Dark Fiber Electronic Culture: History, Theory, Practice Timothy Druckrey, series editor Ars Electronica: Facing the Future edited by Timothy Druckrey with Ars Electronica, 1999 net_condition: art and global media edited by Peter Weibel and Timothy Druckrey, 2001 Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture Geert Lovink Dark Fiber Tracking Critical Internet Culture Geert Lovink The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. Set in Bell Gothic and Courier by The MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lovink, Geert. Dark fiber : tracking critical internet culture / Geert Lovink. p. cm. — (Electronic culture—history, theory, practice) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-262-12249-9 (hc. : alk. paper) 1. Internet—Social aspects. 2. Information society. 3. Culture. I. Title. II. Series. HM851 .L68 2002 303.48'33—dc21 2001059641 Dark fiber refers to unused fiber-optic cable. Often times companies lay more lines than what’s needed in order to curb costs of having to do it again and again. The dark strands can be leased to individuals or other companies who want to establish optical connections among their own locations. In this case, the fiber is neither controlled by nor connected to the phone company. Instead, the company or individual provides the necessary components to make it functional. —www.webopedia.internet.com Contents Acknowledgements viii Introduction: Twilight of the Digirati 2 Theory Essay on Speculative Media Theory (1996) 22 Portrait of the Virtual Intellectual (1997) 30 Case Studies The Digital City—Metaphor and Community (2001) 42 The Moderation Question: Nettime and the Boundaries of Mailing List Culture (2001) 68 Crystals of Net Criticism Language? No Problem (1996) 122 A Push Media Critique (1997) 130 Mass Psychology of the Net: A Proposal (1998) 136 Net.Times, Not Swatch Time: 21st-Century Global Time Wars (1998) 142 Fragments of Network Criticism (1999) 160 Sweet Erosions of Email (2000) 176 Travelogues Culture after the Final Breakdown: Tirana, Albania, May 1998 (1998) 182 The 9/21 Aftershocks: Taiwan, December 1999 (1999) 194 At the Opening of New Media Centre Sarai: Delhi, February 2001 (2001) 204 Dynamics of Net Culture Radical Media Pragmatism (1998) 218 Network Fears and Desires (1998) 226 An Early History of 1990s Cyberculture (1999) 234 The Importance of Meetspace: On Conferences and Temporary Media Labs (2000) 240 An Insider’s Guide to Tactical Media (2001) 254 Reality Check Organized Innocence and War in the New Europe: Adilkno, Culture, and the Independent Media (1995) 276 Soros and the NGO Question, or The Art of Being Independent (1997) 296 Information Warfare: From Propaganda Critique to Culture Jamming (1998) 306 Kosovo: War in the Age of Internet (1999) 318 Towards a Political Economy Cyberculture in the Dotcom Age (2000) 330 The Rise and Fall of Dotcom Mania (2001) 348 Hi-Low: The Bandwidth Dilemma, or Internet Stagnation after Dotcom Mania (2001) 370 Bibliography 380 Acknowledgements This study has the Internet as its natural environment. It is there that the ideas first developed and ought be contextualized. These days, the book is no longer the domi- nant storage medium of knowledge. Yet, it offers an opportunity for the author to re- assess and filter thoughts into a comprehensive body of files. The copy-paste feature is no longer a disdainful, shameful feature of writing. Rather, it is exciting to see how text crystals travel through the net, are translated or pop up in different contexts, get deleted only to reappear elsewhere. Most of the texts in this book appeared in earlier versions on mailing lists and web sites, in particular nettime and Telepolis, sometimes under different titles. Concepts have grown out of dialogues and interviews, electronic and real-life conver- sations with hundreds of colleague media theorists, activists, journalists, programmers, and designers. Even though this book bears my name (indeed, it is the first book of essays in English with my name on it), I regard it as a collective body of knowledge. A considerable part of my thinking, and of this book, has been developed from col- laborations. My media theory framework goes back to the years I spent in Berlin in the 1980s and the early 1990s and to my work in the Netherlands as an editor of Mediamatic magazine (1989–1994) and as a member of the Adilkno group (the Foun- dation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge; Agentur; Bilwet in Dutch or German). In particular, the long-standing collective writing experience with Adilkno member Arjen Mulder has been one of great joy and inspiration. One text in this book, “Organized Innocence and War in the New Europe: Adilkno, Culture and the Independent Media,” explicitly bridges the Adilkno canon with my own theoretical work. As one of the founders of the Amsterdam Digital City project, I promoted and closely monitored this large Internet community project from an early stage. Traveling as a “cultural ambassador” of Amsterdam new media culture, I have done a lot of promotion and critical work in this context. “The Digital City—Metaphor and Community” draws heavily on collaborative writings with Patrice Riemens. The Digital City ideas sprang out of collaborations since the late 1980s with Caroline Nevejan and Marleen Stikker around projects within the framework of Paradiso, De Balie, Digital City, and the Society for Old and New Media. My friendship and working relationship with Pit Schultz during the stormy period 1995–1998 was intensively productive. A great deal of the thinking on net criticism was developed during our collaboration, while building up the nettime list and other publishing activities. Perhaps at some stage our Netzkritik essays, written in German, will become available in English. Tactical media and debates on net activism should be credited to the Amsterdam Next Five Minutes circles, in particular Eveline Lubbers, Jo van der Spek, Patrice Riemens, David Garcia, Menno Grootveld, and Andreas Broeckmann. Writings on this topic have been published under David Garcia’s name and under mine, and parts of these have been used here. Extensive exchanges and collaborations with DeeDee Halleck, Florian Schneider, Sam de Silva, Ravi Sundaram, and other Sarai members have been instrumental in formulating media activist strategies. My ongoing collaboration with the designer Mieke Gerritzen should be mentioned here separately. This book is only one of the many projects we have worked on together, the results of which continue to astonish me. Over the years the following persons and media outlets have supported me in my work and been a source of inspiration: Basjan van Stam, Janos Sugar, Peter Lunenfeld, Lev Manovich, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Siegfried Zielinski, Thorsten Schilling, Toek of DFM Radio/TV International, the Amsterdam free radio stations Radio 100 and Radio Patapoe, Stefaan Decostere, the editors of the journal Andere Sinema, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Jim Fleming and others of the Autonomedia collec- tive, Katharina Teichgräber, Wim Nijenhuis, Andreas Kallfelz, Nel and Ben and the Acknowledgements others of Kloof 57, Telepolis editor Armin Medosch, the crew from Mute magazine, Bart Schut of VPRO Radio, Mark Dery, Graham Harwood, Marita Liulia, McKenzie Wark, Toshiya Ueno, Howard Rheingold, and Saskia Sassen. Without having met them I would most certainly have taken other paths. I have to mention Klaus Theweleit and Friedrich Kittler here separately. Their work has been a great source of inspiration in finding my own style and place within media theory. As a non-native English speaker, editorial support from many has played a key role in the decision to bring the texts together and the actual work. Because of the special status of English as lingua franca of the Internet, I decided to include a text on the issue of “Euro-English,” written in the time when I realized that waiting for publishers to translate my work into English was a waste of time. I am no longer sure which English is apparent in my writing and spoken accent: it’s a melange of the old Dutch layer in me, the lovely long and complex German sentences (which I have to miss now), the stiff sentences of BBC Worldservice, Internet pidgin, and the English of Australia, the country I now call home. Since 1995 Matthew Fuller, Ted Byfield, Geneva Anderson, Patrice Riemens, Linda Wallace, David Hudson, Anita Mage, and McKenzie Wark have been doing great work polishing my texts, editorial work which all flew into this book. Laura Martz translated both ISEA 94 and 95 lectures from Dutch, parts of which were used. For this book Willard Uncapher, jonathan jay, Scott McQuire, Ed Phillips, Ned Rossiter, and in particular Katie Mondloch were all helpful with comments and con- tributed greatly in copy editing different parts. Because of all the fragments shifting through the manuscript I refrained from mentioning who exactly copy edited which part. Timothy Druckrey and Linda Wallace went through the manuscript with great care. [Only light editing was done at The MIT Press.] Thanks to Chris Swart Sr. and Michael van Eeden for their ongoing software and hardware support. In particular I would like to mention Felipe Rodriquez for his gen- <x <x xi> Acknowledgements erous contribution in helping to make it all happen. I would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the Dutch ThuisKopie Fonds and the Fonds voor Beeldende Kunsten, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst (Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture). It was series editor Timothy Druckrey, during a visit to New York in late October 2000, who invited me to do this book and gave me the courage to write it, directly in English.