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The
creation of cyberspace was accompanied by a surge of enthusiasm,
which soon found romantic expression outlets. John Perry Barlow's
Cyberspace Declaration of Independence reels with prophetic overtones:
Governments
of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel,
I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the
future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome
among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather. We have no
elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address
you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself
always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building
to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose
on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any
methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You
have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite
you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace
does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can
build it, as though it were a public construction project. You
cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our
collective actions.
Ever
since John Perry Barlow launched his Manifesto, the perception
of cyberspace has developed into a more subtle and nuanced form.
Nonetheless, it has preserved the sense of heterogeneity with respect
to real life. The realm of cyberspace, as it is presented in the
Manifesto, perceived as a new form of Utopia, which has been
implemented at last, at least virtually.
Utopia
is neither a concept or a metaphor, it is a more elaborate construct,
i.e., a phantheme. It involves its conceptual habitants in a scenario
which guides and legitimates any endeavor concerned with social
engineering and political reformation. From Plato to Bacon and from
Morus to Marx, the utopian phanthemes inspired and stimulated the
social research and the political projects. All these phanthemes
involve an acute awareness of the gap between the real and the ideal;
however, not all of them are concerned with bridging this gap. A
meditation on cyberspace as a utopian realm may prove productive
as far as the conceptualization of cyber-practices and the development
of cyberculture as a distinct set of meanings, values and beliefs
are concerned. Conversely, this approach is apt to provide new patterns
in understanding the range of meaning wherein the classical Utopias
are contained.
Gabriel
Liiceanu distinguishes the Utopia of philosophy from the Utopia
of the intellect. The former transcends the real, dismissing any
attempt at improving it. The latter transposes the nowhere
into the not yet, the unattainable space into an accessible
time. The ideal is projected into the future, so that its advent
is inevitable, the impatient have only to find the best methods
for time-acceleration. The Utopia of philosophy, such as Plato's
Republic, is visionary, it offers an Imago, which
overcomes the empirical perceptions and subjects them to its own
rules. The Utopia of the intellect is not visionary, but imaginary;
the ascensional dimension is absent, the phantasy supplants the
inspiration and the cultural construct of perfection is projected
forward in time, not upwards in space. The difference between the
ideal and the real is a matter of degree, not a matter of heterogeneity,
so that the hope to bridge the gap between them seems reasonable.
If one
considers cyberspace from the point of view of the distinction between
the Utopia of philosophy and the Utopia of the intellect, one finds
that it belongs more to the former than to the latter. The Manifesto
quoted above, which reflects well the values promoted by cyberculture,
points to a complete and clear-cut separation between cyberspace
and real life. There are, of course, lines of contact and various
interfaces between the two, but every communication across borders
is ruled according to well-defined protocols and the frontier is
under close watch. The ideologies of cyberspace do not care very
much about restructuring reality, they nurture the idea of distributed
self-government and the strategy of self-sustained development.
The Utopian phantheme that underlies cyberculture leaves the real
aside and is concerned with the practical construction of the new,
ideal realm. However, one cannot claim that cyberspace is a city
of philosophers. The internal rules are not devised by the wise,
but developed by the many. Here, one values the imaginary more than
the visionary, the fun more than the wisdom. The authors of 'philosophical'
utopias, following Plato and, to some extent, Morus, emphasized
the legal structure of their societies, while the "intellectuals,"
in the trail of Bacon, exalted the technological and ideological
power of theirs. After 1850, the technological themes become more
and more frequent and the classical, isolated realm (the island)
is replaced either by the 'straight' utopia, which imagines a universal,
ideal state, or by the utopian parody, a satire directed to the
present social trends. Cyberspace, as Utopia, is not satirical,
as it dismisses any attempt at the reformation of the real world.
On the other hand, it does not emphasize ideal internal regulation
according to the best rules developed by its elites in the hope--itself
utopian--of seeing such rules emerge out of a self-organizing process.
Rabelais' Thélème Abbey provides better example of cyber-values
than Plato's Republic:
Life
in the Monastery was not subjected to any rules, laws or commands
as everybody lived according to his own free, unlimited will.
One got out of bed when one had enough sleep; drank, ate, saw
to his business, and then went to bed again, where and when he
fancied. Nobody woke him up, nobody ordered him to sit at the
table or to quit it. Neither constraints, nor obligations were
there to bother anyone. This was Gargantua's decision, that the
only internal law should be restricted to four words: DO WHAT
YOU WILL.
The
Blazing World and Respublica Christianopolitana
Among
the Utopian phanthemes, two seem to resemble cyberspace closely
enough. Lady Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle, published
in 1666 The Description of the New World, called the Blazing
World. The Blazing World was an immaterial world, wherein immaterial
subjects acted freely and happily. This world could be created at
will by any human being who chose to make good use of his imaginative
power. The immaterial subjects described by Cavendish look very
much like today's software agents and the creation of the ideal
world is not very dissimilar to the development of a site in cyberspace.
Here is a fragment of the work written in delightful old English:
…
for every humane Creature can create an Immaterial World fully
inhabited by immaterial creatures, and populous of immaterial
subjects, such as we are, and, all this within the compass of
the head or scull; nay, not only so, but he may create a World
of what fashion and Government he will, and give the Creatures
thereof such motions, figures, forms, colours, perceptions, etc.
as he pleases.
The
duchess, as enthusiastic as a geek, decides to dismiss reality and
to go 'cyber,' into her own world, the one she herself had created.
Johann
Valentin Andreæ was a German scholar with a special interest in
the occult sciences, who published in 1616 an enigmatic booklet,
Christian Rosenkreuz's Chemical Marriage, obviously influenced
by the Rosicrucian doctrine. Later on, in 1619, he published Reipublicæ
Christianopolitanæ Descriptio, a classical utopia in the trail
of Thomas Morus. Christianopolis is an ideal city managed
by angel-like creatures.
It is
very a well-lit city, for practical, as well as for symbolic, reasons.
While the social life is centered on piety, the cultural life is
focused on science. Mechanical arts are promoted and the artisans
are highly respected. The workers are highly educated and are stimulated
to put their creativity to use. It is almost impossible not to relate
them to the computer geeks of nowadays. The science of Nature--the
chemistry-alchemy of the time, i.e., the computer-science of today--is
the main object of learning. In Christianopolis, one would
not admit actors, who dispose of too much time, and impostors, who
falsely claim to be related to Rosicrucians. Andreæ's Utopia has
a mathematical flavor and an angelic dimension which Bacon's New
Atlantis lacks. The utilitarianism, i.e., the application of
the scientific knowledge to the improvement of human life, is present
in both Utopias; however, Andreæ's version seems more technical
and practical than Bacon's, which makes it the more appropriate
for understanding cyberspace. The occult sciences aimed to cooperate
with the angelic forces, in order to promote knowledge. The angels
of the occult sciences were the cavaliers of Rosicrucianism, while
the angels of cyberspace are the wizards of informatics. The story
of Christian Rosenkreuz, the city of Christianopolis and
the phantheme of cyberspace are, thus, closely related.
Cyberspace
differs from most Utopias as far as the presentation of the self
is concerned. The cyber-self is multiple and fluid, it can adopt
whatever identity it wishes and role-playing is among its favorite
pastimes. On the contrary, Homo Utopicus tends to assume
fewer roles than the real self does and, moreover, to eliminate
completely the conflicting roles. The distanciation with respect
to the role, which, in the case of actors, is considered a condition
of optimal performance, is not desirable in social life and, moreover,
it is totally unacceptable in the utopian worlds. The utopian being,
unlike the habitant of cyberspace, is consistent with his one-and-only
role, and the distance from the role tends, in his case, to be completely
abolished. Actually, Homo Uitopicus is precisely what he
seems or, better said what he should be.
The
'door-in-the-wall' and the 'over-pervasive eye'
In fairy-tales,
the humblest home may have a hidden 'door-in-the-wall' which gives
entrance to the magic world, in the same way as a portal like Yahoo!,
Lycos or AltaVista leads one to the exciting realm of
cyberspace. The computer monitors are such magic doors--doors of
perception, doors of the Kingdom--which can get us 'over there'
as freed and disembodied entities. There is, however, another monitor,
the TV, which is precisely the contrary of the first. The TV is
not an open eye scrutinizing the world, but an external eye which
watches us; it keeps our intimacy under control. We are indulging
in remaining on the real side and accept being surveilled, instead
of taking up the courage of crossing the frontier of reality in
order to surf the virtual realm. Blake's 'eternal delight' had been
energy, our elders' was information, and ours could be knowledge.
Pleasure is fugitive, peace is mortal, and knowledge is sour. Make
your own choice!
Copyright
© 2000 Adrian Mihalache. All Rights Reserved.
Adrian Mihalache is a regular contributor to *spark-online.
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