Historicizing Utopian Popular Discourse on the Internet in
America in the 1990s:
Positions, Comparison, and Contextualization
Merav Katz-Kimchi
Office for History of Science and Technology
UC Berkeley
Abstract:
This paper aims at historicizing and contextualizing American popular discourse on the
internet during the 1990s. The first part explores two contrasting academic views
including the “historical continuity” approach that sees the utopian discourse on the
internet as a straightforward continuation of earlier discursive traditions, and the
contextualist position that sets each discursive tradition in its own historical context.
Arguing that both approaches are relevant for comprehensively understanding the
discourse on the internet, the second part historicizes this discourse by comparing it to
earlier technological utopian discourses from the turn of the century (1880s-1930s) and to
the utopian discourses accompanying the introduction of earlier communication
technologies into American society including the telegraph, the radio, the telephone and
television; the third part briefly hints at possible ways to contextualize contemporary
discourse.
Key Words: technological utopianism, historical continuity position, contextualist
position, communication technologies, internet
In the United States the process of assimilating the internet into daily life in
homes and offices during the 1990s was accompanied by dramatic, loud, and
often hyperbolic and enthusiastic discourse as regards personal and social
life in the age of the Internet Revolution. Academics from across the
humanities and social sciences sought to decipher and comprehend this
discourse by relating it to earlier discursive traditions about technology. The
first part of the article reviews a selection of these important and seminal
attempts. In particular, it presents the historical continuity approach and the
contextualist position. The former sees the utopian discourse on the internet
as a straightforward continuation of earlier discursive traditions such as
myth telling, the religion of technology, technological utopianism, and the
relatively more recent 150-year old discourse on electronic communication
technologies. By contrast, the latter argues for a thematic similarity between
these discursive traditions and the discourse on the internet but seeks to
understand each discourse in its own historical context.
Arguing for the relevancy of both these different approaches, the second
part, relying on earlier scholarship, historicizes the discourse on the internet
by comparing it to earlier technological utopian visions from the turn of the
century (1880s-1930s) and to the utopian discourses accompanying the
introduction of the telegraph, the radio, the telephone and the television into
American society. It hints at the similarities and differences between these
earlier discursive traditions and discourse on the internet. The third part
suggests some possible ways to contextualize the utopian discourse on the
internet, showing how it embodies contemporary ideals, ideas, and
perceptions.
Part 1
1. The “Historical Continuity” Approach
Diverse authors from various academic disciplines responded to the
enthusiastic and often hyperbolic discourse on the internet by trying to relate
it to former discursive traditions, from the most general to the most
particular.
Sociologist Vincent Mosco interprets the discourse on the
internet within the larger universal phenomenon of “myth telling” that
sociologists see as an integral part of all human societies from the first
human societies onward. He argues that this discourse is a collection of
myths, or “seductive tales containing promises unfulfilled or even
unfulfillable” (Mosco, 2005, 22). As such, like all myths, they provide
routes to transcendence, ascribe meaning to human life, represent an
important part of the collective mentality of the age, and render socially and
intellectually tolerable what would otherwise be experienced as incoherence
Mosco, 2005, 29).1 In particular, Mosco discusses three powerful myths of
cyberspace; namely, the ability to transcend time (the end of history), space
(the end of geography) and power (the end of politics). He further argues
that almost every wave of new technology since the mid- nineteenth century
has brought with it declarations of (various positive and negative) Ends
(Mosco, 2005, 117-127). Thus, overall, Mosco views the enthusiastic
discourse on the internet as part of a wider phenomenon of “myth telling” in
response to the unsettling event of the introduction of a new technology into
society. In the same manner, and in a far-reaching interpretation of Leo
Marx, David Nye, and James Carey, he argues that these myths promote a
vision of the “technological sublime”; i.e. “a literal eruption of feeling that
briefly overwhelms reason only to be recontained by it” (Mosco, 2005, 22).
Whereas Mosco sees no difference between the internet myths and
those that went along with the introduction of nuclear power, the radio, the
television and cable TV into society in general, other scholars have
suggested that this discourse is part of a specific American tradition that is
optimistic in its relation to technology and enthusiastic about its role in
shaping human life. Historian Warren Susman commented that “[o]ne of the
reasons [Americans] talk so persistently about the impact of media is
because thinking and talking about its role, and about the role of technology
generally, have become cultural characteristics” (Susman, 1984,257).
What exactly is this tradition or cultural characteristic? What typifies
it? Where and when it is rooted?
Historian David Noble terms this tradition the “religion of
technology” in his 1997 book and suggests that the contemporary
[American] enthusiastic discourse about technology or “the present
enchantment with things technological” is “a continuation of a thousandyear-old Western tradition in which the advance of the useful arts was
inspired by and grounded upon religious expectations” (Noble, 1999, 3-4)
Providing a Weberian argument as regards the Christian roots of
contemporary technology, Noble focuses on religious transcendentalism that
is at the heart of many techno-scientific projects.
Beginning in the twelfth and thirteenth century, the ideal of
knowledge as preparatory to salvation served, for the first time in the history
of the West, to bring the mechanical arts2 (or later, technology) into the fold
of philosophy by subsuming both under the same function. In effect, this
ideological change defined both philosophy and the mechanical arts as a
means to a higher end rather than as ends in themselves. The mechanical
arts, therefore, like other branches of knowledge, were seen to serve a
precise religious and historical function as an aid to recovery from the
effects of original sin.
The true center of this original religious faith moved west to the
United States and was expressed in American thought during the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. Since the late nineteenth century, and especially in
the twentieth century with the growth of secularization, “the old religious
themes, masked by a secular vocabulary and largely unconscious, continued
subtly to inform [American technological] projects and perceptions” (Noble,
1999, 104). Noble discusses, for example, the quest for divine immortality
and angelic-like freedom from bodily existence in the writing of pioneers
and theoreticians of Artificial Intelligence and computing such as Marvin
Minsky, Michael Heim and Michael Benedikt. Benedikt, for example, the
influential editor of the first anthology on cyberspace, observed that the
“almost irrational enthusiasm” for virtual reality fulfills the need “to dwell
empowered or enlightened on other, mythic, planes.” Cyberspace, according
to Benedikt, is the dimension where “floats the image of a Heavenly city, the
New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation” (Benedikt, 1991, 6, 15 in: Noble,
1999, 159-160).
Noble’s systematic depiction of expressions associated with the
historical tradition of the religion of technology explains an important part of
the dominant vocabulary, sets of metaphors, diverse aspirations, futuristic
mentality, and millennial impulses concerning technology in contemporary
American culture. James Carey and John J. Quirk aptly describe this
vocabulary and mentality as containing an “orientation of secular religiosity
that surfaces whenever the name of technology is evoked”, in particular in
response to social crises and technical change (Carey and Quirk, 1989, 114).
This secular religiosity, which many proponents voice without realizing they
are doing so, has much in common with the American tradition that Howard
Segal, in his seminal 1985 book, defines as “technological utopianism”.
Segal canvassed the rich cultural tradition of American utopian
writings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and identified a
significant variant that he terms technological utopianism. He defines
technological utopianism as “a mode of thought and activity that vaunts
technology as the means of bringing about utopia”, i.e., “the perfect society”
(Segal, 1985, 10). Segal demonstrates convincingly that this mode of
thought was expressed in the popular writings of twenty-five American
technological utopians between the 1880s and 1930s, as a response to the
major industrial revolution that the United States went through at that time.
It was also later expressed, especially after World War II, in the ways hightech – broadly defined as computers, satellite communications, robotics,
space travel, genetic engineering, etc. – promotes its products and ideology
like prophecies, world’s fairs/theme parks and advertising (Segal, 1994).
Historically, technological utopianism is rooted in earlier European
and American thought and notably in the utopian tradition (beginning in the
sixteenth century) with its images of the perfect society, and in the sciencebased progressivism of the French Enlightenment that interpreted the
scientific (and technological) “domination of nature to promise freedom
from scarcity, want, and arbitrariness of natural calamity” (Harvey, 1989,
12).
At the core of technological utopianism is the belief in the
inevitability of technological progress, and in technological advance as the
ultimate and sole solution to many social and economic problems. In other
words, among adherents of technological utopianism technology is seen as a
panacea. Adherents of technological utopianism equate advancing
technology with utopia itself. That is, utopia would be “a completely
technological society, one run by and, in a sense, for technology” (Segal,
1985, 21).
In the group of earlier works written by technological utopians at the
turn of the century (1880s-1930s), technology helps sustain a new order that
is manifested in perfect cleanliness, efficiency, quiet, and harmony.
Inhabitants of the various utopias would tame wind, water and other natural
resources into electricity, considered at that time as an efficient and clean
technology; they would live in megalopolises, i.e. “massive combinations of
urban and suburban tracts covering mass areas” in “perfect comfort,
contentment and happiness ever free of dirt, noise, chaos, want, and
insecurity”.
The ethos of technological efficiency shapes the values of earlier
technological utopias. For example, utopians call for large, heterogeneous
communities rather than small, homogeneous ones because they believe that
large communities offer the best opportunities for the kinds of contacts and
friendships that spawn cooperation, and cooperation is seen as fostering
efficiency (Segal, 1985,19-32).
In the loosely connected group of later works associated with a
completely different institutional and social setting3, technological utopians
like Alvin Toffler envisioned high-tech to foster freedom of choice and
diversity, “ad-hocracy” (i.e. short-term, professional, problem solving task
forces), liberation of individuals and democracy (Segal, 1994, 179-180);
John Naisbait predicted, amongst others, “a global boom free from past
limits on growth and without any future limits” and “the triumph of the
individual over the collective through high tech computers, cellular phones,
and fax machines” (Segal, 1994, 187) and the 1980s IBM advertisements
portrayed personal computers as devices bringing order, profits, and
happiness (Segal, 1994, 193-194).
Although Noble and Segal situate the origin of the enthusiastic
discourse about technology in different historical eras, the similarity of the
two traditions described above lies in the way their advocates conceived of
technology and technological progress. In what Noble portrays as the
religion of technology, technology is the means to restore lost perfection and
to achieve salvation, either in the religious context of previous centuries or
in the secular context of the twentieth century where religious metaphors are
only a remnant of a lost past. In what Segal depicts as technological
utopianism, technology is seen as the means to secular salvation and to
achieving the perfect society.
Whereas Noble and Segal situate the utopian discourse on the internet
within the wider phenomenon of Western and American discourse about
technology and hence see it as a straightforward continuation of earlier
trends, a group of historians of communication consider the internet to be the
latest communication technology and hence argue that the discourse that
accompanied its introduction into mainstream culture is better understood
within the narrower field of the history of communication. In other words,
they distinguish between technologies in general and communication
technologies. In particular they stress the ability of communication
technologies to symbolically transmit content and mediate communication.
French historian Armand Mattelart claims that communication dates
back more than four hundred years, and includes “the multiple circuits of
exchange and circulation of goods, people and messages.” Communication
also evokes “the diverse doctrines and theories that have contributed to
thinking about these phenomena” (Mattelart, 1996, xiv). He argues that since
the seventeenth century, first in France and later elsewhere in the West,
communication technologies (broadly understood) – such as the Suez Canal
or different national railway and telegraph networks – have been ideologized
as agents of social revolution by governments and other regime of power. In
other words, Mattelart suggests that the utopian discourse on communication
technologies, including the internet, is a repetitive phenomenon, initiated by
powerful regimes in order to impose order and regulation.
Unlike Mattelart, historians of communication John D. Peters and
Carolyn Marvin take “communication” to be a late -nineteenth century
concept and provide a phenomenological explanation for the advent of a
discourse accompanying the introduction of electronic communication
technologies.
Peters argues that since the late nineteenth century, when electronic
communication technologies first appeared, “communication” has become
central to reflections on democracy, love, and our changing times. New
communication technologies such as the telephone and the radio made
“communication” possible as a concept in the first place. Thus, according to
Peters, the actual event of introducing new media opens up an intellectual,
and one might add popular discussion about the possibility of
communication. To state the matter differently, communication as a personto-person activity became conceivable only in the shadow of electronic
mediated communication (Peters, 1999).4 Thus, according to Peters, the
utopian discourse on the internet is a recent manifestation of a hundred-year
old discourse on the nature, possibilities and benefits of electronic mediated
communication.
2. The Contextualist Position
Carolyn Marvin historically sets the first intense reactions (both
utopian and dystopian) to modern communication technologies in the late
nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. She describes two ways
in which new media have impinged on social life. First, each new medium
has shaped the imaginative boundaries of modern communities. As a
consequence, the introduction of a new medium challenges, and threatens to
re-draw these boundaries. Thus, established habits of social transactions
between groups are projected onto a new technological environment that
alters, or seems to alter, critical social distances. Second, each new media
form restructures and imperils social relationships. Thus, the introduction of
new media is “a special historical occasion when patterns anchored in older
media that have provided the stable currency of social exchange are
reexamined, challenged, and defended” in different public arenas (Marvin,
1988, 4).
In spite of these generalities that explain a recurring pattern of both
utopian and dystopian discourses accompanying the introduction of each
new type of media over the last hundred years, Marvin is careful to argue
that the emergence of every new medium should be understood within a
specific historical context. The discourse on the telephone, the electric light
and the phonograph during the Victorian era at the turn of the twentieth
century, for example, was “built to uphold a scheme of social stratification”
that changed much during the twentieth century (Marvin, 1988, 8). It
therefore ought to be interpreted in light of specific historical knowledge of
the Victorian period.
In the same vein, media scholar Lynn Spigel points out that “while the
discourse on new technologies seems to proceed on familiar themes, the
historical context change[s] considerably” (Spigel, 1992, 186).5
To sum up, the historical continuity position perceives the utopian
discourse accompanying the rise of the internet as a straightforward
continuation of earlier discursive traditions including the universal
phenomenon of myth telling and the traditions of “religion of technology”
and “technological utopianism,” and the discourses that accompanied the
introduction of new communication technologies into American society
from the mid-nineteenth century on. In contrast, the contextualist position
argues for a thematic similarity or a repetitive pattern between these earlier
discursive traditions and the discourse on the internet but stresses the
different and more specific historical contexts that give rise to diverse and,
in many ways, different discourses.
I argue that both the historical continuity and the contextualist
positions are relevant to fully comprehend the meanings of the discourse on
the internet. The first overcomes the popular amnesia and a-historicism as
regards the (proclaimed) newness of the internet and reminds us that
previous technologies were also envisioned as heralding a promise for a
better way of being and living. It invites us to compare our digital present
with the past. In addition, it puts forward conceptual frames and sets of
themes and topics that are important for our understanding of contemporary
discourse.
However, these frames, themes and topics are still too general to
account for the specific characteristics of the utopian discourse on the
internet. The contextualist position captures the ways in which contemporary
context can explain and elucidate certain themes in the discourse that are
otherwise not explicable, such as the prevalence of the theme that the
internet empowers the individual in her search for success, identity, self-
expression and authenticity or the absence of visions on the internet
supporting national unity and solidarity.6
Part 2
The Discourse on the Internet in Historical Perspective
Earlier scholarship on technological utopianism and the utopian
discourses that accompanied the introduction of previous communication
technologies into American society provide us with bright, historicallyfounded and comprehensive descriptions of these traditions. This part briefly
examines the main findings of this scholarship.
1. Earlier Visions of Technological Utopias
As shown above, earlier visions dwelled on the actual physical reality
of Utopia and its concrete facets of living. Contemporary visions very rarely
describe material reality in the Age of the Internet but focus instead on
various aspects of social and political life. This is probably due to the current
state of affairs in affluent American society in which standards of living are
still construed as being higher than in all previous eras. In addition, earlier
visions defined Utopia as a well-ordered and well-planned society.
Consistent with this well-planned society, personality in Utopia was
characterized by “total conformity, rigid self-control and nearly complete
suppression of emotion” (Segal, 1985, 138). In contrast, contemporary
visions present a relatively more flexible design of society, with capitalism
as the economic system and democracy as the political regime. In any case,
the freedom of the individual, his spontaneity and expressiveness are taken
for granted.
Earlier writers aimed at accurate prediction as regards the future,
whereas contemporary ones write with a modicum of skepticism and are
well aware of the possible inaccuracy of their predictions.7 The difference
between the self-confidence in predicting the future of earlier writers and the
skepticism of contemporary authors might be explained by the current spirit
of cynicism, self-awareness of the futility of such predictions and even a
sense of humility toward the future.
Proponents of the internet see only a short time gap – a few years or
even less – between their prophecy and the actual fulfillment of their
visions.8 Unlike former technological utopians of the turn-of-the -century
who only expected their utopias to be materialize, if at all, in the distant
future, these visionaries anticipate a veritable utopia immediately, or just
around the corner.9
This notion of the immediacy of utopia can be explained by the actual
rate of technological change especially in the field of high-tech that in the
last fifty years has immensely accelerated. During the 1990s, the term
“internet year”, the equivalent of a dog year, was relatively widespread
among techies and captured this sense of acceleration. “Internet year” thus
designated the accelerated rate of technological development.10 The
continuous production of new machines, software, and devices may thus
account for the sense of the immediacy of technological utopia. In addition,
this feeling may be accounted for by a general awareness of immediacy and
“the acceleration of just about everything”, a cultural trope that author James
Gleick describes aptly in his 1999 book, Faster.
In assessing earlier technological utopian visions, Howard Segal
writes that this form of utopian expression had few followers and little
influence throughout that period – with the exception of Edward Bellamy’s
Looking Backward (Segal, 1985, 101-102).
I suggest that contemporary visionaries like Howard Rheingold,
Esther Dyson and John Perry Barlow were influential and garnered much
support, expressing their message in diverse forms. Their gospel, passing
through the mass media, was usually well-received. In many ways, they
were responsible for creating and molding the spirit of the Internet Age.
Nevertheless, they had more modest aspirations compared to earlier
prophets. Thus, their visions were not intended to be blueprints for social
change,
but
either
expressed
collective
utopian
dreams
(as
in
advertisements) or expert predictions and reflections about the changing
conditions of life in the Internet Age. Above all, as Fred Turner argues, they
were promoters of “a new, networked mode of techno-social life” (Turner,
2006, 8). Their support of capitalism coupled at times with avowed
libertarianism and often dreams of egalitarianism, resonates, more than
criticizes, with the ideals of contemporary society. In short, their vision reproduces contemporary ideology.
While technological utopians of earlier eras were obscure figures, they
were successful, well-integrated Americans and in this respect had moral
authority in their communities and upon their readership, whatever its size.
In an age that sought such authority, theirs was unquestionable. In contrast,
contemporary visionaries are known to wider communities and are
authoritative in their professional field and related fields but do not exert
moral authority upon their audience at large. In an era that is suspicious of
grand ideologies and power, individuals usually do not seek moral authority
in the way that previous generations did.
In what follows, I will examine the utopian discourses that
accompanied earlier communication technologies.
2. The
Utopian Discourse
Technologies
on Earlier Communication
Since the mid-nineteenth century, starting with the telegraph, the
introduction of new communication technologies into American society has
been accompanied by enthusiastic discourse and has given rise to utopian
visions of the social order, the economy, politics, culture and education.
Thus, there is, to a certain extent, a thematic similarity and hence a
kind of continuity among these different visions. Advocates of the telegraph,
the telephone, the radio and television, for example, hailed them as fostering
national unity.11 In other words, they were perceived as encouraging
integration and creating solidarity and national unity. Moreover, it was
hoped they would promote world peace and universal harmony as well.12
The telephone and the radio were believed to help abolish loneliness by
enabling people to be in touch with friends and acquaintances, and by
enabling free access to radio programs.13 The television was perceived as
bringing the family together and reconstructing family life by providing
family members with entertainment.14 The telegraph was expected to extend
markets and hence to contribute to the national economy whereas the
telephone and the radio were expected to open up new job opportunities.15
Of the four technologies, visions about the leveling of class distinctions
became dominant with the advent of radio: it was seen to democratize the
dissemination of knowledge and culture for the first time.16 Radio and
television, which inaugurated the age of broadcasting, were predicted to
enhance democracy in that they allowed candidates to be exposed to the
public, making them more familiar to their constituents, and enabled voters
to judge and question candidates.17 It was predicted that radio would
improve education in that it would change the method of transferring
content. It was also seen as democratizing education in that it fostered the
spread of knowledge, potentially to all. In addition, radio was seen as a
civilizing force by bringing knowledge to everyone, and hence leveling class
distinctions.18
3. Comparing the Earlier Discourses on Communication
Technologies to the Discourse on the Internet
Comparing these early visions to the one formulated with the advent
of the internet shows that all share the dream of global understanding, world
peace and harmony, although with the introduction of the internet these
dreams were articulated more strongly; that is, in diverse sources and more
often. The idea underlying these dreams is that more communication will
render international conflicts and cultural differences meaningless.
Nevertheless, although the early media were predicted to contribute to
national unity, solidarity and integration, no such expectations were raised
with the introduction of the internet. Instead, many of the internet visions
focused on the individual, personal freedom, success, identity, selfexpression and search for authenticity. Like the telephone, the internet’s
promise was to end individual isolation and foster inter-societal
understanding. Similar to the idea underlying the dream of global harmony
and world peace, the idea underlying the dream of mediated proximity is that
the availability of more communication contributes to the enhancement of
social relations. Like the television, the internet was perceived as improving
and enlivening family life, but whereas the television was predicted to do so
by providing entertainment for all family members at home, the internet was
expected to do so through its ability to support an intensive exchange of
messages between far-away family members. Like the radio, the internet
was predicted to foster a more egalitarian and just society on the basis of
apparently equal opportunity for all users to obtain information. However,
unlike the radio, the internet was expected to promote an egalitarian society
on the basis of its alleged ability to sustain disembodied communication.
More than all the other media the internet was envisioned to encourage the
development of online communities as spaces of solidarity, cooperation and
accountability and later, as forums of information and shared interests. The
telegraph was expected to improve the economy by extending the national
market and the telephone and the radio – by creating a demand for new jobs.
In a similar manner the internet was perceived as a way to open up
opportunities for new goods and services, but unlike the older media it was
envisioned as creating unparalleled opportunities for the right individual
entrepreneur to extend markets globally and to shape a new economic order
– friction-free capitalism – an improvement on the existing one.
When it comes to politics and democracy, like the radio and television
before it, the internet was predicted to strengthen the democratic state by
providing individuals with information to use in making their political
decisions. In addition, the three media were expected to improve democracy
by exposing the candidates to the voters and by improving the relations
between candidates and constituents – by enabling more communication.
They were also seen as providing an opportunity to monitor candidates.
However, only the internet was expected to support televoting and hence to
make the ideal of direct democracy a reality.
The radio, television and the internet were seen as contributing to
improvements in education in that they transmit knowledge in new ways,
reach everyone and allow for unlimited access to knowledge. In this respect,
they are seen as democratizing instruments. Both new media are seen as
civilizing forces in that they make culture available to everyone.
The most striking differences between the early visions and the
contemporary one are that the earlier media were thought to support the
family and the local traditional community and were seen as potential new
pillars of national unity and economic prosperity. The internet on the other
hand was envisioned as empowering the individual in relations with both
local and global egalitarian virtual communities, by sharing support,
interests and information. In short, the internet came to be associated “with
the fulfillment of a small-scale of individual needs and desires” (Segal,
2005, 166).19 Hence virtuality has become a strong trope, suggesting the
autonomous existence of cyberspace and the possibility of benign
disembodied communication. The strong libertarian view voiced in the
discourse called for a laissez-faire economy. In addition, in the new global
market, economic success was seen as the achievement of the individual
entrepreneur.
To conclude, the repeating element in both the technological utopian
visions and the various utopian discourses on earlier communication
technologies is their technological determinist world view, where technology
is seen as functioning as an independent agent of history and conveys a vivid
sense of the efficacy of technology in bringing about improvement and
betterment. Another repeating and related element is the strong belief that all
these visions express progress in the form of technological achievements. In
other words, all these visions equate progress with advances in technology.
The repeating element in the utopian discourse on the internet and the
utopian discourse on earlier communication technologies is the dream of
global understanding, world peace and harmony.
The many differences between these visions include, among others,
the dream of a well-ordered society brought about by technology that was
expressed in earlier technological utopian visions. This contrasts with the
more flexible design of society in the Internet Age or the vision of earlier
media supporting the family, the local traditional community and fostering
national unity as compared to the vision of the internet as empowering the
individual in the fulfillment of his needs and desires.
These similarities, along with the many differences, suggest a “family
resemblance”: the utopian discourse on the internet both continues earlier
utopian discourses on technology in general
and communication
technologies in particular, but at the same time differs from them.
The many similarities can be explained by the persistence of the
traditions of a religion of technology and technological utopianism. Both are
enthusiastic about new technologies and take them to be a means for
religious salvation and the ultimate solution to social and economic
problems, respectively. In addition, and more specifically, following the
phenomenological explanation provided by Peters and Marvin above, these
similarities can be explained by the more or less similar characteristics of
communication
technologies.
As
I
argued
earlier,
all
electronic
communication technologies in their many variants opened up an intellectual
and popular discussion about the (benign) possibilities of communication. In
addition, they shaped the imaginative boundaries of modern communities
and restructured and imperiled social relationships. As a consequence, their
introduction into society in different eras gave rise to more or less similar
discourses.
The following part focuses on the ways the utopian discourse on the
internet differs from earlier discourses. I will explain these differences by
concentrating on the unique characteristics of the internet and the changing
historical context.
Part 3
Technology, Culture and Society:
The Discourse on the Internet in the 1990s
The traditions and discourses mentioned above put forward conceptual
frames and sets of themes and topics that are important for our
understanding of the contemporary discourse on the internet. However, these
frames, themes and topics are still too general to account for the specific
characteristics of the utopian discourse on the internet. For example, they do
not explain the prevalence of the theme that the internet empowers the
individual in his search for success, identity, self-expression and
authenticity. Similarly, they do not account for the absence of visions that
envision the internet as supportting national unity and solidarity.
In what follows I elucidate the discourse on the internet from a recent
socio-historical perspective. In particular, and in addition to accounting for
the prevalence of visions focusing on the individual and not on national
unity and solidarity, I analyze the key features of this discourse: “enlivening
family life” in the Internet Age, the dominance of the trope of virtual
community, the expressions of the dream of global understanding, world
peace and harmony manifested more forcefully than ever before, the
dominance of the trope of entrepreneurialism played out in the global
market, the ascendancy of the idea of a global economic order of frictionfree capitalism and the strange coalition of spokesmen – libertarians,
Republicans, residual counter-culturalists and others working in concert to
promote the internet.
In my discussion I do not suggest a strong causal link between all
such factors as the collapse of the Soviet Union or the weakening of the
nation state and the discourse on the internet, as it is hard to prove such a
connection. Instead, I argue that we have to examine the ways the discourse
embodies contemporary ideals, ideas and perceptions. In other words, I
suggest that we need to abandon debates over causal concepts and turn to
phenomenological concepts to explain the ways such diverse factors as
1980s entrepreneurialism, globalization, and technical advances that made it
possible to conduct a many-to-many discussion have shaped and codetermined the discourse on the internet.
***
1. The Internet as Empowering the Individual
A large proportion of advertisements for internet devices and services
presented the internet highway as the proper location for the individual self
to seek (and find) authenticity, personal success, liberty, freedom, autonomy,
instinctual spontaneity and adventures in the realms of both leisure and
work, blurred as never before; many internet visions of a better way of being
and
living
involved
empowering
the
individual
by
disembodied
communication. Finally, internet gurus perceived the new medium as
fostering personal empowerment, self-reliance, personal liberation and
freedom.
Part of the explanation for the recurrence of this theme lies in the
immersive and interactive qualities of cyberspace, the new “semantic space”
made possible by the internet.20 Whereas the TV or cinema are also
immersive media in that the audience often feels “in” the scene on the
screen, cyberspace strengthens this feeling by allowing users not only to
passively watch the content but to interact with it by choosing where to go
next. Thus, users are free to surf, browse and navigate on their own,
“hitching a free ride on [the] information superhighway”, as one of the
advertisements for America Online suggested. These immersive and
interactive qualities of cyberspace made many American advocates of the
internet consider cyberspace a safe haven, open to the individual to explore.
This free exploration in turn was regarded as empowering the user and
strengthening his individuality.
Another part of the explanation for the recurring appearance of the
theme lies in the fact that on the internet each user can easily publish any
type of content, unlike publishing in traditional media such as newspapers,
radio and TV. Publication in these older media is monitored and regulated
by editors and producers. The ability to publish easily on the internet was
considered a means of enabling and empowering the expressive individual.
In his much circulated book, The Virtual Community, Howard Rheingold
confessed how “[l]ike others who fell into the WELL, I soon discovered that
I was audience, performer, and scriptwriter, along with my companions in an
ongoing improvisation. A full-scale subculture was growing on the other
side of my telephone jack, and they invited me to help create something
new” (Rheingold, 2000, xv-xvi).
The final distinguishing quality of the internet that explains the
recurrent theme of the empowered individual is the internet’s alleged ability
to support disembodied communication. This disembodied communication
was perceived as free from many worldly constraints such as gender, race or
disability, and hence could empower the individual as an individual. The
Washington Post cited deaf person Jamie Clark about his surfing experience
in cyberspace as saying “There is nothing to blockade me. I feel free, it feels
great” (Sullivan, 1993, D1 in: Cogan, 2002, 229).
In my discussion so far, I have stressed that advocates of the internet
perceived the distinguishing qualities of the medium as empowering the
individual. In other words, I implicitly suggested that the inherent qualities
of the medium do not in themselves explain much. The connection that
many proponents of the internet made between these qualities and
empowering the individual means that an ethos that privileges the individual
has prominence in the culture at large. This ethos is the romantic ethos of
postmodernity.
1.a. The Romantic Individual in Postmodernity
While the individualist ethos in American society is relatively steady,
as Alexis de Tocqueville showed, following Daniel Bell, I suggest that in the
past, “rugged individualism” was channeled toward the pragmatism of
economic affairs and material achievements. In postmodernity, this
individualistic ethos became central in the culture and was channeled toward
self-realization,
self-exploration
and
self-gratification.
Thus,
the
contemporary romantic ethos sanctifies the untrammeled self, experimental
individualism, individual authenticity, rebellion and hedonism (Bell, 1976).
Historically, the romantic ethos of postmodernity has its origins in the
Romantic Movement in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. As
Colin Campbell argues, the reaction of the Romantics against the Newtonian
world view was expressed in a philosophy of ‘dynamic organicism’ with the
metaphor of growth substituted for that of the machine, and the values of
change,
diversity,
individuality
and
imagination,
for
those
of
uniformitarianism, universalism and rationalism. Historical Romanticism
tended towards the new, towards individualism, revolt, escape, and fantasy
(Campbell, 1987, 181). Later, the ethos of the Romantic Movement was
adopted by Modernist artists during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Their revolt was directed toward the ‘project of modernity,’ that
is, modernity as a social and political project including science, reason,
progress (as exemplified in Positivism), and industrialism (Calinescu, 1987,
41-42).
Overall, in the past, as this brief historical overview shows, the torch
of romantic ethos was carried by minority elites such as poets, avant-garde
artists and bohemians. Gradually, as Daniel Bell argues, when the
legitimation of social behavior passed from religion to modernist culture,
and more forcefully, after World War II, first in the counterculture and later
in culture at large, this romantic ethos gained prominence on a mass scale,
and was promoted by various agents of popular culture, including the
cinema, pop music, and advertisements (Bell, 1976). The discourse on the
internet represents a new version of this romantic ethos that Richard Coyne
aptly describes as “technoromanticism” (Coyne, 1999).
In particular, Coyne discusses one feature of the romantic narrative,
that of unity and multiplicity. He argues that it pervades information
technology (=IT) discourse including its four variants that cluster around the
four great artifices of the digital age: virtual communities, virtual reality,
artificial intelligence, and artificial life.
The unity theme in the IT discourse presents in various forms. For
example, in narratives of virtual communities, people who have never met
face-to-face and are located in different places around the world, are drawn
together to participate in the one global tribe through posts, emails and chats,
in ways that obscure the divisiveness of issues of appearance and status.
Another example is the language of virtual reality that involves the unitary
conception of immersion and engagement (Coyne, 1999, 2-3).
The multiplicity theme, particularly as understood pejoratively as
fragmentation or disintegration presents also in narratives of virtual
communities who are posited as being the response to the fragmentation of
current social forms (Coyne, 1999, 4).
What paradoxically defines the contemporary version of romanticism
as expressed in the IT discourse is that it seeks the redemption of the
individual alongside or through technology. Whereas Modernist culture and
its associated romantic ethos revolted against science and technology,
technoromanticism embraces technology, in particular the internet and
computers as the means to self-empowerment, self-realization, selfexploration, liberation and freedom.
The strong romantic and individualistic ethos of contemporary society
can be seen as compatible with the new perception of family life in the
Internet Age.
2. Enlivening Family Life
During the 1990s advocates of the internet put forward a different
notion of “enlivening family life” as compared to the meaning suggested by
advocates of TV during the 1950s. Whereas in the 1990s promoters of the
internet expected the new medium to sustain and enliven family life by
allowing geographically separated family members to keep in touch via
emails, in the 1950s promoters of TV expected it to bring the family
members back to the “family circle” as a close-knit audience around the set.
The difference can be explained by the dissimilar social circumstances of the
two eras, and the different features of the two media. While during the 1950s
one of the central preoccupations of the burgeoning middle class was
domesticity and the reconstruction of family life after the disruptions of the
previous two decades (and in this respect TV was perceived as the panacea
for the broken family), no such circumstances existed in the 1990s. In fact,
as recent statistics show, the traditional family is not necessarily the
dominant/preferred way of life for many Americans.21
In addition, as regards the special features of the two media, browsing
the internet and conducting other internet activities like managing an internet
account or reading online news is done on an individual basis. In this sense,
it is hard to imagine the personal computer and the internet in their stage of
development during the 1990s as bringing family members back to the
family circle as did the TV in the 1950s.22 On the other hand, the internet is
an efficient medium to exchange messages between geographically distant
family members and thus its advocates expected it to enliven and strengthen
family connections, assuming that more communication fosters friendship,
intimacy and familiarity.
Intimacy and friendship were indeed among the core elements that
contributed to the existence of virtual communities.
3. Virtual Community
In the previous part I referred to the dominance of the trope of virtual
community in the discourse on the internet during the 1990s. Put forward by
Howard Rheingold it originally meant a virtual venue, enabling emotional
support, friendship, a sense of belonging and cooperation. Later, when
absorbed into mainstream culture, it took on the new meaning of any online
group that shares interests and goals.
The dominance of the trope of “virtual community” can first be
explained by the fact that the internet and specifically, the bulletin board
systems and later electronic forums, technically enabled many-to-many
discussions. Regular participants in these dynamic discussions perceived
them as giving rise to a “community”, in the strong sense of a virtual venue,
enabling emotional support, friendship, a sense of belonging and
cooperation. In contrast, such a medium as the telephone allowed only oneto-one conversation. As a consequence, its advocates saw it as enabling
sociability within the traditional community and on a personal basis; the TV
allowed neighbors and friends to gather ‘round to watch together, and hence
was thought to sustain the traditional community.
The prevalence of a “virtual community” also resonates with the reemergence of communitarianism. During the late 1980s and 1990s, social
critics such as Robert Bellah, Robert Putnam and Amitai Etzioni (Bellah,
1985; Putnam, 2000 ; Etzioni, 1997) called for more community, more civil
society and more social cohesion. As David Brooks argues, at that time,
writers by and large “attempt to reestablish the rituals and institutional
structures that were all weakened in the great rush of the educated-class
emancipation. All critics are interested in moving in the same direction, back
to the bonds of local communities and small scale authority and away from
systems that allow individuals choice to trump all other values.” (Brooks,
2000, 238-239). But these social critics were not alone. The need for “more
community” was widely felt. As Brooks further argues, across American
society during the 1990s there were many efforts to restore social cohesion
and to reassert authority (Brooks, 2000, 261).
In contrast to these efforts, it would be difficult to cite other
successful, large-scale attempts to restore or enhance the cohesion of the
nation.
4. The Absence of Visions of the Internet as Supporting
National Unity and Solidarity
One of the explanations for the absence of visions of the internet
supporting national unity and solidarity is that due to intensive electronic
communication, made possible from everywhere on the globe in the form of
discussions in virtual communities, emails, chat rooms, and mailing lists,
proponents of the internet consider geographical boundaries of the nation
state and physical location to be of minor or no importance. As John Perry
Barlow wrote “I live at Barlow@eff.org. That is where I live. That is my
home. If you want to find me, that’s the only place you’re liable to be able to
do it, unless you happen to be looking at me at that moment – physically”
(Barlow, 1998).
The absence of visions concerning national solidarity and unity is
consistent with the broader trend that has emphasized the growing
importance of separate ethnic identities and multiculturalism since the
1980s. David Goldberg argues that multiculturalism and commitments to
cultural diversity emerged out of the conflictual history of resistance,
accommodation, integration, and transformation of the 1960s and are to be
understood
in
relation
to
the
twentieth-century
dominance
of
monoculturalism; i.e., an ethnoracial Eurovision that cast the United States
as a hegemonic intellectual ideology and institutional practice. This
ethnoracial Eurovision perceives European cultural production as the best
that has been said and thought in the world (Goldberg, 1994, 3-4). Broadly
defined, “multiculturalism is critical of and resistant to the necessarily
reductive imperatives of monocultural assimilation” and embraces the
variety of cultures inter- and intranationally (Goldberg, 1994, 7). This trend
further undermined the sense of national solidarity.
This lack of utopian notions of national solidarity and unity is also
enmeshed with the broader process of globalization, the decline of the nation
state, and the dismantling of national borders. In the course of the
“accelerated globalization”23 of the last 50 years, the boundaries of the
nation state have become more permeable than ever before to the economic
activity of transnational corporations, an immigrant workforce and global
culture. According to Jürgen Habermas, globalization weakens the forces of
national integration in that it blurs the uniqueness of each national culture by
nurturing a cross-national culture and by empowering the individual to
easily move across borders in her professional activities (Habermas, 2000).
In this cultural climate that favors ethnic identity and cross-national or
global culture and where communication knows no geographical borders,
the nation state appears anachronistic. This would account for the absence of
visions of the internet supporting national unity and solidarity.
In contrast to this absence of internet visions supporting national unity
and solidarity there were many voices expressing a dream of global
understanding, world peace and global harmony.
5. Dreams of Global Understanding, World Peace and Global
Harmony Manifested More Forcefully than Ever Before
While not dismissing earlier expressions of the dreams of global
understanding and world peace, I suggest that the current manifestations are
stronger than ever before because technical features of the internet are
perceived as making “global communication” a true reality. In 1858, the
trans-Atlantic
cable,
for
example,
allowed
potentially
communication. However, it operated for only a few short
for
global
weeks and
accessing it was beyond the economic means of many, making “global
communication” concretely impossible. The internet on the other hand is
relatively easy and cheap to use and hence its promoters suggested, more
strongly than before, that it would foster global harmony and peace.
In a world of intensive global communication, proponents of the
internet also expected entrepreneurialism to be played out on a global scale.
6. Entrepreneurialism Played Out in the Global Market
As never before, during the 1990s advocates of the internet felt the
new technology would create unparalleled opportunities for the right, often
small, entrepreneur and for the right start-up company to operate (and
succeed) in the global market.
One plausible explanation why this trope emerged can be linked to the
merger of the 1980s enterprising ethos with what promoters of the internet
saw as an electronically connected global market made possible by the new
technology. The new enterprising ethos of the 1990s, as David Brooks
describes it, created a rigorous “system of restraint”. Its devotees
“transformed work into a spiritual and intellectual vocation, so they
approach their labor with the fervor of artists and missionaries” (Brooks,
2000, 136). Adherents of this ethos perceived the new global market opened
up by the internet as a natural arena for their economic activity.
Not unrelated to this trope of entrepreneurialism on the global market
is the ideal of friction-free capitalism.
7. Global Economic Order of Friction-Free Capitalism
Vincent Mosco suggests that the prevalence of this idea among
advocates of the internet cohered with the general feeling of the “triumph of
capitalism” that many in the West felt with the collapse of the Soviet Union
in 1989 and China’s move to embrace a capitalistic regime. One of the
manifestations of this enthusiasm was the extremely popular article and
book by Francis Fukuyama (1989 and 1992 respectively), The End of
History. In the article and book, Fukuyama endorsed the global free market,
technological developments and the triumph of empirical science. Also, and
more importantly, he claimed that contemporary liberal democracy as we
know it in the West marks “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution
and the final form of human government and, as such, constituted the end of
history” (Fukuyama, 1992, 2 in Mosco, 2005, 57). Fukuyama explained this
by the fact that liberal democracy and its capitalist order are freed from the
fundamental contradictions that led to the collapse of other forms of
governance.
The end of history was marked for many of the advocates of the
internet not only by the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy but the
very arrival of the internet itself. Its promise of general betterment in all
areas of life was strongly related to the belief in the end of social and
political conflicts on both the local and global scale.
8. Coalition of Spokesmen
A mixed group of cultural entrepreneurs – authors of popular guides
to the Internet Age, advertisers, and less anonymously, residual
counterculturalists like John Perry Barlow and Howard Rheingold,
Republicans such as George Gilder and libertarians like Esther Dyson or
Louis Rossetto – worked in concert to promote the internet. I suggest that
the formation of this strange coalition of spokespeople can be explained by
the existence of a shared strong American ethos that centers on technology
(in particular computing and the internet) as an agent of personal
empowerment, liberation and social change. Such a strong ethos masked the
relatively minor political differences among its advocates.. Specifically, Fred
Turner argues that the group of residual counterculturalists belonging to
what he terms “the Whole Earth network” “developed a utopian vision that
was in many ways quite congenial to the insurgent Republicans of the
1990s.” Their turn away from “agonistic politics and toward technology,
consciousness, and entrepreneurship as the principles of a new society” was
compatible with the ideology of Republicans like Newt Gingrich and George
Gilder. They all shared affection for new technologies and businesses and
rejected traditional form of governance (Turner, 2006, 8).
In broader terms, the ideological compatibility between such people as
Barlow, Rheingold, Dyson and Gilder; namely, the common ethos that they
all shared, must be set against the backdrop of the hybrid culture of Silicon
Valley, which mixes antiestablishment rebelliousness with Republican
laissez-faire. Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron define this hybrid
culture as the “Californian Ideology”. It is “a heterogeneous orthodoxy for
the coming information age”, combining “technological determinism and
libertarian individualism”. The authors argue that “this new faith has
emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco
with the high-tech industries of Silicon Valley.” As such it “combines the
free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the
yuppies.” Further, according to the authors, following the victory of the
Republican Party in the 1994 congressional elections, the right-wing version
of the Californian Ideology that favored laissez-faire capitalism,
deregulation, and the “free market” was on the rise (Barbrook & Cameron,
2001, 364-370).
Still more broadly, the combination of 1960s radicalism with 1980s
entrepreneurialism and new businesses during the 1990s became the
trademark of the American business world as a whole. As David Brooks
argues, paradoxically “the one realm of American life where the language of
the 1960s radicalism remains strong is the business world” (Brooks, 2000,
110-112). Thus, the ethos of the 1990s combined the countercultural sixties
and the achieving eighties, preaching high-tech as an agent of personal
liberation and social change.
To sum up, in this article I reviewed two contrasting positions as
regards the relations (or lack thereof) between the utopian discourse on the
internet and earlier discursive traditions about technology: the historical
continuity position and the contextualist stance. I argued for the relevancy of
both for fully comprehending the utopian discourse on the internet.
Following this, I historicize the discourse by comparing it to earlier utopian
discourses about technology and contextualize it by showing how it was codetermined and co-shaped by diverse contemporary factors.
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1
Earlier sociological accounts on the discourses accompanying the introduction of computing cast it within
the Durkhemian sociological frame of the sacred and the profane (Alexander, 1992) and the sociology of
magic (Stahl, 1995).
2
The later medieval tradition arrayed the mechanical arts in a range from technological to economic
subjects: shoemaking, armaments, commerce, tailoring, metalwork, and alchemy, and occasionally
agriculture, navigation, and music, among others (Walton, 2003).
3
According to Segal the principal allegiance of the new technological utopians is not to the public sector,
but to the private. In addition, the new technological utopians favor the big corporation and not big
government; their prime motivation is personal gain and not serious social change (Segal, 1994, 177).
4
Peters asserts that “the dualism of communication – at once bridge and chasm – arose from new
technologies and their spiritualist reception, which capped a long tradition of speculating about immaterial
mental contact” (1999, 5).
5
John Staudenmaier (1985) discusses the contextualist position in the history of technology.
6
For a comprehensive description and interpretation of the utopian discourse on the internet, see KatzKimchi, 2007.
7
Bill Gates, for example, in his The Road Ahead, explains that “[t]his is meant to be a serious book,
although ten years from now it may not appear that way. What I’ve said that turned out to be right will be
considered obvious and what was wrong will be humorous.”; (1995, xiii) Esther Dyson in her Release 2.0
confesses that “[m]y goal in this book is to pass on a little of my sense of the richness and potential of the
Net. …Much of what I’m writing about is just starting to happen. Some of it is inevitable; some of it is not.
Some of it could come true.”(1997, 3).
8
Howard Rheingold, for example, wrote that in the early 1990s he “was astonished to realize that the
highest levels of American telecommunications industries had not awakened to the revolution that was
overtaking them” (2000, 394); Louis Rossetto wrote in 1993 that the “digital revolution is whipping
through our lives like a Bengali typhoon – while the mainstream media is still groping for the snooze
button.” (Rossetto, http://www.elon.edu/predictions/prediction2.aspx?id=JQA-1838, accessed August 8,
2006). Needless to say, in their writing Rheingold and Rossetto stress the benign social, political and
economical implications of the on-going digital revolution. Nicholas Negropone wrote in 1995 that “[t]he
harmonizing effect of being digital is already apparent as previously partitioned disciplines and enterprises
find themselves collaborating, not competing.” (p. 230).
9
On the relatively large time gap between the predictions of the turn-of-the-century technological utopians
and the expected utopias, see Segal, 1985, 21-23. On the increasing shorter time gaps between prophecy
and fulfillment in the various expressions of technological utopianism since the 1930s, see p. 126-127.
10
See, for example, http://jeffsutherland.com/objwld98/current.html, accessed June 27, 2007.
11
For the telegraph see Czitrom, 1982, 6-7, 12; for the telephone see Pool, 1983, 71; for the radio see
Davis, 1976, 84-85 and Douglas, 1987, 306; for the television see Davis, 1976, 86.
12
For the telegraph see Pool, 1983, 89 and Czitrom, 1982, 10; for the telephone see Pool, 1983, 89; for the
radio see Davis, 1976, 127,131; for the television see Davis, 1976, 130-131.
13
For the telephone see Marvin, 1988, 196-197 and Pool, 1983, 151; for the radio see Davis, 1976, 86-88
and Douglas, 1987, 306.
14
Davis, 1976, 379; Spigel, 1992, 2-3.
15
For the telegraph see Czitrom, 1982, 12; for the telephone see Pool, 1983, 68-69, 145; for the radio see
Davis, 1976, 119-122.
16
Davis, 1976, 84 and Douglas, 1987, 309.
17
For the radio see Davis, 1976, 79-80; for the television see Davis, 1976, 83, 354.
18
Davis, 1976, 333-334, 326, 342 and Douglas, 1987, 309.
19
According to Segal, high-tech (including computing and biotechnology) “enhances individual sanctity”
(p. 166). Segal argues that “especially in the period from roughly 1920 through 1970, technology [in
general] in the United States and elsewhere was commonly conceived as being the principal solution to
widely acknowledged large-scale problems like poverty, irrigation, electric power, and education” (p. 166).
20
For cyberspace as “semantic space” see Floridi, 1999, 61.
21
According to a New York Times analysis of census results, in 2005 51 percent of women said they were
living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000. In 2005 married couples
became a minority in all American households for the first time (Roberts, 2007).
22
The patterns of watching TV have changed dramatically over the last 20 years. With the decrease in
prices of TV sets, more and more family members watch TV on an individual basis in separate rooms.
23
Held, McGraw, Goldblatt & Perraton (1999) describe the contemporary stage of globalization as an
accelerated one.