| Technopranks
Carving
out a message in electronic space
by Jesse Drew
I
knelt to examine the floor, and there it was, in tiny writing, quite
fresh it seemed, scratched with a pin or maybe just a fingernail,
in the corner where the darkest shadow fell:
Nolite
te bastardes carborundorum.
I
didn’t know what it meant, or even what language it was in.
I thought it might be Latin, but I didn’t know any Latin.
Still, it was a message, and it was in writing, forbidden by that
very fact, and it hadn’t yet been discovered. Except by me,
for whom it was intended. It was intended for whoever came next.
(1)
This passage from Margaret Atwood’s
Handmaid’s Tale provides a nightmarish projection of where
US society is possibly headed, a place where communication between two
people about their common oppression is forbidden. This simple message,
scratched into the wall of a kitchen cupboard, will represent to some
the utter futility of the protagonist’s situation. Yet it also presents
the potential spark of resistance and the fragile but triumphant re-emergence
of truth. It has been the preservation and distribution of many such small
truths that have shattered many a dictatorship, tyranny and autocracy.
A
Public Sphere
At the root of most conceptions of democracy,
lies a very simple supposition, that a well-informed public engages on
even ground in a contestation of ideas within a public sphere of communication
and media. Vestiges of such ideas live on in the New England Town Hall
meetings, and within our ideas of a free press.
Today, democracies like to present themselves
as harbingers of a healthy public sphere, with traditions of a free press
and the free association of citizens. Such window dressing seeks to conceal
the anemic state of public discourse, particularly within the United States.
The near-monopolization of all media by corporate conglomerates, and the
paranoiac control of information by the State, with its vast Public Relations
apparatus, its “embedded ” reporters, and its system of “official
” leaks and disinformation has made a mockery of claims to a well-informed
citizenry. This corporate/government media nexus has locked communications
into a one-way stream of messages from the centers of power to the periphery
of spectators and audiences. Today an individual’s ability to compete
in the marketplace of ideas is akin to throwing a message in a bottle
into a vast ocean of corporate and government entertainment, punditry
and infomercials, a Huxleyan stew of “feelies, orgy-porgy and centrifugal
bumblepuppy. ”As Huxley himself said:
For conditions even remotely comparable
to those now prevailing we must return to imperial Rome, where the
populace was kept in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of
many kinds of entertainment —from poetical dramas to gladiatorial
fights, from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts
to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome there
was nothing like the non-stop distraction now provided by newspapers
and magazines, by radio, television and the cinema. (2)
Long ago, corporate power, like some kind
of Frankenstein monster, arose from the dead scrolls of their articles
of incorporation to become recognized alongside average citizens as “individuals”
with the same individual rights accorded by the Constitution. In today’s
corporatocracy, Microsoft Corporation has the same rights as Joe Blow
from Vermont to persuade the public with their point of view. In other
words, the law, in its majestic equality, allows Microsoft and Exxon the
same rights to buy primetime television time and nationwide billboard
campaigns as you or I.
So, is public discourse dead? Are you reading
these words scratched onto a cupboard wall? Hopefully not yet. Undeniably,
there is still contested terrain in the mediascape, especially within
the realm of electronic space. There is a vital tradition of independent
and alternative media that historically has had two primary emphases:
one aims at creating new channels of independent media, the other aims
to expose the complicity of mainstream media. This division of labor is
still evident within new electronic communications. Today’s electronic
media activists seek to create free spaces where information can be exchanged
and discussed unfiltered and uncensored by power, as well as to subvert,
expose, and hack away at the veneer of objectivity that shrouds corporate
media.
An
Electronic Public Sphere
There has been much discussion in recent
years about whether the expansion of cyberspace constitutes the creation
of an electronic public sphere, centered around the Internet. In the early
years of usenet groups, gopher sites, and on-line communities, many envisioned
the birth of the nationwide town hall meeting, where each individual was
equal to any other, and where all had equal voice and access to information.
According to Benjamin Barber, in a nation the size of the U.S. with its
great distances, electronic communication can assist in facilitating such
a grassroots democractic process:
Once it is understood that the problem
of scale is susceptible to technological and institutional melioration
and that political communities are human networks rooted in communication,
scale becomes a tractable challenge rather than an insuperable barrier.
(3)
This utopian notion seemed to build steam
with the advent of the World Wide Web, which allowed anyone to build a
simple website with a few lines of html code and a couple of gifs. Such
an opportunity proved irresistible to venture capital, however. Society
launched headlong into the web-frenzied dot.com explosion of the late
nineties. Within a short time, the .edus and .orgs were swallowed in a
tidal wave of dot.coms, and the Internet was transformed from a decidedly
anti-commercial space to a one-way commercial shopping platform.
Now that the wicked dot.com witch has melted
down, perhaps we can begin to sort out what is left behind that still
suits public discourse. When does electronic media space facilitate public
discussion and exchange? Numerous exemplary cases and projects abound,
from public access on-line discussion groups, to activists’ networks,
to political groups like Move-on.org.
Behind such newly emerging online activism,
however, lies a legacy of radical, prankster and hacker practices that
has blazed a path for such conventional communications. Some of these
techno-practices are politically conscious, some unconscious, and some
downright inane, ranging from the poetic to the polemical to the pornographic.
Some are clearly legal but push the law, some are in gray areas, and some
are illegal. But they fall within the classic traditions of pranksterism,
where a sense of humor can be razor-sharp, or wielded as a blunt ax. The
perpetrators are individuals claiming their place within public discussion.
Such is the messy process of democracy.
Rapidly advancing technologies are making
media production tools increasingly accessible, but channels for delivering
these messages are increasingly restricted by a tightening noose of corporate
and governmental control. The Committee for Democratic Communications
of the National Lawyers Guild took on an important legal case, involving
the opening up of FM radio frequencies to community–based Low Power
FM radio broadcasters. Their position was ultimately upheld by the courts
and even the FCC:
Although “full and free discussion
” of ideas may have been a reality in the heyday of political
pamphleteering, modern technological developments in the field of
communications have made the soapbox orator and the leafletter virtually
obsolete.
This decision helps to open a front in the
electronic communications realm for real two-way exchange, since it effectively
argued that to communicate electronically is a fundamental right of all
citizens.
There have been few attempts to unify activities
such as hacking, pranking and culture jamming. They spring from the same
desire to have public input into a closed communications system. In the
U.S., we have substituted a system of mass communications for the public
sphere. This has eliminated public discussion in favor of the mass reception
of messages from the centers of power. In an age of ruthless confiscation
of public space, prankster forays into the mediascape are increasingly
popular. The synthesis of humor, graffiti-writing, technical showmanship,
grassroots activism and the DIY punk rock aesthetic appear in many of
these media interventions. Rather than being mere background noise to
cultural, social and political life, these practices represent a common
effort to reshape the climate of ideas in the U.S.
Two main divisions in “technopranksterism”
reflect two primary camps of media activism—those working to build
alternative channels of information and those who focus on disrupting
corporate media. I refer to these two areas respectively as “New
Electronic Spheres ” and “Breaking the Façade.”
 
Microscopic
graffiti etched in silicon wafers, only visible through an electron microscope.
Breaking
the Façade
It is hard to ignore that we are subject
to a mind-numbing barrage of commercial messages, public relations ploys,
political spin and other modern propaganda techniques. “Breaking
the Façade ” refers to the types of hijinks that chip away
at the smooth veneer of these manipulative practices. Whether consciously
or unconsciously, Dadaism, Surrealism and the Situationists contributed
to the ways electronic pranksters expose the fallacy of mainstream media
objectivity, corporate responsibility, and the benevolence of the State,
often while violating our “common decency”!
Photoshop
Pranks (The Jackalope Tradition)
These images follow within a grand tradition
of Tall Tales and satire, a blend of tongue-in-cheek and cut-and-paste,
frequently mixed with dark sense of humor. Often designed by creative
but bored office workers, these images proliferate on the distribution
model created from a loose network that arose primarily to share jokes
via Xerox and fax machines. With the massive and instantaneous distribution
offered by the Internet, this material takes on greater significance.
At times, even the mainstream media steps in to “set the record
straight.”
Labor
Traces
The desire for one’s labor and creative
effort to be recognized is a long-standing one, going back to early craft
workers who branded or initialized metal work, pottery or woodwork. In
an era of global labor, where pieces of labor come from disparate corners
of the globe to be assembled and mass-marketed, individual recognition
for work is almost non-existent. This is particularly true in the software
and entertainment industries, where the name Disney or Microsoft subsumes
the creative talent of tens of thousands of workers. There is evidence
of leaving traces of one’s individuality in much of these products,
however. Some, like “permission ” walls for graffiti, are
let past the gate. Others surface later, often to the embarrassment of
the megacorporation.
An infamous
"flashing" frame embedded in a Disney film.
Disney
characters zoom by a stripper in a window in another embedded Disney cartoon
(top center).
Fair
Use Versus Copyright Infringement
Where culture is increasingly trademarked,
and all life seems to be “branded, ” it is only natural that
many people want to speak back to the “LOGO.” When we live
in a media environment saturated by advertising and brands, these icons
and symbols become just part of the environment, and fair game for commentary.
In an era when corporate power has surpassed State power, these logos
become political and ideological symbols, not just stand-ins for products.
Besides, many members of the public are increasingly incensed at seeing
their own culture stolen from them, to be repackaged and sold at the mall.
Copyright infringement may be your greatest entertainment value, but it
is increasingly litigious one.
Web
Hacks
Outright webhacks range from focused political
education to electronic grafitti. Sometimes the work can only be described
as vandalism. Because the perpetrator must crack security and surreptitiously
replace files on servers, this type of practice gets much publicity on
account of its illegality. Regardless of the swapped content, the result
of such intrusion is what I like to call the “Wizard of Oz ”
effect, in that they puncture the omnipotent strength of the victims.
Who would know that the all powerful CIA, FBI, Pentagon and Department
of Justice would have their ankles bitten by the teenage Totos of the
hacker underground. I would argue that these frequent attacks have substantially
degraded the once powerful images of these organizations.
Tali-tubby
and the "recovered film" hoax filled millions of email boxes
in the weeks after 9-11.
Google
Hacks
There are certain other hacks, which are
less illegal, but effective in delivering satirical answers to rhetorical
questions. Google hacks direct questioners on the popular Google search
site to phony error pages, that usually provide a humorous response to
the question. News of these hacks are often relayed along the same distribution
networks used by Photoshop pranks, circulated among networks of friends
and colleagues, prompting the right question to ask. Probably not too
many people would ordinarily go to Google and type in “miserable
failure ” and click the I’m Feeling Lucky button, and bring
up the website of George W. Bush.
False
Websites, simulations and general disinformation
Following in the parody and satire vein,
disinformation websites remain very popular and outrageous to those parodied.
Since the web began, grabbing a website in the typical first-come, first-served
way proved a convenient way to humiliate the party that was too slow to
grab their own domain. (GWBush.com, for
example) To add insult to injury, these sites usually imitate the object
of satire, and serve to confuse and agitate innocent visitors to these
sites. Powerful interests are now trying to roll these sites back, however,
by tying domain names into laws around copyright infringement.
New
Spheres of Discussion
The friendly accompaniment to “Breaking
the Façade ” is the creation of new spaces for the free exchange
of information and discussion. Incredibly frustrating to official gatekeepers
of information in the powerful media chains and in the State Department,
this is one of the most promising developments of the Internet. Truth
often begins to emerge here, before gaining a critical mass of believers.
At this point, mass media often wades in with its spin, to avoid the embarrassment
of being left far behind on an issue everyone is talking about.
Public
Files
One of the truly hopeful things about the
web is that citizens can publish original documents, images and evidence,
entire original sources un-filtered by mass media. This has led to some
truly spectacular results. Recent publishing adventures include damning
files from cigarette companies detailing their targeting of youth, recent
documents on the instability of software for electronic voting, and health
risks of eating at McDonald’s. This type of activity is probably
the most frightening for powerful interests, because they allow hard data
out for anyone to make up their own minds, and bypass “spin ”
put on the issues by PR and the media. Legality is often questioned, as
sometimes theft is involved, but it seems clearly for now to be protected
First Amendment activity.
Peer
to Peer
Peer-to-peer technologies have transformed
the way files are shared, a decentralized activity that allows for random
on-demand sharing of data. This enormously popular phenomenon is creating
a new culture of mutual respect and responsibility, for it depends upon
leaving ones computer folders available for public sharing, an anathema
to corporate interests who have worked so hard to commodify information.
Such files often consist of full-frame motion video clips, books, music,
graphic arts and other cultural work. Such sharing is opening up a world
of media to many people who would otherwise not have access to these resources.
from
Phil Pateris' Iraq Campaign
Internet
Activism and List Servs
E-mail must certainly be considered among
the most powerful tools available for opening up public discussion, particularly
among the burgeoning supply of dedicated list-servs available to join.
For a great number of environmental, labor, cultural and other activist
groups, this simple form of communication is allowing an unprecedented
volume of one-to-one conversation. Although sprouting from the original
model built around usenet groups, e-mail listservs bring regular information
and action requests from like-minded individuals and organizations.
Blogging
the Night Away
An increasingly popular media activity is
the “blog ” or web log that offers instant reportage and opinion
directly and instantaneously from the writer to the on-line audience.
“Blogging ” allows information to travel unfiltered to a limitless
audience, acting as a textual witness to events both earth-shattering
as well as banal, from Iraqi battlefields to Hollywood gossip. Increasingly
seen as the raw truth, blogs have started to pull the mainstream media
around by the nose, as it outscoops and out-maneuvers the slower moving
journalistic institutions.
Though the speed at which bloggers post their
comments often sacrifices fact-checking, the proven reliability of many
blogs has proven disastrous to official spin-meisters, censors and those
who prefer to control the flow of information.
The
Way Forward
Ultimately, what is the impact of such activities?
While some pundits like to dismiss it all as the trivial work of isolated
individuals, I believe that the total effect of technopranks is having
a substantial impact on public life, with benefits ranging from opening
up raw documents directly to the public, to questioning and satirizing
powerful interests, to deflating the omnipotent power of corporations
and government, to building horizontal links between millions of people.
Information, however, is not necessarily power, but must somehow be translated
into action. That is the challenge of our age.
1 Atwood, M. (1986). The Handmaid’s
Tale. NY; Anchor Books, p. 52.
2 Huxley, A. (1965.) Brave New World Revisited. NY: Harper Row. p, 29.
3 Barber, B. (1984). Strong democracy: Participatory politics for a new
age. Berkeley: University of California, p. 247.
from
Jesse Drew's Manifestoon |
