Performing Digital Activism

New Aesthetics and Discourses of Resistance

Fidèle A. Vlavo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138911246
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317434573
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Digital Media
• Index: Social Sciences

From the emergence of digital protest as part of the Zapatista rebellion, to the use of disturbance tactics against governments and commercial institutions, there is no doubt that digital technology and networks have become the standard features of 21st century social mobilisation. Yet, little is known about the historical and socio-cultural developments that have transformed the virtual sphere into a key site of political confrontation. This book provides a critical analysis of the developments of digital direct action since the 1990s. It examines the praxis of electronic protest by focussing on the discourses and narratives provided by the activists and artists involved. The study covers the work of activist groups, including Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Disturbance Theater and the electrohippies, as well as Anonymous, and proposes a new analytical framework centred on the performative and aesthetic features of contemporary digital activism.

1 ‘I Come from Cyberspace’

The New Stage of Resistance

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

—John Perry Barlow

In February 1996, John Perry Barlow, lyricist of the rock band Grateful Dead, wrote the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. In a flaming email directed to the US government, Barlow condemned the new Telecommunications Act which sanctioned the circulation of indecent and obscene material on the internet. This act infuriated many users who denunciated an infringement to the First Amendment.¹ For Barlow, who also co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organisation dedicated to the protection of free speech online, this latest governmental interference was insufferable. Thus, taking matters into his hands, he declared the independence of cyberspace:

I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

(Barlow, 1996: para. 2)

Barlow’s text is a grandiloquent statement which proclaims cyberspace as the new territory that will provide social and economic prosperity to all. Most importantly though, this digital land is, and should remain, outside of governmental control:

This bill was enacted upon us by people who haven’t the slightest idea who we are or where our conversation is being conducted. … Well fuck them. Or more to the point, let us now take our leave of them. They have declared war on cyberspace. Let us show them how cunning, baffling and powerful we can be in our own defense.

(Barlow, 1996: preface)

The declaration of independence is a seminal piece not only for its discursive construction of cyberspace as a free and self-governed environment, but also for its underlying threat of radical action to protect the space. It is a fascinating example of the type of narratives that have popularised the vision of cyberspace as a brand new world.

Needless to say, the piece received virulent responses when it was first published, partially because of the pompous style that Barlow adopted, but mainly because of his elliptic account of the development of digital technology. The idea that perhaps the internet was never free, or autonomous, is alien to Barlow. On this account, it is very tempting to consider the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace as an idiosyncratic text and many critics have been keen to dismiss it. Yet, Barlow’s piece epitomises the libertarian discourse that underpins the very idea of digital direct action, that is, the assumption that cyberspace is open and democratic, and that it should stay outside of state control.

In one way or another, this conception of the virtual space runs through most of the rationales supporting the development of digital activism. This first chapter thus explores the discourses that construct cyberspace as the new stage of social and political action. The discussion begins with the analysis of specific narratives, or cyber-imaginaires, that posit digital technology as the central engine of social progress. Embedded in these stories is the belief that technology can address the deficiencies of our world. As will become clear from the discussion, many of these narratives are rooted in the history of American culture and society. These cyber-imaginaires require close examination as they embody the core interpretations that have shaped our understanding of digital technology. The chapter therefore focuses on several key texts, including Barlow’s Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace and CAE’s The Electronic Disturbance, and examines their performative ability to lay the grounds of digital direct action.

Imaginaires of Cyberspace

In The Internet Imaginaire, Flichy (2007) introduces the concept of digital imaginaire,explaining that many stories about technology emerged from scientific discoveries, before becoming trendy topics for literature, counterculture movements and mass media publications. Flichy identifies two dominant imaginaires related to cyberspace. The first one comes from the stories created by politicians, industrialists, computer scientists and hackers alike. This imaginaire is embedded in key scientific developments and innovations, such as the internet and mobile technologies. It centres on the possibilities offered by the digital and encourages the production and consumption of electronic commodities. As with many grand narratives about technology, this cyber-imaginaire is linked to the dominant American culture and supported by the excessive enthusiasm generated by public access to computers, and the emergence of online communities.

An account of this trend can be found in the early stories created by the group of American technophiles and business entrepreneurs, known as the digerati. In 1996, Brockman published Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite, an early version of a “who’s who” book about the internet. The term ‘digerati’ was coined by combining ‘digital’ and ‘literati’ (intellectuals), and referred to a specific circle of elite internet users that Brockman introduced in 36 interviews. At the time, he suggested that although not exhaustive, the list still represented the most influential network of individuals in the internet industry. Brockman referred to them as the cyber elite:

A critical mass of the doers, thinkers and writers connected in ways they may not even appreciate, who have tremendous influence on the emerging communication revolution surrounding the growth of the internet and the World Wide Web. Although they all happen to be Americans, their activities have a worldwide impact.

(1996: xxvi)

A close reading of these interviews brings to attention the contradictory discourses that shaped early interpretations of cyberspace. Consider for example, the case of Stewart Alsop, business entrepreneur and former Editor-in-chief of InfoWorld, who is introduced as ‘The Pragmatist’: ‘He likes doing business. He likes making money. He likes things that people are willing to pay for’ (ibid.: 1).² Alsop is said to believe that ‘if the web is going to change our lives substantially, there are going to be plenty of ways to make money, and some will be the ways we already make money’ (ibid.: 2).

Another example is David Bunnell, a cyberelite and founder of the PC Magazine and PC World publications, who explains that to make money online, ‘you need multiple revenue streams. You need advertising revenue, transaction revenue and subscription revenue’ (cited in Brockman, ibid.: 32). Yet, in the same interview, Bunnell, also known as ‘The Seer’, provides another argument, typical of the cyberelite paradoxical approach to digital technologies:

We need a free, unfettered Internet. You can’t trust commercial online services to respect your rights. They are too susceptible to commercial pressures, too likely to cave in when their profits are on the line. The Internet is different, and it should stay that way. The future of our democracy depends upon this, because the Internet has the potential to give individuals much more say in government affairs. (Maybe this, not dirty pictures is what the government is really afraid of?)

(ibid.: 35)

The last comment is a clear reference to the 1996 Communications Act with which the US government attempted to censor the internet (the same one that prompted Barlow’s Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace).

Turner (2006) offers a fascinating account of another context where early ideas of digital technologies fermented. In his book, From Counterculture to Cyberculture,Turner recounts the story of Steward Brand, the personage behind the creation of the most popular early online community. Brand was the central figure of The Whole Earth Lectronic Link, commonly known as The Well, an online community project related to the American counterculture magazine, Whole Earth Catalog. Started in the mid-1980s, The Well was an online bulletin board conceived to facilitate meetings, publications and networking amongst its members. It included well-known contributors such as John Perry Barlow, Howard Rheingold, Kevin Kelly and Esther Dyson, all part of Brockman’s list of digital elite (in Digerati,Stewart Brand’s is known as ‘The Scout’).

The discussions taking place online covered various topics, including counterculture movements, homesteading ecology and mainstream consumption culture, but also, science and computing. Turner (2006) suggests that The Well reflected the entrepreneurial spirit of the Californian Bay Area in the late 1970s, and soon became a space for professional and social networking. The discussions of the board also influenced on the conceptualisation of computer technology and the virtual space:

Over time, the network’s members and forums helped redefine the microcomputer as a “personal” machine, computer communication networks a “virtual communities” and cyberspace itself as the digital equivalent of the western landscape into which so many communards set forth in the late 1960s, the “electronic frontier”.

(Turner, 2006: 6)

Steward Brand successfully brought together separate social groups that began to promote social transformation through digital technologies. These people were elite technophiles as well as dominant players in the industry of computing and software design. Their approach of digital technology therefore readily mixed utopian hippie counterculture with business entrepreneurship. As Brand declared in the first edition of the Whole Earth Catalog: ‘We are as gods and might as well get good at it’ (1968).

Barbrook and Cameron (1995) coined this paradoxical tendency the ‘Californian Ideology’. The two critics retraced the emergence of early digital utopias to the radical transformations of the 1960s, arguing that the new breed of activists and artists emerging from the Bay Area came to view communication technologies as a way to achieve more freedom, but also to fulfil their economic ambitions. This combination of social engagement and libertarian capitalism characterises the Californian Ideology:

This new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the high-tech industries of Silicon Valley. Promoted in magazines, books, TV programs, websites, newsgroups, and Net conferences, the Californian ideology promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies.

(Barbrook and Cameron, 1995: para. 2)

The Californian Ideology is central to the imaginaire of cyberspace as a new world of possibilities. In particular, the ‘bizarre fusion’ transpires from most early accounts by influential internet users, and as will be discussed in the next sections, these cyberelites have conveniently ignored any narratives or events that could challenge their new technological aspirations.

While today The Well could be considered one of the first successful online communities, it must be stated that the digerati constructed their virtual global village at a time when access to the internet was still very limited. In its early days, the project operated on a teleconferencing system and subscribers had to dial up a central computer line to post messages. Participation in the project was therefore unequal. Conversations and debates were often dominated by the same few people. According to Flichy (2007: 74), 1% of the participants (around 70 people), produced half of the messages. Flichy explains that ‘the community was not linked to a geographic territory, very few people expressed themselves and the vast majority simply observed the debate (read messages) as in most online communities’ (ibid.).

Flichy also suggests that the virtual community did not operate as globally as anticipated, since ‘in BBS [bulletin board services] writing was the only form of interaction between individuals, and that interaction was possible only if members shared a common vocabulary, form of speech, and, more generally, culture’ (ibid.: 85). In addition, those who participated were more inclined to reproduce the dominant discourse of virtual community promoted by the founders. In the end, The Well was not the digital public sphere it claimed to be, and the digerati’s imaginaire of a virtual open community, responsible for its own politics, economy and ecology, seems to reflect a desire to assert ownership of the internet.

At the time of her interview with Brockman, New York Times columnist, Denise Caruso, rightly brought attention to the fact that most internet users were predominantly white privileged males. She therefore called for increased awareness about access, and for governmental support in the development of public infrastructure (1996: 53). The alias Brockman had for Caruso was ‘The Idealist’, a rather ironic choice, considering the role of many members of the digerati and The Well who circulated idealistic tropes about the transformative power of technology and virtual communities, with little introspection about their own positions.

Along with the primary imaginaire,Flichy identifies a second imaginaire which is not associated with specific technological innovations or directed to a particular audience. This other imaginaire assumes that digital technology is the foundation of social progress and the transformation of the human condition. Flichy describes it as ‘a complete imaginary construction encompassing all aspects of the new digital society: individual life, relations between body and mind, micro and macro social management of society, and production and distribution of wealth’ (2007: 107).

A key element is that this imaginaire tends to be shared by distinct social groups that would otherwise have little in common. Lister et al explain the phenomenon, suggesting that ‘some tendencies that may have been originally posited (in psychoanalytical theory) as belonging to individuals are also observed to be present at the level of social groups and collectivities’ (2003: 60). For instance, the idea that digital technologies could have a redeeming function is a belief shared by many people outside of the technological field. These beliefs in the transformative power of technology are usually spread through idealistic narratives that promise the emergence of new social order, fair economic growth and democratic systems. The internet is a core example of a technology that has prompted the resurgence of ideals of democracy. In this internet imaginaire,cyberspace is perceived as a digital miracle, a ‘new’ virtual world, which supersedes geographical frontiers and revives the collective dream of global social change.

For Flichy, these utopian constructions come from early writings on digital technology, such as the work of Howard Rheingold on virtual reality and community. These texts transpose complex scientific developments into the sphere of ‘ordinary sociability’ (2007: 90), through which they become part of everyday’s accounts and understanding of technology. Flichy further explains that as the first generation of personal computer users became dissatisfied with the limited and slow development of technology, utopian projections and digital dreams functioned as imaginary substitutions.

This is when science-fiction literature takes on a central role. From novels depicting the merging of humans and machines, to stories about the triumph of artificial intelligence; from the writings of H.G. Wells and Isaac Asimov to those of Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson, science-fiction has contributed to the ways in which human and computer interaction is conceived and experienced. The most famous book in this genre is certainly Neuromancer by Canadian author William Gibson. This novel is regularly cited as the preeminent work of cyberpunk literature, a science-fiction genre which emerged in North America during the early 1980s. Written in 1984, as part of the Sprawl trilogy,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Digital Performance
• 1 ‘I Come from Cyberspace’: The New Stage of Resistance
• 2 ‘Little Electronic Shadow’: The Virtual Body
• 3 ‘What CD once was, ECD is now’: The Legacy of Contention
• 4 ‘Not Found on this Server’: The Performance of Protest
• 5 ‘I Did It for the Lulz’: The Humour of Disturbance
• Conclusion: Tactical Performance
• Bibliography
• Index