Nice One, Chairman Bruce
I’m writing at the moment—academic writing—a painful process which never quite seems to go how or where I want it. Grinding out a few hundred words today that’ll I delete tomorrow.
So, it was more than pleasant to find out that Bruce Sterling has posted a piece at his Wired blog, Beyond the Beyond, Web Semantics: Cyberspace in Words and Warfare, which is his commentary on select portions of a short essay I wrote for Current Intelligence in mid-March. For Catholics, it’s meeting the Pope: for me, it’s getting something read and relayed to others by Chairman Bruce.
Whether he liked it or not is another matter. Here’s one extract:
“Words reveal deeper truths about the processes, structures and institutions that are fuelling the current cybersecurity panic. Critical analysts like James Der Derian have long noted the existence of a military-industrial-media-entertainment network (MIME-NET), a thesis it is more and more difficult to write off as paranoid post-structuralism. (((Not that anybody was actually writing that off, because the military-entertainment complex is at least as real-life as the madrassa terrorist training network.)))
I agree but you’d be amazed how little traction Der Derian gets in certain circles. Academic ones, that is. I can’t imagine he’s well-liked in Reston, VA, or inside the Beltway either, not that anyone he’s critiquing probably gives a shit. Cyber ShockWave proved that.
The only bit I can definitely discern is a mild riposte to me is the following:
“A recent Center for a New American Security (CNAS) report states that cyberspace “resembles the American Wild West of the 1870s and 1880s, with limited governmental authority and engagement”, and repeatedly calls for control of this environment, with US national interest the sole governing principle for doing so. Although it is unfair to single out CNAS, the Wild West trope is not only one of the founding myths of modern American culture but also of anti-authoritarian cyber-utopian groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (((”Cyber-utopian?” The EFF?! No way, dude. I can introduce ya to some REAL cyber-utopians: they’re those squinty geeks over in the corner gobbling antioxidants while they await the Singularity.)))
Hehe, that’s true enough. Are we there yet? The Singularity, that is. I should perhaps have described the EFF as ex-utopians, or just ex. Although I stand by the ‘founding myth’ assertion – the real point of that sentence – I did have a funny feeling when I wrote it that someone would pick up on it. I just never imagined it would be Bruce Sterling. Kwality.
how retro and odd to see cyberspace compared to the american wild west this late!
i first saw that analogy back in the early/mid 1990s, when it made some sense. and it showed up after other analogizers were comparing cyberspace to a frontier about to undergo colonization and the linking up of colonies. both analogies reflected a new-frontier metaphor.
there’s still some wild-west behavior going on. but aren’t we way beyond that analogy reflecting much reality?
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? I was somewhat surprised to read it too. The body metaphor that CNAS use also has a rather venerable heritage, Platonic in fact, not to mention a host of others in his wake. It has utility but I’m not sure it actually describes the phenomenon at hand. It may do in years to come but I think we can carried away with the idea of the metaphoric cyberspatial body-politic.