This may be of interest.
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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
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