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_Le Monde diplomatique 

October, 2000

DOES THE NET SERVE ONLY THE GLOBAL MARKET?

Wired to the counterculture

by PHILIPPE BRETON *

It's hard not to be struck by the similarities between the cult of the
internet and the vast counterculture movement that developed as a mass
phenomenon in the United States in the 1960s and, in a variety of forms, in
other Western countries. The counterculture that people refer to - assuming
more homogeneity than was actually the case - was in fact a very broad
movement encompassing the "beat generation", the youth protest movement
which later led to the big student revolts, the hippy movement and a host of
alternative movements.

The counterculture movement as such disappeared during the 1970s.
However, the values which it embraced gained social currency and influenced
life styles. A list of famous names was associated with this cultural
eruption which left its mark on a whole era: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac,
Alan Watts, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, Neal Cassady and Bob
Dylan, not to mention a number of rock bands and various journals. San
Francisco and the West Coast were the heartland of this "lifestyle
revolution".

The practices of this counterculture world involved "dropping out" from the
world of ordinary people, a journey of initiation reminiscent of mendicant
Buddhist monks (often to India, but also just "on the road" in the US and
Europe), communal living, a deep desire for equality and a touch of
libertarianism. There was a Gandhian attachment to the culture of
non-violence, a closeness to nature and a mysticism coloured by Eastern
influences, particularly Buddhism (many key figures of the period became Zen
Buddhists or joined sects that were influenced by Eastern ideas). Society
was to be a peaceful community based on love and altruism. A range of
life-style networks - producing music, books, leisure activities, a new
approach to education and medical care, new ideas about eating - formed a
vast "underground" in which hundreds of thousands joined.

This idea of a new world has many similarities with the present movement
developing around the internet, which is also mobilising hundreds of
thousands of young people - many of them looking for a society which is more
fraternal, more "communicative", more peaceful. The continuity is striking:
the world of the internet is, in its own way, today's counterculture - a
space in which you can leave the "ordinary world" behind you. People who
spend their time on the Net are in a sense the "drop-outs" of today, and
many of the descriptions of young surfers remind you strikingly of Kerouac's
"desolation angels".
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