In the early 1990s, in San Francisco, where I was living at the time, the characteristically cold, fog-drenched air was laced with an outpouring of fin de siècle technopagan optimism. Oh, how the internet will open up new liberating avenues of communication! Fast-forward a few years, to the late 1990s – said “communication” is finally revealed to be a stunning illustration of Douglas Adams’ theory: the movement of small green pieces of paper.
On balance, it could be said that what encouraged the dot-com boom to thrive in SF is exactly what allowed me to thrive in my more high-minded artistic pursuits. The economic climate was ripe for “start-ups” of all kinds; the city was just emerging from the recession of the late 1980s, and rents were low. The familiar argument is: how could they stay low forever? Sooner or later one has to succeed, and in our society money follows success. By the same token, the “liberationist” ethic that circumscribes ’Frisco is, to use an eminently 90s term, empowering to a variety of creative endeavours.
Adams’ basic message, packaged in scene after scene, in incarnation after incarnation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is that no matter how much we appear to make “progress,” we stay the same, and that our blunders can be attributed to not keeping things in perspective. His description of contemporary humanity as a people “who still think that digital watches are a pretty neat idea” was hilarious back in the late 70s, when the digital watch fad had peaked, and his insight into the constant, modern lure of techno-optimism demonstrated how little western culture had learned from the extravagances of the “Me Generation,” we’d all been suckered again, blinded by bling. Now, narrow the context to the art world, and substitute new media for digital watches.
Back then – after Hitchhiker’s, yet before the 90s dot-bomb, I wrote an article in which, looking ahead to the then-unnamed medium we now know as web-based video, or more colloquially, YouTube (sorry, ifilm!), I referenced the dictum with which Clinton’s advisers were reputed to have won him the ’92 election: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Then, imagining the glut of video to come, I wrote, “it’s the content, stupid.” Now, contemplating new media, or technology-based art, or interactivity, the original, unaltered phrase seems appropriate.
Excerpted from Gordon Winiemko / Some Thoughts About “New Media” in Quotes
other islands in this text-fed stream
