Californian Ideology
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron
"Not to lie about the future is impossible and one can lie about it at will"
Naum Gabo
Introduction
The California Ideology is a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and
counter-culture libertarianism and is promulgated by magazines such as Wired and
Mondo 2000 as well as the books of Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and many
others. The new faith has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students,
thirty-something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats and even the
President of the USA himself. As usual, Europeans have not been slow to copy the
latest fashion from America. While a recent EU report recommended adopting the
Californian free enterprise model to build the 'infobahn', cutting-edge artists and
academics have been championing the 'post-human' philosophy developed by the
West Coast's Extropian cult. With no obvious opponents, the global dominance of
the Californian Ideology appears to be complete.
On superficial reading, the writings of the Californian ideologists are an amusing
cocktail of Bay Area cultural wackiness and in-depth analysis of the latest
developments in the hi-tech arts, entertainment and media industries. Their politics
appear to be impeccably libertarian - they want information technologies to be used
to create a new 'Jeffersonian democracy' in cyberspace where every individual
would be able to express themselves freely. Implacable in its certainties, the
Californian Ideology offers a fatalistic vision of the natural and inevitable triumph of
the hi-tech free market - a vision which is blind to racism, poverty and environmental
degradation and which has no time to debate alternatives.
The Rise of the Virtual Class
Back in the '60s, Marshall McLuhan preached that the power of big business and big
government would be overthrown by the intrinsically empowering effects of new
technology on individuals. Many hippies were influenced by the theories of
McLuhan and believed that technological progress would automatically turn their
non- conformist libertarian principles into political fact. The convergence of media,
computing and telecommunications, they trusted, would inevitably result in
electronic direct democracy - the electronic agora - in which everyone would be able
to express their opinions without fear of censorship.
Encouraged by McLuhan's predictions, West Coast radicals became involved in
developing new information technologies for the alternative press, community radio
stations, home-brew computer clubs and video collectives.
During the '70s and '80s, many of the fundamental advances in personal computing
and networking were made by people influenced by the technological optimism of
the new left and the counter-culture. By the '90s, some of these ex-hippies had even
become owners and managers of high-tech corporations in their own right and the
pioneering work of the community media activists has been largely recuperated by
the hi-tech and media industries.
Although companies in these sectors can mechanise and sub-contract much of their
labour needs, they remain dependent on key people who can research and create
original products, from software programs and computer chips to books and tv
programmes. These skilled workers and entrepreneurs form the so-called 'virtual
class': '...the techno-intelligentsia of cognitive scientists, engineers, computer
scientists, video-game developers, and all the other communications specialists...'
(Kroker and Weinstein) Unable to subject them to the discipline of the assembly-line
or replace them by machines, managers have organised such intellectual workers
through fixed-term contracts. Like the 'labour aristocracy' of the last century, core
personnel in the media, computing and telecoms industries experience the rewards
and insecurities of the marketplace. On the one hand, these hi-tech artisans not only
tend to be well-paid, but also have considerable autonomy over their pace of work
and place of employment. As a result, the cultural divide between the hippie and the
organisation man has now become rather fuzzy. Yet, on the other hand, these
workers are tied by the terms of their contracts and have no guarantee of continued
employment. Lacking the free time of the hippies, work itself has become the main
route to self-fulfillment for much of the 'virtual class'.
Because these core workers are both a privileged part of the labour force and heirs
of the radical ideas of the community media activists, the Californian Ideology,
therefore, simultaneously reflects the disciplines of market economics and the
freedoms of hippie artisanship. This bizarre hybrid is only made possible through a
nearly universal belief in technological determinism. Ever since the '60s, liberals - in
the social sense of the word - have hoped that the new information technologies
would realise their ideals. Responding to the challenge of the New Left, the New
Right has resurrected an older form of liberalism: economic liberalism. In place of
the collective freedom sought by the hippie radicals, they have championed the
liberty of individuals within the marketplace. From the '70s onwards, Toffler, de
Sola Pool and other gurus attempted to prove that the advent of hypermedia would
paradoxically involve a return to the economic liberalism of the past. This
retro-utopia echoed the predictions of Asimov, Heinlein and other macho sci-fi
novelists whose future worlds were always filled with space traders, superslick
salesmen, genius scientists, pirate captains and other rugged individualists. The path
of technological progress didn't always lead to 'ecotopia' - it could instead lead back
to the America of the Founding Fathers.
Agora or Exchange - Direct Democracy or Free
Trade?
With McLuhan as its patron saint, the Californian Ideology has emerged from an
unexpected collision of right-wing neo-liberalism, counter-culture radicalism and
technological determinism - a hybrid ideology with all its ambiguities and
contradictions intact. These contradictions are most pronounced in the opposing
visions of the future which it holds simultaneously.
On the one side, the anti-corporate purity of the New Left has been preserved by the
advocates of the 'virtual community'. According to their guru, Howard Rheingold,
the values of the counter-culture baby boomers will continue to shape the
development of new information technologies. Community activists will increasingly
use hypermedia to replace corporate capitalism and big government with a hi-tech
'gift economy' in which information is freely exchanged between participants. In
Rheingold's view, the 'virtual class' is still in the forefront of the battle for social
change. Despite the frenzied commercial and political involvement in building the
'information superhighway', direct democracy within the electronic agora will
inevitably triumph over its corporate and bureaucratic enemies.
On the other hand, other West Coast ideologues have embraced the laissez-faire
ideology of their erstwhile conservative enemy. For example, Wired - the monthly
bible of the 'virtual class' - has uncritically reproduced the views of Newt Gingrich,
the extreme-right Republican leader of the House of Representatives and the
Tofflers, who are his close advisors. Ignoring their policies for welfare cutbacks, the
magazine is instead mesmerised by their enthusiasm for the libertarian possibilities
offered by the new information technologies. Gingrich and the Tofflers claim that the
convergence of media, computing and telecommunications will not create an
electronic agora, but will instead lead to the apotheosis of the market - an
electronic exchange within which everybody can become a free trader.
In this version of the Californian Ideology, each member of the 'virtual class' is
promised the opportunity to become a successful hi-tech entrepreneur. Information
technologies, so the argument goes, empower the individual, enhance personal
freedom, and radically reduce the power of the nation-state. Existing social, political
and legal power structures will wither away to be replaced by unfettered interactions
between autonomous individuals and their software. Indeed, attempts to interfere
with these elemental technological and economic forces, particularly by the
government, merely rebound on those who are foolish enough to defy the primary
laws of nature. The restyled McLuhanites vigorously argue that big government
should stay off the backs of resourceful entrepreneurs who are the only people cool
and courageous enough to take risks. Indeed, attempts to interfere with the emergent
properties of technological and economic forces, particularly by the government,
merely rebound on those who are foolish enough to defy the primary laws of nature.
The free market is the sole mechanism capable of building the future and ensuring a
full flowering of liberty within the electronic circuits of Jeffersonian cyberspace. As
in Heinlein's and Asimov's sci-fi novels, the path forwards to the future seems to lie
backwards to the past.
The Myth of the Free Market
Yet, almost every major technological advance of the last two hundred years has
taken place with the aid of large amounts of public money and under a good deal of
government influence. The technologies of both the computer and the Net were
invented with the aid of massive state subsidies. For example, the first Difference
Engine project received a British Government grant of £17,470 - a small fortune in
1834. From Colossus to EDVAC, from flight simulators to virtual reality, the
development of computing has depended at key moments on public research
handouts or fat contracts with public agencies. The IBM corporation built the first
programmable digital computer only after it was requested to do so by the US
Defense Department during the Korean War. The result of a lack of state
intervention meant that Nazi Germany lost the opportunity to build the first electronic
computer in the late '30s when the Wehrmacht refused to fund Konrad Zuze, who
had pioneered the use of binary code, stored programs and electronic logic gates.
One of the weirdest things about the Californian Ideology is that the West Coast
itself is a creation of massive state intervention. Government dollars were used to
build the irrigation systems, highways, schools, universities and other infrastructural
projects which make the good life possible. On top of these public subsidies, the
West Coast hi-tech industrial complex has been feasting off the fattest pork barrel in
history for decades. The US government has poured billions of tax dollars into
buying planes, missiles, electronics and nuclear bombs from Californian companies.
Americans have always had state planning, but they prefer to call it the defence
budget.
All of this public funding has had an enormously beneficial - albeit unacknowledged
and uncosted - effect on the subsequent development of Silicon Valley and other
hi-tech industries. Entrepreneurs often have an inflated sense of their own 'creative
act of will' in developing new ideas and give little recognition to the contributions
made by either the state or their own labour force. However, all technological
progress is cumulative - it depends on the results of a collective historical process
and must be counted, at least in part, as a collective achievement. Hence, as in every
other industrialised country, American entrepreneurs have in fact relied on public
money and state intervention to nurture and develop their industries. When Japanese
companies threatened to take over the American microchip market, the libertarian
computer capitalists of California had no ideological qualms about joining a
state-sponsored cartel organised by the state to fight off the invaders from the East!
Masters and Slaves
Despite the central role played by public intervention in developing hypermedia, the
Californian Ideology is a profoundly anti-statist dogma. The ascendancy of this
dogma is a result of the failure of renewal in the USA during the late '60s and early
'70s. Although the ideologues of California celebrate the libertarian individualism of
the hippies, they never discuss the political or social demands of the counter-culture.
Individual freedom is no longer to be achieved by rebelling against the system, but
through submission to the natural laws of technological progress and the free
market. In many cyberpunk novels and films, this asocial libertarianism is expressed
by the central character of the lone individual fighting for survival within the virtual
world of information.
In American folklore, the nation was built out of a wilderness by free-booting
individuals - the trappers, cowboys, preachers, and settlers of the frontier. The
American revolution itself was fought to protect the property of the colonists against
unjust taxes levied by a foreign parliament. Yet this primary myth of the USA
ignores the contradiction at the centre of the American dream: some individuals can
prosper only through the suffering of others. The life of Thomas Jefferson - one of
the icons of the Californian ideologists - clearly demonstrates the double nature of
liberal individualism. The man who wrote the inspiring and poetic call for democracy
and liberty in the American declaration of independence was at the same time one of
the largest slave-owners in the country.
Despite the eventual emancipation of the slaves and the victories of the civil rights
movement, racial segregation still lies at the centre of American politics - especially
in California. Behind the neo-liberal rhetoric of individual freedom lies the master's
fear of the rebellious slave. In the recent elections for governor in California, the
Republican candidate won through a vicious anti-immigrant campaign. Nationally,
the triumph of Gingrich's neo-liberals in the legislative elections was based on the
mobilisation of 'angry white males' against the supposed threat from black welfare
scroungers, immigrants from Mexico and other uppity minorities.
The hi-tech industries are an integral part of this racist Republican coalition.
However, the exclusively private and corporate construction of cyberspace can only
promote the fragmentation of American society into antagonistic, racially-determined
classes. Already 'red-lined' by profit-hungry telcos, the inhabitants of poor inner
city areas can be shut out of the new on-line services through lack of money. In
contrast, yuppies and their children can play at being cyberpunks in a virtual world
without having to meet any of their impoverished neighbours. Alongside the
ever-widening social divisions, another apartheid between the 'information-rich' and
the 'information-poor' is being created. Yet calls for the telcos to be forced to
provide universal access to the information superstructure for all citizens are
denounced in Wired magazine as being inimical to progress. Whose progress?
The 'Dumb Waiter'
As Hegel pointed out, the tragedy of the masters is that they cannot escape from
dependence on their slaves. Rich white Californians need their darker-skinned fellow
humans to work in their factories, pick their crops, look after their children and tend
their gardens. Unable to surrender wealth and power, the white people of California
can instead find spiritual solace in their worship of technology. If human slaves are
ultimately unreliable, then mechanical ones will have to be invented. The search for
the holy grail of Artificial Intelligence reveals this desire for the Golem - a strong and
loyal slave whose skin is the colour of the earth and whose innards are made of
sand. The techno-utopians imagine that it is possible to obtain slave-like labour from
inanimate machines. Yet, although technology can store or amplify labour, it can
never remove the necessity for humans to invent, build and maintain the machines in
the first place. Slave labour cannot be obtained without somebody being enslaved.
At his estate at Monticello, Jefferson invented many ingenious gadgets - including a
'dumb waiter' to mediate contact with his slaves. In the late twentieth century, it is
not surprising that this liberal slave-owner is the hero of those who proclaim
freedom while denying their brown-skinned fellow citizens those democratic rights
said to be inalienable.
Foreclosing the Future
The prophets of the Californian Ideology argue that only the cybernetic flows and
chaotic eddies of free markets and global communications will determine the future.
Political debate therefore, is a waste of breath. As neo-liberals, they assert that the
will of the people, mediated by democratic government through the political process,
is a dangerous heresy which interferes with the natural and efficient freedom to
accumulate property. As technological determinists, they believe that human social
and emotional ties obstruct the efficient evolution of the machine. Abandoning
democracy and social solidarity, the Californian Ideology dreams of a digital nirvana
inhabited solely by liberal psychopaths.
There are Alternatives
Despite its claims to universality, the Californian Ideology was developed by a group
of people living within one specific country following a particular choice of
socio-economic and technological development. Their eclectic blend of conservative
economics and hippie libertarianism reflects the history of the West Coast - and not
the inevitable future of the rest of the world. The hi- tech neo-liberals proclaim that
there is only one road forward. Yet, in reality, debate has never been more possible
or more necessary. The Californian model is only one among many.
Within the European Union, the recent history of France provides practical proof that
it is possible to use state intervention alongside market competition to nurture new
technologies and to ensure their benefits are diffused among the population as a
whole.
Following the victory of the Jacobins over their liberal opponents in 1792, the
democratic republic in France became the embodiment of the 'general will'. As such,
the state had to represent the interests of all citizens, rather than just protect the rights
of individual property-owners. The French revolution went beyond liberalism to
democracy. Emboldened by this popular legitimacy, the government is able to
influence industrial development.
For instance, the MINITEL network built up its critical mass of users through the
nationalised telco giving away free terminals. Once the market had been created,
commercial and community providers were then able to find enough customers to
thrive. Learning from the French experience, it would seem obvious that European
and national bodies should exercise more precisely targeted regulatory control and
state direction over the development of hypermedia, rather than less.
The lesson of MINITEL is that hypermedia within Europe should be developed as a
hybrid of state intervention, capitalist entrepreneurship and d.i.y. culture. No doubt
the 'infobahn' will create a mass market for private companies to sell existing
information commodities - films, tv programmes, music and books - across the Net. Once people can distribute as well as receive hypermedia, a flourishing of
community media, niche markets and special interest groups will emerge. However,
for all this to happen the state must play an active part. In order to realise the interests
of all citizens, the 'general will' must be realised at least partially through public
institutions.
The Rebirth of the Modern
The Californian Ideology rejects notions of community and of social progress and
seeks to chain humanity to the rocks of economic and technological fatalism. Once
upon a time, West Coast hippies played a key role in creating our contemporary
vision of social liberation. As a consequence, feminism, drug culture, gay liberation
and ethnic identity have, since the 1960s, ceased to be marginal issues. Ironically, it
is now California which has become the centre of the ideology which denies the
relevance of these new social subjects.
It is now necessary for us to assert our own future - if not in circumstances of our
own choosing. After twenty years, we need to reject once and forever the loss of
nerve expressed by post-modernism. We can do more than 'play with the pieces'
created by the avant-gardes of the past.
We need to debate what kind of hypermedia suits our vision of society - how do we
create the interactive products and on-line services we want to use, the kind of
computers we like and the software we find most useful. We need to find ways to
think socially and politically about the machines we develop. While learning from the
can-do attitude of the Californian individualists, we also must recognise the
potentiality of hypermedia can never be solely realised through market forces. We
need an economy which can unleash the creative powers of hi-tech artisans. Only
then can we fully grasp the Promethean opportunities as humanity moves into the
next stage of modernity.
You can find other versions of this article in the site of Hypermedia Research Center