The
hackers were questioning whether Barlow’s utopian rhetoric about
cyberspace might really be a convenient camouflage hiding the
emergence of a new and growing power that was way beyond politics
We could say
that the latest film of Adam Curtis, HyperNormalisation, is an
update of some of his previous films, which is enriched with the most
recent global events and developments. The new film presents also
interesting stories about some key figures in the development of
cybernetics and the modern perception of non-linear politics.
A special
"chapter" describes an interesting story concerning the
idea of independent cyberspace and how some hackers managed to prove
that this was only a kind of illusion.
One of the
leading exponents of the idea that cyberspace could be a place where
we would be liberated from the old, corrupt hierarchies of politics
and power and explore new ways of being, was John Perry Barlow.
In the ’60s,
Barlow had written songs for the Grateful Dead and been part of the
acid counterculture. In the 90s, he organised what he called
“cyberthons”, to try and bring the cyberspace movement together.
Barlow then
wrote a manifesto that he called A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. It was
addressed to all politicians, telling them to keep out of this new
world. It was going to be incredibly influential, because what Barlow
did was give a powerful picture of the internet not as a network
controlled by giant corporations, but, instead, as a kind of magical,
free place. An alternative to the old systems of power. It was a
vision that would come to dominate the internet over the next 20
years.
But two
young hackers in New York thought that Barlow was describing a
fantasy world, that his vision bore no relationship at all to what
was really emerging online. They were cult figures on the early
online scene and their fans followed and recorded them. They called
themselves Phiber Optik
and Acid Phreak and they
spent their time exploring and breaking in to giant computer networks
that they knew were the hard realities of modern digital power.
In a
notorious public debate online, the two hackers attacked Barlow. What
infuriated them most, was Barlow's insistence that there was no
hierarchy, or, controlling powers in the new cyber world. The hackers
set out to demonstrate that he was wrong.
Acid Phreak
hacked into the computers of a giant corporation called TRW. TRW had
originally built the systems that ran the Cold War for the US
military. They had helped create the delicate balance of terror.
Now, TRW had
adapted their computers to run a new system, that of credit and debt.
Their computers gathered up the credit data of millions of Americans
and were being used by the banks to decide individuals’ credit
ratings. The hackers broke into the TRW network, stole Barlow’s
credit history and published it online. The hackers were
demonstrating the growing power of finance. How the companies that
ran the new systems of credit knew more and more about you, and,
increasingly, used that information to control your destiny.
But the
system that was allowing this to happen were the new giant networks
of information connected through computer servers. The hackers were
questioning whether Barlow’s utopian rhetoric about cyberspace
might really be a convenient camouflage hiding the emergence of a new
and growing power that was way beyond politics.
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