Web 2.0, Simulacrum & Control.

These quotes are from an interview between media theorist and activist Geert Lovink and Danish journalist Stirne Bjerre Herde.

[T]he political class is nowhere near ready to engage with the idea that we have left behind representative democracy and its inherent push to create majorities. When it comes to politics we have to think big and better vote for a hand full (sic) of parties. In many Western countries there is still only a choice between two or three parties. In terms of prosperity that would be comparable with the consumer goods on offer in a Cuban state supermarket. In fact, as you indicate, the ‘popular’ parties of the past struggle with a steady decline of membership. They have compensated their lack of proper representation with an increase of PR means. Politics has become a business opportunity for spin doctors. We do not need to repeat the Situationist critique of the society of the spectacle here. It would be much further build on Jean Baudrillard’s notion of the simulacrum and how this disembodied archipelago of signs called mutates when it enters the Web 2.0 age.

These points about the complete collapse of the political structure on the internet are interesting. I’m glad that Lovink sees the internet as a place of resistance and negotiation, where the simulacrum of Baudrilliard’s, is able to be twisted and distorted. How will mass politics survive in the age of the niche and the long tail? Should we be seeing stronger representation from minor parties?

Lovink’s next quote is also pertinent:

Let’s start with the observation that the Internet itself has become less and less democratic. This may be unavoidable as millions of ordinary users do not want to get involved in complex issues around (global) internet governance. The very idea that the Internet itself could be new digital public domain, like squares in the past, or the fourth estate in the age of the industrial revolution, does only exist on the level of tiny content particles. Increasingly users delegate power and responsibility over the network architecture into the hand of large firms such a Google where they trade their privacy against the free use of incredible web services such as Google Earth and YouTube. Let’s face it: there is less and less autonomous infrastructure, in a time when it is so cheap and easy to run a web or email server from your own bedroom. This lack of self-organization has an impact on the structure of the online political interventions that you asked about. We can hardly speak anymore of ‘tactical media’ in this respect. Even do-it-yourself is no longer an appropriate image. What we see happening is extremely fluid and instable ’smart mobs’ (Howard Rheingold) that gather, connect, act, and then disappear and dissolve the built-up structure.

I’ve always been interested in how few internet users have the ability to create their own architecture. Unlike the early days of the Internet where everyone was a geek, early adopter or a tech-head nowadays we have a large proportion of the population online and they have less knowledge about the nuts and bolts of code and programming than their own cars. I’m guilty of this as well and I even began a multimedia course, hoping to be all net savvy but of course I got horribly bored and dropped out. This lack of control does have major issues for the future of DIY and the ability to create. I don’t think this negates concepts about democratising media, but i think being unable to control spaces and sites within the web could have a lot to do with the weird, political space which is currently being played out across the internet.