Grasping at Bits -- Art and Intellectual Control in the Digital Age: Version 1.1 Patrick Lichty Editors Note: This essay was originally written in 2000 to inventorying, quantifying and exploiting the 'need' to address then current issues in net.culture and globalism, and create a homogenous mass culture of the production updated in 2004. In its original form, G@B was written in an and consumption of corporate signs. It is an extension ‘associative’ fashion, using The Brain technology to draw of 20th Century materialist culture, spurred on by the associations between the more or less associated, semi- explosive forces created by the confluence of global- independent lexia. This linear version is the first time this essay has been seen in print. The original version was the ization, international capitalism, and fin de millennium recipient of an Honorable Mention at Ars Electronica 2000. technological expansion. This cycle of production per- meates all aspects of society from the cradle to the Introduction grave, due to the necessity of the complete develop- At the turn of the millennium, the international art com- ment of unchecked capitalism within the international munity has begun to recognize the significance of the milieu. Multinational conglomerates construct complete Internet as a milieu for expression and critical inquiry consumer cultures enabling the mass consumption of of issues such as the globalization of capitalist culture. their brands of food, entertainment, art, clothing, or The increasingly Blade Runner-esque role of corporate transportation without requiring the consumer to leave culture, 'big money' in global society, and cyberspace the safety of the corporation's influence. Thus, coordi- in particular, raises questions about freedom of nated marketing strategies homogenize the market expression and the controlling influence over intellec- and the audience by channeling signs through the tual property by multinational corporations. Artists who combined experience of consumption and reinforce- critique the expanding role of corporate power make ment of the company's signifiers. The creation of a visible the cultural terrain of this power relation, fre- 'pure' experience of production and consumption sys- quently through subsequent litigation by the very insti- tematically unifies global economies of symbolic and tutions under scrutiny. In addition, events such as the material exchange. Producer and receiving audience Leonardo and etoy controversies have brought to light of the interchange of material and aesthetic property how corporations enforce their brand identity over are combined into a 'New World Order' of a single con- artistic groups that predate them through the exertion sumer community. But then, 'It's a small world after all,' of legal force. isn't it? In a 'Golden Age' of global capitalism, brand names The Transparence of Hypercapitalism and corporate culture are nearly ubiquitous within Hypercapitalism, in its all-pervasiveness must seep into Western society. The centrality of the media image as every aspect of global culture so that it may saturate its identity pervades the whole of our cultural milieu, and markets to maximize its productive potential. Jean calls into question the linkages between the material Baudrillard, in The Transparency of Evil [2], posited that and the aesthetic as symbols of exchange. In a society in a society inundated with media, cultural attributes of that increasingly centers itself on the production and different genres expand to ubiquity throughout a given consumption of symbolic information, what are the milieu. In a media-saturated society, sports become poli- tics, politics become pornography, art becomes war, war issues of control over the aesthetic object arising from becomes a video game, and capitalism becomes sport, such a paradigmatic shift? Can any freedom of aes- ad infinitum. This is not to say that all aspects of culture thetic expression be assured in a climate of the within the mediated society cannot become one another, increasing capitalistic expansion in a 'free' market as they do. However, it is the way in which the cultural economy or will such influences signal a cyberspatial aspects combine that is of particular interest. The trans- 'Tragedy of the Commons' (Hardin)? This essay parence of culture is evident from American television attempts to provide a critical perspective on the matrix ads, which tout the excitement of day trading on of issues surrounding the questions of corporate influ- Ameritrade, the tribal identity sold by Nike and The Gap ence and control of intellectual property. Subsequently, (EVERYONE in vests!), and the remote-control titillation I will speculate on the possible implications of the of the CNN coverage of the Gulf War and all subsequent intersection between the aesthetic and the material in events. And it should be no different that after the end of the age of the Internet. the Cold War, that Western society would bask in its vic- tory by allowing capitalism to pervade all aspects of life Colonization of the New World (DOS Kapital) through the culture of consumerism. The new colonizing force of the 21st Century is all-per- vasive, a Hyper-capitalism [1] that fulfills all desire by Intelligent Agent 4.2.3 2004 IP.sichty.01 The Potential of the Object tal revolution. Such strategies of legitimacy and The potential of the object, material or symbolic, must verisimilitude (as WIRED became 'the source' for the be reduced to that of commodity use value. By defini- future of technocracy) drew the attention of mega-pub- tion, corporate culture strives towards the maximum lisher Conde Nast, which purchased the magazine. utilization of all resources to obtain the greatest profit And, without surprise, the homogenizing effect of capital regardless of the mode of exchange -- regardless of was seen immediately in the pages of the magazine. whether the symbols of exchange are durable goods Less coverage about research and prognostication, and or aesthetic content. All content is potential product, more about CEOs, entrepreneurs, and their high-tech and must be exploited to its fullest extent. We want to products. The channel for the high-tech culture had not only see the touring Monet (Mon-ey?) exhibition, been appropriated and controlled, assuring efficient but we want to take home the print and buy the T-shirt delivery of product to the consumer every month, while Mondo still appeared to be produced on a schedule that as well, go to the chat room on monet.com, and then was quite erratic. Assessing the two magazines and the wear the shirt to the Rivera exhibition, so that we can shift in journalistic strategy after WIRED's multinational buy its bag and screensaver. As all aspects of the buyout, it seemed that, in the latter case, capital had object become fetishized symbols of commodification, expanded to fill the space allotted. it is no surprise that the local branch of the art muse- um is at the shopping mall. Museums are placing their shops at the entrance, and The Museum Store has The Centrality of the Image become a potent signifier of the hypercapitalistic As capital colonizes cyberspace, we are reminded of reconfiguration of aesthetic cultural forms. The cyclical Negroponte's prognostication of the shift from systems commodification of signs is most prevalent on the of exchange based on atoms (material) to one of bits Internet, where all information is a potential symbol of (information). [5] This follows Baudrillard's assertion exchange, and reifies the homogenous cult of com- that the media, and especially digital societies, are modity. based on the simulacrum of the object that translates into the double for the thing itself [6] and exhibits full Intermezzo: Mondo and WIRED equivalence for any exchange of use value. In fact, the image itself has now become a symbol of exchange, There are few examples that illustrate the cultural col- as many societies shifted from hard coin to promissory onization by capital as well as the stories of the two note. Western society is changing from an economy of magazines Mondo 2000 and WIRED. [3] In the first symbols of exchange to a system of symbols for half of the 1990s, there was a plethora of well-pro- exchange. The material becomes less of an issue as duced fringe maga-'zines' that epitomized the bur- the real is increasingly placed in the realm of the infor- geoning cyberculture of the Bay area, and the best mational object. known of these was arguably Mondo. Slick and highly aestheticized, Mondo focused on the culture of the tragically hip at the bleeding edge of contemporary Paradigm and Spasm culture. It featured visionaries such as Brenda Laurel, With regard to Negroponte's writing [7] on the conver- Jaron Lanier, and astrophysicist Fiorella Teranzi, sion from the material to the informational society, par- among others. Mondo was the operating manual for adigmatic schisms become evident if one considers the silicon Haight Ashbury of the early 90s. material and information-based systems of exchange. For the past two hundred years, Western society has Enter WIRED. At its inception, it was the geeks' been dominated by the materialist capitalism that built answer to Mondo 2000. Similarly slick and polished, it since the Industrial Revolution. The initial response the difference was that it focused less on the aestheti- of corporate culture was to apply the materialist princi- cization of possible futures and more on the culture of ples of mid-20th century industrial consumerism to places like Silicon Valley research communities and electronic realms of intellectual capital. Wall Street has MIT. The difference in ideology is similar to that of the shown that the info-culture operates on substantially Shaper and Mechanist clades in Sterling's Schismatrix different principles than the previous industrial society, Plus [4], and relates to those cultures' desire to as investments and returns from the tech sector are remake humanity through genetic manipulation or frequently not measured in terms of actual holdings technological augmentation through prosthetics.