IP: DIGITAL NATION L.A. Times column, 4/3/00

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

sent with permission of author djf

> Monday, April 3, 2000
>
> DIGITAL NATION
>
> Foes of "New Economy" Gaining Voice
>
> By Gary Chapman
>
> Copyright 2000, The Los Angeles Times, All Rights Reserved
>
> The baby boomers running and profiting from the "new economy" grew 
> up in, and were shaped by, the countercultural movements of the 
> 1960s and '70s. Indeed, the personal computer itself was once viewed 
> as a "liberation" from the boring, gray and tightly controlled kind 
> of computing imposed by large corporations and their mainframes.
>
> Several notable pioneers of the PC era started out as hippies, 
> commune residents, meditation instructors and even campus radicals. 
> But few if any of these now middle-aged men understand that there's 
> a new culture emerging that's counter to what they've built.
>
> The "dot-com" economy, as it rapidly matures, is setting itself up 
> as a big fat target for rebellion, dissent and possibly even 
> sabotage. The conditions are beginning to resemble what led to the 
> blow-up of the '60s, and if this happens again, it will be, to put 
> it mildly, supremely ironic.
>
> After shamelessly absorbing the rhetorical terms "revolutionary," 
> "cool," "transformational" and all the rest, the new establishment 
> of the new economy may be in for a dose of the real thing.
>
> There are tremors faintly tangible across the country these days.
>
> Over the last few weeks, for example, the South of Market area in 
> San Francisco has been plastered with signs, put up by an anonymous 
> guerrilla propaganda group, that ridicule and satirize the 
> neighborhood's Internet-based companies.
>
> The "KilltheDot" campaign has created slogans that are mostly 
> obscene and therefore can't be repeated here, but which skewer the 
> pretensions and silliness of "dot-com" services. The signs have 
> proliferated around the country through the Internet and are 
> beginning to show up in other urban technology centers.
>
> Last year, we had the images of the "Battle in Seattle," the 
> protests over the World Trade Organization. Those events may be 
> repeated in a few weeks in Washington, D.C., in demonstrations 
> against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. On April 
> 14, there will be national teach-ins on globalization in Washington, 
> with scheduled protests by many of the same groups that were in 
> Seattle.
>
> In recent weeks, 1,500 people marched in protest in Boston against 
> biotechnology and genetically altered foods. And 3,000 trade 
> unionists marched in downtown Los Angeles for higher wages and 
> better working conditions. Students at UCLA and other colleges are 
> building organizations to fight sweatshops in L.A. and overseas.
>
> "There's more and more sense from our donor constituency that money 
> isn't everything, that this has gotten out of hand," says Catherine 
> Suitor, director of development for the Liberty Hill Foundation in 
> Santa Monica.
>
> Liberty Hill has sponsored donor events that address such issues as 
> "Raising Socially Responsible Children," and the turnout has been 
> huge, Suitor says.
>
> Most of the activism in working-class neighborhoods and on college 
> campuses is about inequality. "It's more than just the new 
> technology," Suitor says. "It's more about the divide created by the 
> new economy." She attributed the new restlessness to "anger at 
> corporate power."
>
> Jon Katz, a media critic and author of the new book "Geeks: How Two 
> Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" (Villard Books, 2000), 
> agrees. "What you're seeing shape up is the first big political 
> battle of the 21st century, between individualism and corporatism," 
> Katz says.
>
> Katz follows the growing numbers of young computer mavens who are 
> loosely allied as proponents of open source software, free 
> expression, an open Internet and radical individualism.
>
> These are the young people who are increasingly challenging 
> corporations that are trying to lock down the Internet and secure it 
> for commerce. The mounting wars over intellectual property and 
> network security are just the beginning, Katz says.
>
> "Corporatism is a new phenomenon, and not the same as capitalism or 
> corporations," he says. "It means bigness, controlling markets, mass 
> marketing. Companies are now bigger than ever before. They've 
> acquired most of our mainstream culture, and now they're moving on 
> to the Internet.
>
> "There's a general sense of helplessness and anger," he added. "It 
> used to be you could be an individual and coexist with large 
> corporations, but now you can't. It's the Wal-Marting of America."
>
> Because of the homogenization of mass culture, Katz says, "the place 
> individuals are turning to is the Internet." That's where the battle 
> is being waged by young, smart, computer-savvy free-thinkers.
>
> "These kids are the freest people on Earth. And they're mad." They 
> don't want to see "their" Internet absorbed into mass market 
> culture, and they don't want to see a corporate logo on every Web 
> page. They're contemptuous of how conventional political parties are 
> dependent on high-tech money.
>
> The critical factor is that a lot of these young people can outwit 
> the technologists of the government and private sector and build 
> systems that are always one step ahead of powerful interests.
>
> "These kids are ready to go, ready to rally around a leader," Katz 
> says. "They're not going to go as easily as journalists did, when 
> their media were bought up."
>
> He predicted that soon, perhaps within a couple of years, there will 
> be a political candidate who will emerge from this constituency. 
> "That person will be surprised at how much anger there is out there 
> about corporate power."
>
> "When the war in Vietnam ended, the boomers gave up on revolution 
> and went back to work," Katz says. In fact, they just adopted the 
> terms of that era for advertising. "But these kids are real 
> revolutionaries. They cannot be stopped. They're our last hope," he 
> concluded
>
> Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the 
> University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at 
> > gary.chapman () mail utexas edu.