From Speculative Media Theory To Net Criticism
By Geert Lovink
Lecture at ICC, Tokyo, 19.12.96

Arthur Kroker once pointed out that 'media' are 'too slow'. The
term is no longer appropriate to express the speed culture of the
digital age. 'Media' still refers to information, communication
and black boxes,  not to pure mediation, straight into the body.
Media, almost by definition, are about filters, switches,
technical limitations, silly simulations and heartless
representations. Focussed on particular senses, they still need
access and selection mechanisms. There are only particular media.
We should therefore look for terms that are even more fluid,
being able to break through all interfaces, geographical
conditions and human imperfections.
This is the ultimate 'speculative' media theory, the wish to
overcome the actual object of our studies and passions, heading
for 'The World after the Media', as one of the early pieces of
the Adilkno called it.

This view defines the Net as the 'medium to end all media', the
'Metamedium'. But at this very moment, there is not yet a General
Net Theory. Cyberspace is still a work in progress. We face the
realisation (and therefore decline) of a specific kind of media
theory (being 'too slow'). It is in this ideological vacuum that
a temporary autonomous project called 'net criticism' shows up. A
pragmatic form of negative thinking, in the aftermath of a period
dominated by speculative thinking that tried to define the 'new'.

My generation, which entered the intellectual arena in the late
70s, witnessed the collusion of Marxism-in-crisis with the rising
post-modern theory and got crushed in between the two. The dirt
of punk was still too political and existentialist for cool
people and free-thinking academics. Most issues centred around
the writings of Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, and Michel
Foucault. We were obsessed with the question of power and
ideology, beyond historicism, humanism and the deadly economic
determinism. Media were a part of the ideological realm (but
nothing more than that). Like other instances, media had their
own 'relative autonomy', a term that sounded like a profound
revelation. And media were not only repressive, but productive,
as Foucault pointed out. So where to locate power, if it is no
longer in the corporate headquarters and the government?
Capitalism dominates through its ideology. And slowly ideology
became more and more identical with the media and its emerging
technologies.

When I got involved in the so-called 'new social movements', it
became clear that is was no longer useful to reflect on the
problems of the previous generation, the generation of 68. But it
was not entirely clear whether we could use elements of the new
French thinking. We did not practise 'micropolitics'. We did not
just want a piece of the cake, but 'the whole bloody bakery.' It
was not enough to be a 'patchwork of minorities'. The radical
movements had much stronger desires. The fear and anger were much
stronger, no future involved here, less theory, just action.
Deleuze and Guattari only became popular in the nineties, after
all these movements had dissolved into the virtual, to reappear
as pop cultures, in rap, techno and jungle.

During the political and social clashes of the 80s we also faced
another change in society. We were well aware of the explosion of
the media realm. I studied political science and mass
communication and I remember we did not speak about media in
plural, only about 'mass media' as a monolithic block. Our main
concern was the change of 'public opinion'. The movements of the
early 80s questioned the rigid definitions of politics as such,
but did not yet position themselves within the media realm. The
mysterious laws of 'public opinion' dealt with mentality,
consciousness, attitudes, a semiotic process that would
ultimately bring about social and political changes, without
requiring  reformist compromises or self-marginalisation as
embittered, dogmatic Marxists.

The amount of channels on TV, radio and the growing availability
of microelectronics and the PC in the mid-80s gave us more access
to media, and this changed the nature of the political fight. The
Do-It-Yourself media strengthened the position of rising
movements, specially in the ongoing attempt to influence the
journalists of the established media, without depending on them
entirely. For me, the rise and the expansion of this media
experience went together with the birth of 'media theory'. When
my (direct) involvement as a squatter and eco-activist
transformed itself into a commitment to 'the media question', I
discovered the then emerging media theory in Germany. I even got
involved in it, although I was not anymore on the university and
had abandon all academic rituals like footnotes, PhDs, etc. One
might be familiar with their names: Friedrich Kittler, now in
Berlin, Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio from Paris. But also
Avital Ronell from the United States, the Jewish-German-Brazilian
media philosopher Vilem Flusser, and Peter Weibel and Florian
Roetzer, who made connections to the arts.

It seems important now to summarise this specific type of media
theory. It is not exactly academic or even scientific. There is a
strong emphasis on style. At its best, it is techne-poetry,
brilliant in its search for new, historical patterns. At its
worst it is dry, academic hermeneutics. There is a strong
affection for art and aesthetics, and it has a strong
relationship to the history of literature and philosophy. If our
English-speaking colleagues could read this stuff, it would be
fun to read their critique of its metaphysical, almost 19th
century style and premises. Take the works of Heidegger, Carl
Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Juenger, Friedrich Nietzsche and
J. W. Goethe, simmer them in the sauce of the media technologies,
flavour with a dash of French Theory. That is the basic recipe.
This postmodern media theory tries implicitly to escape its 68-
past. Also typical is the rejection of the existence of rival
media theories. It makes no reference to the existing media
studies like 'mass communication' or cultural studies (with
McLuhan being the exception). Its dislike of social sciences
remains a secret. The condemnation of the Frankfurt School is
also standard. Media theory dislikes ideology criticism. It
reduces media to the essence of the machine logic. It is no
longer interested in the meaning of its message, which was once
assumed to be propaganda.
Speaking about the fascist past of some the authors in an open
way, still seems highly problematic. It is not done to just enjoy
dubious thinkers and appreaciate Heidegger as a fascist (not:
despite his short fascist engagement). A secret or unconcious
fascination for authoritarian models is still there. Don't laugh
about the totalitarian hertitage, it is still taken very serious.
In that sense, the Cold War, being the project to freeze-dry the
fatal European passions, had not yet ended in the this particular
branch of theory.

Central to this theory is the definition of media as technical
media. This should be seen as a polemic gestures to remove all
references to a economic, political, social or even cultural
context. First and foremost, media have to be described in the
language of the technical, in the language of the technology
itself. Strangely enough, this is a precise expression of the
further rise of media as an 'autonomous' realm, the victory of
ideology over the other instances. When the media starts to float
(and becomes 'immaterial'), it first of all has to cut all
references to journalism, social sciences, ideas of progress and
enlightment, state propaganda, public opinion, being a tool to
educate and entertain the people. Media from now on are merely
spin-off products of the military that basically deal with the
war of perception. The rest is merely noise.

It is important to see that there is a continuity from the debate
about ideology and power as a first phase, the notions of
discourse and structures as a second stage and the centrality of
the technical media as the third. Crucial for all three stages is
their relation to Jacques Lacan and the question of language. We
can see a shift here and a continuous process of redefinition of
'language' from being just the spoken and written word, towards
'language' as a general structural mechanism, ending up with a
very abstract definition, the language of the technology, which
can no longer be deconstructed as an ideology so easily. Although
'language' became so crucial, at the same time these thinkers
were confronted with the so-called crisis of linearity, the
crisis of the text. With the rise of the personal computer, the
status of the text in society changed and so did the role of
writing in the electronic age.

Essential for these thinkers is that they have to introduce the
'new' in the terms of the old. They always have to proclaim the
new and condemn the old, while still keeping a channel open to
the traditional disciplines. So there is a constant oscillation
between the new and the old, both of which must be incorporated
in the theory. Also characteristic is a melancholic position
towards the old terminology and sources, combined with a deep,
philosophic fascination for the new. But never in a truly
futuristic manner. The destruction of the old seems an alien
notion in this context. Being post-political intellectuals, it is
difficult for most of them to become prophets, visionaries or
even propagandist for the new. They cannot so easily be
transformed into salesmen for Siemens or Philips. Instead, their
task remains the careful exploration and explanation of the
objectives of the 'new' in the language of the old. Their success
is in presenting this to the conservative (but enlightened)
cultural elites.

This postwar generation is used to constantly undermining its own
premises (an old leftist habit). In particular, the premises of
their commitments of May 68. This became an obsession for most of
them -- especially for Baudrillard. They are even more influenced
by the trauma of the Second World War. All of them are making
references to the crucial period between the two world wars, both
historically and theoretically. The War is the father of all
media and the founding fathers of media theory are Heidegger and
Benjamin (McLuhan being the good third). Combine all these
elements and you have an impressive and productive research
program for decades to come.

The media theory of the 1980s is in essence a philosophy of The
End. It works its way up to its historical height in 1989. It
contemplates The End (of the social, history, ideology etc.), but
because of its refusal to be radically modern, it is unwilling to
overcome its own ideological framework, which was formed in the
period 68-89. As for many of the intellectuals of the same
generation, it seems impossible to fit the Fall of the Berlin
Wall into the aesthetic program. Most of them do not want to be
bothered by the East and can only interpret it as an atavistic,
disturbing factor, just another sign of ongoing disintegration
and fragmentation. Technology is hardware in the first place. It
has no users that play with it in a productive way. That is why
pop culture can be ignored so easily. Hardware is the driving
force, not people, let alone East Europeans. It sounds almost
Marxist, this technological determinism, but that is what happens
if theory lacks the categories of subjectivity.

There are two methods used. On the one hand they are exercising
the fascinating 'archaeology of media' (like in the works of
Werner Kuenze, Siegfried Zielinski, Bernhard Siegert, Christoph
Asendorf and Erkki Huhtamo). Examples of this can be found in
Paul Virilio's 'War and Cinema', Friedrich Kittler's
'Grammophone, Film, Typewriter' and Avital Ronell's 'The
Telephone Book'. On the other hand, there is the tradition of
hermeneutics, the essay or theory as such, which can easily be
used to speculative about the future possibilities of new media,
combining etymology with technological forecasts. But it can
also go into the direction of the historical antropology (Dietmar
Kamper, Peter Sloterdijk, etc.) or stay within the academic
boarders of the science of literature (Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht,
Jochen Hoerisch, etc.). And then there are the hard core
scientists with literary ambitions like Otto Roessler, Heinz von
Foerster and Oswald Wiener. It is impossible to give an overview
here. 99% of all this has not been translated, but that's another
story.

A crucial term, if we want to study this media theory, seems to
me the definition of aesthetics. Media theory rejects the
classical definition of aesthetics used by art historians (a set
of rules to judge the artwork) and comes up with a new one,
focussing on the technical determination of perception. We can no
longer speak about a pure aesthetics which is just an expression
of visual pleasure. This kind of aesthetics is almost military.
It is technical because it is defined by all the tools we are
using. There is no aesthetics anymore besides or beyond the
technical.

All these thinkers were relatively unknown until the late 80s.
But this all changed when the Western societies went through a
narcotic period of intense speculation -- in bonds and
currencies, real estate, the arts and... theory. This happened
exactly around the crucial year of 1989. We see the academic
theory bursting out of its small circle, making an alliance with
the visual art scene and the emerging media-art scene, which was
by then still mainly video art.

It is also exactly in this period, dominated by speculation, that
we see the growth of cyberculture, virtual reality, multimedia
and computer networks. Until the late 80s there were only the
rumours one could read in the books of William Gibson and other
cyberpunk writers. But this suddenly changed in 1989 with the
appearance of visionaries like Steward Brand, Timothy Leary,
Jaron Lanier and Howard Rheingold. After a certain delay, their
concepts and buzzwords also reached Europe and in the early 90s
we see media theory becoming more and more popular. Historians
and philosophy professors overnight became art world celebrities,
then marketing advisers -- praised for their in depth view of the
'essence' of digital technology.

A good example might be the German media philosopher Norbert
Bolz. In the early 80s he was a professor at the Free University
in West-Berlin, giving classes about Walter Benjamin, Theodor
Adorno or Carl Schmitt. He was especially interested in the
history of religion, working together with Professor Jacob
Taubes. This was his period of the discourse, one could say.
After he met Friedrich Kittler, he joined the Kassel research
group that shaped German media theory. This resulted in his book
'Theory of the New Media', in which he linked Richard Wagner's
Gesamtkunstwerk, Walter Benjamin's media theory with the writings
of Marshall McLuhan. This is still within the framework of a
rather academic way of working: combining the two elements I
described before, media archaeology on the one hand; the
philosophical, hermeneutical approach on the other hand. But then
he changed. He started to write about chaos theory, hypertext and
multimedia. He headed off in the direction of a truly speculative
media theory. Finally, Norbert Bolz accepted a post as a
professor of design in Essen and is presently publishing about
design, advertisement and marketing strategies.

This is of course only one example. But we are speaking here
about a general trend in society, connected to the 'emancipation'
or 'coming out' of the media realm. It is related to the rise of
the conceptual aspects of electronic space, called cyberspace, in
which concepts are absolutely crucial as a first stage, in order
to develop products out of it later. So we cannot judge this
speculative media theory on a merely scientific level. We have to
study its impacts on information capitalism in an early stage,
when cyberspace is not anymore a rumour, good for literary
phantasies, but still has not yet been implemented fully into
society. For the developers of software and computer systems and
multimedia products, it seems essential to work with the proper
metaphors. And these metaphors are not given by the technology,
by the hardware as such. It is up to creative intellectuals to
develop those metaphors. This is where speculative theory plays
such a decisive role.

It is all too easy to accuse some authors for having sold out to
the industry, and make a quick analysis of a period which is
really only five or ten years ago. I myself was also involved in
speculative media theory, perhaps not as an academic, but more as
a free floating intellectual. I was unemployed at the time, being
an editor of the magazine _Mediamatic and a member of the Adilkno
group, the 'Foundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge'.
We had a lot of fun writing numerous so-called Unidentified
Theory Objects, the UTOs, brought together in the book 'The Media
Archive', which was originally published in 1992. One could call
this the period of Gay Media Science, in which we developed
concepts like 'wetware', the 'data dandy', 'sovereign media' or
the 'extra medial', being a space or condition outside of the
media realm. Perhaps Adilkno is embodying the most pure and
extreme form of speculative thinking, not being hindered or
censored by any academic or journalistic rule.

The year 1989 was more important because of the introduction of
virtual reality than for the fact that the Berlin Wall came down.


[ a somewhat unreal claim! I don't think it adds much to your
argument. I'd delete it.]

The Gulf War in early 91 was a first sign that this particular
media theory had come to an end. The ideas of William Gibson,
which were science fiction at the time, were becoming all too
real. 'The future is now' and we had from now on to (re)read
those books as conceptual computer manuals, no longer just as
fictional stories about a possible future.

It was shocking to see that theories can indeed come true. The
crisis of intellectuals, the end of ideology and the end of the
big stories had questioned indirectly the power of discourse.
Highly successful export products from Paris, nothing more. But
the power of writing had not (yet?) vanished. Ideals can be
implemented in society, despite the final 'defeat of the
intellectuals' and their political power after 1989. Currently,
we are facing the triumph of the new conceptual engineer ('the
philosopher with the mouse'), who is working with all the various
existing intellectual tools, all the available creativity and
personal fantasies, on the forefront of the technology. At the
same time, the old-style intellectuals are in deep crisis over
their loss of power over the global society and its media.

During the Gulf War, two of our heroes, Jean Baudrillard and Paul
Virillio, suddenly appeared everywhere in the media. It seemed
that their whole program, their whole way of thinking finally
came to the surface, becoming instant reality. But this reality
was a very disturbing one. So what is the epiphany of speed and
simulation, their true essence? Was this live television at its
best? It was a shock for them also and the Gulf War became a
turning point for both of them in their writing.

While some of the thinkers became commercial and conceptual,
others, like Baudrillard and Virilio, became more and less
pessimistic, one could even say melancholic. A shift appeared:
while some media theorist metamorphosed into professional
'cultural optimists', others, with the same background, showed
they truly desperate, sometimes cynical face, becoming old-style
'cultural pessimists'. Some even rewrote the leftist Frankfurt
School writings and incorporated them into a deeply resentful,
anti-media, anti-computer philosophy. Adorno and Horkheimer's
analysis of the 'culture industry' gradually became a
programmatic text of all those who look down on pop culture,
being trash, junk and pulp. This resulted in an open conflict
between experimental media aesthetics and High Art.

We see a clear shift here between people who are getting involved
in these new technologies and others, who are criticising the
consequences of these technologies from the outside and warn us
for the upcoming apocalypse (from the fatal crash on Wall Street
to real time dictatorships of the New Dark Age). A true fight has
not yet taken place. All attention is (still) focussed on Paris.
Many of the our heroes have died. The defensive climate amongst
intellectuals nowadays seems to make a productive debate on the
nature of media and technology highly unlikely to take place.
There seems to be a growing critique on Virilio and Baudrillard
for the pessimistic stand they take. On the other hand, Pierre
Levy takes the opposite position, coming up with unprecedented
sales talk, presenting the digital technologies as a solution for
all our problems.

The same can be said about the role of media art. One could make
a similar chronology, from the underground, through a phase of
experiments towards a close link with the commercial sector.
Places like Ars Electronica in Linz, The InterCommunication
Center in Tokyo and ZKM in Karlsruhe have become true
institutions with huge budgets and buildings, defining themselves
as 'Museums of the Future'. These are some of the many signs that
the phase of speculation and introduction is coming to a close.
Now that they no longer hidden in the margins of an avant-garde,
new media are now entering society and coming face-to-face with
all the current political and cultural conflicts. It is within
this change that we have to position the rise of 'net criticism'.

Net criticism, as Pit Schultz and I have defined it, does not
want to take the outsider's point of view. It positions itself
within the Net, inside the software and wires. On the other hand,
it isn't a promo for any of the technologies or their
visionaries. It is part of a wider movement for public access to
all media and their content. Net criticism tries to formulate
criteria about the politics, aesthetics, economics and
architecture of multimedia and computer networks. This is
necessary if we want to go beyond the stage of hype and do not
want to fall back into a state of scepticism. Most of all, we
have to clarify the terms many of us use. Of course there might
be some parallels with genres that deal with old media, like
literary criticism, book reviews, film critique, following the
developments within its own medium.

We should increase the quality of cyber discourse, beyond sales
talk, beyond easy complaints and of course beyond earlier
speculations. One of the places for this is the nettime mailing
list, which is also a social network where media activists,
theorists, programmers and net.artists meet. This group was
created in the spring of 95 and held its first meeting during the
Biennale in Venice. It combines radical criticism with the
building up of independent computer networks and net projects.
But we could also mention the magazine Mute from London, which is
taking a similar stand. Important sources are the book _Data
Trash, by Arthur Kroker and Michael Weinstein (in which they
developed the notion of the 'virtual class'), Hakim Bey's
'Temporary Autonomous Zone', the works of Critical Art Ensemble
and Mark Dery's _Escape Velocity. The most controversial
contribution so far has been the essay 'Californian Ideology',
written by Andy Cameron and Richard Barbrook, a true European (or
British?) critique of the Wired magazine from a radical, though
social-democratic point of view.

These are all first attempts to describe the hidden ideological
premises of the virtual class, gathered around the magazine
Wired. But it quickly became clear that we should do more than
just criticise the neo-liberal hippie capitalism. We should try
to analyse why they appeal to a worldwide group of young white
males,. We should examine their fascination with the technology.
What is this "desire to be wired"? Of course it is way too easy
project this on others, take an anti-American stand and come up
with some antique European truth or moral. This should be an
American-European dialogue and we are trying to involve as many
people from as many countries as possible, without pretending
that we are 'global'. There is no European alternative to
American cyberculture, and we hope there never will be. It is
unwise to project all the evil on California, or even the
Californians. Instead, is seems more important to study one's own
virtual class, everywhere, the nearby monopolies and various
attempts by all state authorities to regulate and censor the Net.

At the moment, nettime is debating the framework for a 'political
economy of the Net', once we move into the new stage of brutal
commercialisation, state regulation, which will lay the
groundwork for a true massification of the Net. Like Ailkno's
saying, 'It cannot be the future everyday', net criticism is not
predicting some future, but trying to formulate diverse critiques
of the present. Its aim is to come up with working models and
implement them, before others will take over. It seems important
not to repeat the failures of past generations. Politics and
aesthetics can no longer go separate ways. Many political
activists are looking for ways to include digital aesthetics,
while at the same time many artists are very unhappy with the
isolated position of this very experimental media art.

It is very tempting and dangerous to describe net criticism as a
global affair. Most of us are Europeans. It is hard enough
establishing some independent channels for exchange between the
East Europe and the West. Unlike the still very western media
theory, we are trying explicitly to include people and projects
from East Europe. Hence projects like the Next Five Minutes
conferences, Press Now and the network V2_East. Despite the fact
that the Internet might be a global medium, the cultures on it
are still very much based on different languages and separate
user groups.

It is not enough to speak about copyright and censorship. It is
not enough to complain about the rise of power of big
telecommunication companies. It is not even enough to charge the
rising gap between the information poor and the information rich.
Most important for me now is to come up with working models,
truly utopian, root level projects that can be realised on the
spot. For example: public access to the Net, your own domain
name, free content, or the inclusion of unwired countries. Net
criticism also means fun, specially if it comes through our own
desires to be wired, if it comes through our own will to connect
to other people and cultures and to ultimately meet each other,
face to face, 'breast to breast' as Hakim Bey uses to say. Net
criticism should not end up as an ideology or belief system. Or
to put it more accurately for these times: net criticism should
not end up as an identity lifestyle or fashion. Then it is time
again to disappear, into the darkness of cyberspace, speeding up,
slowing down, into multiple, hybrid realities.

(edited by McKenzie Wark)