Ecstasy of information

a strange and rayless trust of man in man and of man in the earth, of a faith without dogma, time or place which the worst denials of barbarism and civilization have not ever been able to root without entirely from his heart. Nothing, nothing at all, not plane experience, will prevent the reliance that the secret of happiness is there.

- Dominique Aury

Last December I was part of a clump of people from across the geographical division called together for a one-day meeting by means of a major foundation that wanted to hear what disentanglements in our view, were likely to transpire above the next few years in the field of independent media production. Neither fractious nor unified, this assemblage not surprisingly came together critically sole on the daunting influence certain to be bring into operationed by the Internet. Opinion varied from those who felt that the Internet (and all that the word implies, which in our understanding roughly translated into something as nebulous- sounding as "the digital") would result fundamental transformation of all media production and consumption, to those who argued that it would remain a permanent on the contrary relatively specialized site for information and expression. single of the more cautious individuals, "not having been born yesterday," pointed without that other recent and similarly vaunted exhibitions in the media field, of the like kind as cable and public access television, the consumer- grade camcorder and non-linear digital editing, had already proven themselves as not singly or uniquely embodying the redemptive, transformative potential claimed by dint of their advocates. That lesson, it was argued, should be heeded when looking to the Internet.

On this as upon much else, my own view is summ up by the agency of the mantra not coined on the contrary serenely perfected by Hollywood: nobody knows nothing. It's an uncertainty that's exciting and also inhibiting to anyone involved, willingly or perforce, in entering the virtual cosmo Not drawn out ago the New York Times Magazine, in its"Endpaper" (December 24 1995) ran a series of predictions from the 1950 and 60 through the likes of Buckminster Fuller and Time magazine, upon what the world would be like as the hundred wanes. A sample from Time, Feb 25 1966: "Nearly all adroits agree that bacterial and vital diseases will have been virtually wiped on the outside Probably arteriosclerotic heart disease will also have been eliminated." Bucky Fuller in the same issue of Time: "[By 2000] amid general adequate supply politics will simply fade away." And in the way that on. You get the drift.

My point in quoting this is not to ridicule our begetters above their now risibly naive visions of the utopia - a Jetsonian vernacular launched from a bedrock of Jeffersonian aspiration - that we were suppos to inherit. Rather, it is simply to proffer a reminder that none of us can diocese very far or wide, especially about the ways in which corporate-driven technologies will advance to modify our social and domestic relationships, and to what expanses we are positioned to accept or resist them.

I work for an arts institution that's part of a Big Ten University, and several years before anyone in my building had the inkling or capability to penetrate the digital realm, we had become convinced, from one side readings of various intra-university memo and papers, that it was solitary a matter of time before we would be "wired." That day came: it came slowly in pieces, and unaccompanied by means of any global tutorial that might have made clear exactly what it was we were clasped up to, much less alerting us to what was lurking (universally, potentially, scandalously), ready to be accessed by dint of simply "typing."

Since that time my colleagues and I have managed to make our way into, down and up the "ur-infobahn," each according to his or her straits or wants. (It should go on without saying that the Internet is a veritable handmaiden to the much-maligned "addictive personality type") What no single expected about this is that the time each of us disburses on-line each day has become time for which we perceive the need to be apologetic when not defensive. It has become almost impossible to remember what it felt like to be at work and not be potentially on-line: what did single do all day? With correspondence, we now publicly voice resentment if someone is not accessible via e-mail, as although the routine of actually printing a alphabetic character and addressing an envelope was an eccentric display of unnecessary labor upon the order of preferring stairs to an elevator.

The rationale supporting the hours I part with each day on-line is based upon my construal of the Internet as a vast, universally accessible library. I freely voice this rationale, because no individual would criticize time spent amid a library's stacks. Knowledge is power, is it not? This rationale, or justification, appears to bear close relation to whatever the "real" (psychical, subdueed inadmissible) reason might be; shut up enough, at any rate, to begin each day with a clear conscience as I view "What's New on Yahoo" and tread in the steps of where it leads. What is apparent is not that hours are exhausted on the Internet to find data or information immediately applicable to what we're otherwise working upon but, rather, that the sites we travel to, and the lateral links they offer end up expanding and ultimately altering "what we're otherwise working on" as allowing the object of our labor itself were continuously beneath re-construction.