Name : Willem van Weelden Subject: public access to the media Date: friday 19 january 1996 Time: 10.30-12.00 (Paradiso Hall) |
| Titel The opening debate of the N5M 2 began with a topic that is a crucial one for any supposedly tactical use of any media : access and accessability.
MARK DERY, author of Culture Jamming, held a speech which was theoretical, and
general in character, criticizing the mainstream rhetoric and post-modern
critique that sees e.g. the internet as a true means to ultimately reach the
goal of a democratic society. He placed this utopian cloud dwelling next to the
issue of discorporateness and the historic moment in time in which our culture
has reached the possibility of overwriting and enhancing nature. He delivered a
whole cabinet of examples of writers like Donna Harraway, William Gibson, and
Bruce Sterling, criticizing not only their rhetoric, but also the appropriation
by utopian net advocates that use the egalitarian flag for the legitimization of
their own life style. More than that it is a real social commitment to efforts
in making democratic access possible. Mark Dery more or less proclaimed that the
yuppie mentality and their view on the subject of accessibility not only is very
thin in content but is as much part of consumer society as everything else. He
referred to this kind of elitist engagement as technomegatrance that really is
about the empty idea of 'making things happen' as a means of a cybernetic
healing effect. Mark Dery concluded by warning for the eely character of the
EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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