[Hi all, I enjoyed the mini-essay below. It is forwarded from the Rhizome
list. Details of the list are at the end of the piece. John.]

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Date: 10.25.2000
From: Randall Packer ([log in to unmask])
Subject: Eulogy for the Utopian Dream of the Net

The Universal Page has, finally, put to rest the Utopian Dream of a
collectively-engaged, harmonious world united by the invisible impulses
of the Net. I am delivering my Eulogy to praise this noble effort, as
well as honor the past, that has brought to an end once and for all an
age of naive aspirations and fatal ideologies.

Natalie Bookchin and Alexei Shulgin, the co-creators behind the
Universal Page (http://www.universalpage.org/), devised the precise and
deadly Lethal Algorithm that dealt a quick death to the Utopian Dream of
the Net. Driven by overwhelming cynicism, a yearning for hope and
renewal, and a cool, detached need to topple teetering Theories, their
Special Script "scrawls and searches the entire Web," gathering in its
path the endless torrent of on-line rants, musings, pleas, and
declarations--thrashing and churning a once hopeful and misguided
idealism into a heap of meaningless ASCII. "Brx gbtfl rjsff gcmw hfp7xc/
oGgurnc qfypw6 ji," the Universal Page reads, is all we have left
of the Dream.

Where once we dreamed of a world of One, a Global Village, a
democratized Art, radical new participatory forms and the destruction of
rigid hierarchies, we can now only look back with a sigh of nostalgia
and a sad tear. It was a beautiful Dream--a grand one at that--since the
earliest days of the telegraph. Wasn't it Samuel Morse, ushering in the
era of the Victorian Internet in 1846 when he sent the first telegraph
message from Washington, DC to Baltimore, who declared, "What Hath God
Wrought."

Such words are now so poignant. One fondly remembers the touching
proclamations that followed the laying of the first trans-Atlantic cable
in the 1850s. The Atlantic Telegraph became "that instantaneous highway
of thought between the Old and New Worlds." "We are one!" they cried, as
Nations clasped hands in belief of the new Age of Information.

It was a heady time, intoxicating, filled with commemorations, speeches,
and excessive hope for a new bright future in which man could extend his
reach into the unknown territory of the Electronic Frontier. "The
greatest event in the present century," they claimed, "now [that] the
great work is complete, the whole earth will be belted with electric
current, palpitating with human thoughts and emotions." One has to hold
back intense feelings while recalling these now distant memories.

Yes, those brave Victorians believed the electronic media would heal the
world of its problems, in which old prejudices and hostilities should no
longer exist. The terrible and inevitable forces of human nature would
yield to man's great Invention. Of course we laugh at such naivete, now
that the veil of illusion has been stripped clean by the Universal Page,
but at the time, they believed that world peace would be achieved by the
"constant and complete intercourse between all nations and individuals
in the world." Steam power may have been "the first olive branch offered
to us by science," they proclaimed, but the electric telegraph "enables
any man who happens to be within reach of a wire to communicate
instantaneously with his fellow men all over the world."

Remembering these profound aspirations is overwhelming. Devastating. It
is painful to continue, but I must.

As communications technology evolved, the telegraph would come to join
the hemispheres, unite distant nations, making them feel they are
members of one great family. Information would flow freely and globally.
By the early 20th Century, HG Wells envisioned a World Brain that
gathered together all of mankind's knowledge into a vast library.
Vannevar Bush, America's Scientist during the Second World War, believed
that we would build memory machines so that we could "find delight in
the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the
common record." Science would bring us all together! Uniting our
Knowledge, our Culture, our Dreams, our Fantasies!

There were many hopeful scientists and cultural theorists who emerged
during the social transformation that took place in the 1960s, who
believed passionately in the Dream. We must not forget their committed
and touching dedication to the creative possibilities of the new
technologies. J.C.R. Licklider believed in the Symbiosis, the merging as
One, of man and machine; Douglas Engelbart's idea was to use the network
to "Boost the Collective IQ" to "solve the world's complex problems";
Ted Nelson, believed that "Everything is Deeply Intertwingled," and
someday, we would all live united in the Hypertext; and of course the
great media sociologist Marshall McLuhan, whose proclamations touched
the hearts and minds of artists and thinkers of his time, declared
emphatically: "Today after more than a century of electric technology,
we have extended our central nervous system itself in a Global Embrace,
abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned."

The Global Embrace would come to be called the Telematic Embrace, as
artists such as Roy Ascott saw in the potential of telecommunications
"the harmonization and creative development of the whole planet." Like
their Victorian predecessors, it seemed anything was possible. And yet,
the final cornerstone of the Utopian Promise was about to be laid. It is
very difficult to speak of this moment in history without deep sorrow.
But when the World Wide Web was born in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, and such
a humble man he was, announced that the Net would allow us, as he mused
philosophically, to "Enquire Within Upon Everything."

The World flocked to the Web. The Dream had become a reality. How could
anyone resist and not pluck the fruit? And so too the artists came, in
droves, emancipated by this new found power to reach anyone and everyone
with their message. And there was more! For not only could the artist
bypass the now archaic bastion of cultural distribution, the Museum,
they could join with the Masses, interact with them joyously in the
bliss of the Collaborative Artwork. Ubiquitous computing and networking
has led to democratization, they rallied!! Every citizen of the Net
could be part of the process of the creation of Art!

But ultimately it was this great potential of the Net to include
everyone that proved to be its fatal flaw. It was their duty, those two,
to put an end to the Utopian Dream with their Universal Page, "the Last
Web Page. The Ultimate Web Page!" That Lethal Algorithm has delivered
the death blow to rampant Idealism by revealing to us the profoundly
meaningless nature of the homogenized, democratizing synthesis of Web
chatter, as culled by the Universal Page from every single Web page on
the face of the Earth. Yes, the brownification of Information.

The Universal Page. This is what it took to put an end to the Dream and
we must now take this moment to remember, to reflect, and to remorse. A
moment of silence, please...

At this sad moment, looking back, it is heartbreaking to realize it is
over. But it was the conviction of Alexei and Natalie that the Dream
must be shattered, and we must have absolute faith in their decision.
The greater danger, they felt, of making grandiose and "Universal
Statements" via the Net would have been destructive to our Art and so
too, our Human Condition. That they have protected us from the Hype, the
Generalizations, the Grand Proposals, the Flowery Rhetoric--the menacing
forces that poisoned the Dream--we should be forever grateful.

I understand you feel empty now. But things are not hopeless. We can
only wonder what will replace the Utopian Dream of the Net which has
nourished us for more than a century. Perhaps this poem by the Great
American HyperNovelist Mark Amerika will provide us with new Hope, new
Inspiration P taken from a message he posted on one of the now defunct
projects of the past era, the Telematic Manifesto:

Hello Fellow Listmember Selves Telepistmologically-Enabled Kin
Curatorially-Linked Writer-Mediums Net -Conditioned Lurkers Those of Us
Swimming in American - produced Autopoiesis Infomatic Sha(wo)men
Filtering the White Noise Computer-Mediated Consciousnesses Virtual
Subjectivities Splayed in a Network Environment Gardeners of Edenic
Robotry Principled Language Disseminators Intertwingling Rhizomatic
Nomads, Monads, Gonads, and Phonads Galactic Singularities Enmeshed in
Hypermediated Context Your Exchange Continues To Stimulate Neurons
Pumping Intelli-Blood Rush Fusing Dissolving Coagulating Leaking...

Thank you fellow Artists, Theorists, Thinkers, Dreamers. Ever-Hopeful,
let us together seek renewal in a world no longer encumbered by the
Dream. The Dream is now Dead. Gone. Over. Finished. "We won't get fooled
again..."

http://www.zakros.com/
http://www.universalpage.org/
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/universalpage/
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/webwalker/

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