Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
formed a strong alliance with Ronald Reagan, who was elected
President of the United States in
. Reagan espoused 'supply side
economics', in the name of which he made dramatic cuts in taxes,
and in government support of social welfare programmes, while
massively increasing military expenditure.
These measures, both conservative and radical at the same time,
were a response to the challenges of a society in which the post-war
Fordist-Keynesian consensus no longer held. Neo-liberal economics
was a kind of ideological justification for the dramatic adjust-
ments governments perceived as necessary in the context of highly
competitive globalized capitalism, and of the high social costs they
incurred. It might seem at first that, both in theory and in practice,
neo-liberalism would be at odds with counter-cultural thinking.
But in fact, as remarked before, there is a remarkable degree of
consensus. Both neo-liberalism and the counter-culture elevated the
individual over the collective. Both also proclaimed the necessity of
freeing the individual's capacity to act from the tyranny of organi-
zations and bureaucracies. The hedonism that was a characteristic
part of the counter-culture is not so far from the neo-liberal appeal
to the self-interest of the consumer. In a curious way, the pursuit
of neo-liberal policies is also the triumph of counter-cultural ideas.
Another shared characteristic is a belief in the positive power of
information technology. As we have seen, from the late '
1980
s counter-
culture luminaries such as Brand were extolling the potential of
computers. The rhetoric of neo-liberalism also continually empha-
sizes the extraordinary abilities of computers and networks to
enable the managing of complex interlinked markets. But the
affinities between neo-liberalism and technology run deeper. Like
Adam Smith's market system, described in chapter one, neo-liberal
economics instantiate a kind of cybernetic fantasy of self-regulation.
In his early work on theoretical psychology, Hayek acknowledged the
influence of his friend Ludwig van Bertallanfy, founder of General
Systems Theory, as well as of Norbert Wiener and Walter Cannon,
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