BOOKS: Liberterians Explore Freedom of the Internet

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Apr 21 1998 (IPS) - Every political ideology can be transmitted through the Internet, from the missives of Zapatista leader ‘Subcomandante Marcos’ to the rantings of the neo-Nazi organisation – White Aryan Resistance. But for some users of the web, the communications network has fostered its own ideology: post-partisan libertarianism.

Some writers, like Jon Katz, who writes a column on the World Wide Web called ‘The Netizen’, argue that the wealthy, educated elite who use on-line communications extensively form a ‘digital nation’ which practises a highly libertarian form of ‘post- politics’.

Others, like the staff of the cynical, witty Web site ‘Suck.com’, question the libertarian values of much Internet discourse, but share Katz’s contempt for such traditional political forces as the mass media, corporations and advertising.

At their worst, some of the latest books from the Net theorists – like Katz’s ‘Media Rants: Postpolitics in the Digital Nation’ (available from Hardwired Books for 13.95 U.S. dollars) and ‘Suck’, a collection of Suck.com pieces, edited by Joey Anuff and Ana Marie Cox (available from Wired for 17.95 dollars), can read like the work of utter cranks.

At their best, the books – like the Websites – can show where the politics of the educated, if “nerdish” youth of the United States is heading.

Sometimes the books accomplish both tasks at once. Katz, for example, is persuasive in warning that “the digital culture is fast becoming one of the most powerful and exclusive elites in history – one that becomes wealthier, better equipped, and more detached from poor, working-class Americans all the time.”

However, within a few pages, he sounds like a priviliged, cranky elitist himself when he argues that “People are responsible for themselves. They can get wired (connected on-line) if they really want to … (Technology) is also Darwinian. The strong survive – the weak can’t be saved.”

Katz, formerly a print journalist, learned once he wrote for the Web the challenges of inter-active publishing. With readers quickly responding to everything he wrote, Katz argues, his work became more democratic, and became a part of the process of communicating rather than the final word – a key difference from what Katz calls ‘the Imperial Media’.

With the Net, he contends, “political journalism – one of America’s most elitist, ethically challenged, and dysfunctional institutions, is collapsing.” It is being replaced, he believes, by a diverse group of Net-connected writers, who believe in freedom of information and multiculturalism, resist censorship – but are also suspicious of ‘big-government’ policies like the welfare state.

Katz often seems to romanticise his ‘digital nation’ for its suspicion of government and big media – but as journalist Wendy Kaminer warns, “People who automatically disbelieve politicians and journalists may instead believe in angels and UFOs.” The spread of myths on the Web – such as the rumour that a Navy missile shot down TransWorld Airlines flight 800 in 1996 – confirms for some the pitfalls of relying too heavily on the Internet for information.

On the other hand, the Web often seems like a gateway to various different types of communication, in which different media – the entertainment world, journalism, politics, advertising – collide in amusing and revealing ways. That, at least, seems to be one of the messages of ‘Suck’, which offers gibes at everything from the 1996 elections to ‘gangsta’ rap, from Nike’s and Microsoft’s domination of the world to the pervasiveness of shopping malls.

Some of the ‘Suck’ pieces are refreshingly self-aware, as with one analysis of the same people who comprise Katz’s digital nation: “Never before in history have nerds, as a class, become economically viable. It was never worthwhile to exploit astronomers. But computer programmes can actually make something people want, something people will pay for.”

In a nice touch, the book version of ‘Suck’ mimicks the Web version by including marginal asides that resemble the linkage between the main text and other sites which can be accessed from them.

At the same time, both book and Website suffer from the same flaw: too much of the writers’ work project a reflexive irony and concern over shallow subject matter – such as sloppy television, or crass consumerism – which is ultimately numbing. Too much concern about the lack of social skills among the computer elite make the digital nation sound like a singularly awkward place, as well.

Katz is probably right that the digital nation is taking on a distinct character – but so far, the smug tone of Net libertarians make the prospect of citizenship in that nation slightly unappealing.