---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:36:35 -0700
From: el@riseup.net
To: nettime
Subject: <nettime> cyberpunk is dead
Resent-Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 08:51:20 +0200
Resent-From: nettime@kein.org
Resent-To: Nettime
notes on the development of the so-called social web and the role of
cyberpunks inside this process
http://el.blogsport.de/2011/03/28/cyberpunk-is-dead/
The weakness of cyberpunk was its virtuality, being a complex of
imagery mostly used by writers in fiction, by bloggers in egomany and
by journalists in, well, journalism. What was missing, is a
cyberpunk realism, in the sense of an aesthetics that relates to and
occupies something else than the realms of literature. From this
viewpoint, real existing cyberpunk was the adaption of cyberpunk as a
shiny static representation for what was left of the dynamic of
electronic pioneers, the early computer hackers, and their process of
dissolving their avant-guard status in time and into mass. Comparable
to the punks that were the mass reproduction of the avantgarde
activists before them. The name of this historic forerunner of punk
referred to here, was the Situationist International, a 1950s and 60s
avantgarde group (Read their texts and Greil Marcus history book).
Just like the situationists worked at the fissure between literature
and street, the early real-existing cyberpunks worked at the fissure
of literature and cyberspace. The cyberpunk literature served its
purpose to provide aesthetic naratives some time ago, and in the
ensuing process the real-existing groups that were trying to adapt
these clichis turned into clichis for others to adapt to. A virtual
movement.
What constitutes the weakness of the aesthetic force, results in the
weakness as a material force: Cyberpunk made its way on the market of
despiritualized ideas, as the shopping good for the masses. Ever tried
to squat something in Secondlife, like offline punks would do?
Technically impossible. In the process to solve this dilemma,
cyberpunk had to give up integral parts to be able to work on social
topics without a realism and therefore without a political strategy.
Which led to a certain aligning with the social and economical facts
in the process of trying to gain a social impact through the cyberpunk
models. Wondering why Wikileaks doesnt have a wiki anymore? Because
cypherpunk (with ph in this case, refering to those fractions of
cyberpunk that focuse on encryption) was either mass movement or
political tactics of an avant-guard. In deciding to focus on political
manouvres, an open publishing model is not fitting anymore. Contrary
to this, CHAN-culture (imageboards, fast communication channels) and
the ANON-meme (crowd orientated cyber actions) try different ways in
waging real mass-based cyberwars, they reach this point by being more
punk again, punk as in: deviant subculture that parents are afraid of.
Still inside this historic #fail of cyberpunk, there were hacker
groups and cyberpunk collectives not only representing the literary
images of cyberpunk, but trying to do cyberpunk realism. In the sense
of picking up the punk culture and porting it to the cyberspace.
Working with images and text in the new media, taking it back to the
roots of post-war pre-punk movements, creating free tools, cultural
gifts and mixed artworks, like all the minds from Guy Debord (and many
before), to John Lyndon, to Allen Ginsberg, to Wau Holland, had shown
the way. But working with punk attitude in the 90s and the Zeros
proofs to be a delicate business. Now we can see the last phase of
cyberpunk, the virus has spread, it has dissolved into one of its more
justified aims: the dissolution in non-elitist mass approaches. If you
search today for crazy netpunks, doing the mix with images, ideas and
slogans, fighting cyberwars against scientology and other creepy
institutions, you dont come to the avantgarde collectives, you go the
chans.
These collectives had been reaching out to you, flooding you with
texts, movies, songs, images, a vast wave of media. Working all the
time under fake identities to give away anticommodities of a little
countercultureindustry. With that fulfilling the idealist idea of the
free and useful citizens. Only through the nature of these efforts
being collective and collaborative, this theater of autonomy could be
kept running, serving as a good example to all little self-managed
projects out there that with a little circle of friends you can reach
everything you can imagine. Nothing else though. So when the
participants got tired of the shooting in the dark acceleration these
collective products had taken, all the releases, all the
administration, all the fuzz, it went down the spiral of
individualization: moving to a aggregation of solo blogs, then moving
on to the short notes of twitter, a medium only to well fitting for
the self-advertisement. After the autonomous text production of the
last two decades, we face a shift to short notes and images. The DIY
music scene remains a bit unaffected by this, since the hope to become
a money earning musician is still a more powerful cultureindustrial
meme than the one of a writer actually getting paid. The recent
shifting from myspace to facebook shows although, that
everyone-is-an-artist wasnt a powerful enough idea. It had to be
self-representation, mini-blogging, star-cult, focus on images and
other spectacular media instead of text: The hyperindividualist
self-representation platform of facebook suited the masses best.
For large parts, this big network is filled with representations of
static faces. Faces, that are amongst our most subliminal ways of
communicating, become our fastest and most plain way of making a
statement. Update profile picture, comment, like, like back, update
again. The collectivization of communication (lat. communicare = do
sth. together) failed, in fact this means the failure of mass art.
Todays market of representations means that we exchange images that
are valued by statements without consequence, statements whose only
value is the one of attention, something we have learned from the
advertising process, which has become the key process of culture. This
cultural praxis fails to find a history of the human faces. The faces
tried to break the boundaries of word and image, they were processes
of conscious creation of speaking images for the feelings that words
fail to describe. The times of boredom that everyone wanders now,
through images that dont form related stories anymore, are a result
of loosing our dream of creating non-static post-representative
playful expressions. To associate the fragile idea of friendship still
with the formalized and online media based networks of friends is
the dramatic deception that covers this loss. It was the fragile
nature of friendship itself that was lost, that what made
communication between friends comfortable. The need to be near to
others and to be free on ones own at the same time, was dissolved into
the mode of being present to each other only through distance. The
tools of social media cover up the failure of the social itself.
Giving up the idea of the possibility of social relations in which one
can give each other the comfort of being together and granting all
freedom the same time, is a failure whose results may be not so easy
to cover. This is not a judgment about the idea of mass communication
per se, but about the idea and modes of social media networks.
Coming back to the crews for once: the game of creating a strong
collective representation that immediately represents itself was
programmed to fail in a society that only uses representations to mark
the value of exchangeability. The punk image of a cybergang that
somehow evades the mainstream norms and holds up the, now
conservative, ideas of elite and underground was the joke that had to
choke itself. It was working with the idea of an everchanging
collective project that would remain the same all the time in order to
avoid to spoil the fans. This planned contradiction of the ultimate
hype was not scandalous anymore when the whole web turned to the
noncontradictive targeted creation of hypes. What these groups had
caricatured since decades was only about to become the online model of
creating static ideas that represent dynamic change. The cybergangs
were constructed never to end, because as a project, a channel, it was
not aiming for something and therefore it couldnt fail. Other media
collectives of today, opposed to this, want to start because they
realize that pictured dynamics has to be the key feature of a
successful industrial media product.
So from this learning process we gain the perspective of boringness.
Being a progressive participant of cyberspace today is not about being
elite and surfing the most underground hubs. Its about surfing on the
top of it all, on the big normal junkyard of human creation and
picking up the inspirations together. Its also about reading a book
again, following an authors thought through 400 pages instead of 140
letters. And also in the same sense: doing a website again, a static
thing that waits for hundreds to come by, just like a book in the
library, instead of giving daily updates to attract some other
thousands that need their daily fix of info. Some books still are more
actual than the daily news reports (when these were still existing,
now the news must be updated all the time). And maybe the lost dreams
in these books need an actualisation through a website, instead of
just a quotation in the fast streams of actualities. Its about
refusing the entertainment, its about finding enlightment in thought
processes themselves and not in what forms they have been given for
representation. Its about picking up something dead and giving it
life instead of living the perpetual death of the bubble of statements.
The non-conformism of today is a real challenge: To deal with
something beyond the instantaneous satisfaction of a pseudodynamic
static image. The progressive illustrations, thoughts, projects and
processes will need you to stumble over them, to search for them, to
look closely or even stare at them (not like you stared at the TV
since 50 years ago, at youtube since 5 years ago). It needs you to
stop worrying about the central hub, website or plattform that you
feel like home in. It needs you to stop worrying about any rss-feeds
that you only used to feed your identity out of angst in this process
of identification, representation and individualisation. Not to learn
even more exiting ways of being alone you can easily find those in
the entertainment industry but to pick up again the idea of
communication. Surf around, take off from time to time and play with
what and whom you might find.
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