedom on the networks!  A thankless labor in 
the service of media freedom and diversity.  Yet it helps to know what we 
need not expect of ourselves as "artists" on the web.

Max Herman
The Genius 2000 Project
www.geocities.com/~genius-2000

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Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 01:24:36 -0500 (EST)
From: Robbin Neal Murphy <rnm7789@is9.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: An Early History of 90s Cyberculture

On Mon, 27 Dec 1999, Alan Sondheim wrote:

> Finally, I'm one of those 50 year olds but couldn't care less about the
> so-called old days - I do care about ageism which is rampant on the Net,
> rampant in the mills, and a fight no one really seems to care about. 

As a fellow old fart though not quite THAT old I think the experience of
the old days is still important. We can sit in the hogan beating our
drumb telling tales of the Sex Pistols and CBGB and how things used to be.

That's our job now and some of the pups listen and integrate it into
whatever they're doing now. We should remember to be articulate and not
slobber. They have short attention spans.

Rob


Robbin Murphy
robbin.murphy@nyu.edu
http://artnetweb.com/iola/


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