IsayUsaySsay

Name   : Geke van Dijk 
Time   : 15.00-17.30 hours (Paradiso Hall)
Subject: The Desire to be Wired 
Date   : Friday 19 January 1996

One of the central themes that occurred on the first day of the N5M conference was the analysis of the 'Desire to be Wired'. Or, as Geert Lovink put it, the analyis of the myth that seduces us to get on the net. Several speakers adressed this myth in their contribution to the conference, and no doubt this theme will be alive for a while longer. It seems that the moment has come for re-politicizing the cyber-rap of 'the virtual class'.

Steven Kurz (Critical Arts Ensemble, Chicago) and Richard Barbrook (Hypermedia Research Centre, University of Westminster, London) both spoke about this theme during the session 'Desire to be Wired'. And also Mark Dery adressed to it during the N5M opening session 'From Acces to All to Access for What'.

There is a lot to the arguments the speakers have brought forward, though you will have to see through the somewhat pamphletistic tone of the speeches. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a generation conflict, and it may imply 'killing' your parents. To summ up the most important arguments of the speakers:

• We don't want to hear any more giddy euforia about new technologies bringing us new and better lives. No more 'touch-of-the-button-metaphors' please.
• Technology is embedded in the real world, with all its powerstructures, and economical and social inequalities. Technology does not necessarily free us from this.
• The so-called democratic aspect of the net is a popular argument used by the cyberelite in the seduction game. We all (should) know this is not true, but it is difficult to escape the seductive powers of, for instance, the cascade of beautifull advertisements. The appeal is of this understandable, but hypocrite at the same time.
• Our lives are strongly influenced by the computer industry. And this industry is based on a Californian point of view. In a sense we've all been shaped by the westcoast since the sixties.
• Central in the utopian rhetoric on the wired world is the myth of the end of politics. Like technology could bring us to a world beyond politics.
• There is a strong component of sixties, techno-liberalism in the cyber-rap. A bizarre retro-futurism. A strange mixture a the new left and the new right. The cyberhippy capitalists symbolize a new class, a virtual class.
• The worldview of the virtual class requires a very specific 'semiotic software', wich can make you forget the existing inequalites on the level of the hardwae.
• If we do not want to belong to the virtual class we have to acknowledge the political and social situation in the real world around us. Fetishizing the net is denying this situation and the need for working on solutions.

In 'ZK Proceedings 1995, the Next Five Minutes edition' you can find an article from Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron on this theme: 'The Californian Ideology'. The proceedings are also available on print at the desk in de Balie.
Richard Barbrook.

For further reading about the Hypermedia Research Centre you should check http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/

Geke van Dijk (geke@acsi.nl)