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Full text at: http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/2000/10/06internet _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". =========================================== %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%