The Digital Counter-culture - Digital Culture - page 133

and the technological determinism of Marshall McLuhan, tinged
with Teilhard de Chardin's mysticism. Wired represents the apothe-
osis of the wired counter-culture, in all its technological-utopianist
glory, and also its subsumption into the dominant culture. Wired
is thus the most accessible articulation of the particular Northern
Californian inflection of the counter-culture out of which has
emerged a powerful and influential ideology that combines a belief
in the transformative powers of technology and in the positive
and self-regulatory capacities of the market. Wired has proclaimed
the existence of the 'Digital Citizen', who is, according to Jon Katz,
'knowledgable, tolerant, civic-minded, and radically committed to
change. Profoundly optimistic about the future, they're convinced
that technology is a force for good and that our free-market
economy functions as a powerful engine for good.' 43
At first sight such endeavours might appear distant from the
idealism of the late s, concerned as it was with resisting con-

sumer capitalism. Yet as this chapter has sought to show, there is
a logical progression through which the ideals of the erstwhile
counter-culture have mutated and attenuated into a whole-hearted
commitment to our current technologically driven capitalism. At
the heart of this utopian vision is the Internet, which embodies
many of the ideals fostered and promoted by the counter-culture,
and which have now become a central constituent of that capitalism.
The Internet is the paradigm of the emergent, self-regulating, self-
organising structures that can develop and thrive without govern-
mental intervention. In this it is a material realization of the idea of
the market as a spontaneous natural phenomenon that lies at the
heart of neo-liberal economics. A model of the economy as an
evolved and optimized natural system clearly resonated with the
cybernetic and ecological concerns of the post-war era. It also mili-
tated against hierarchical planning and elevated the role of the indi-
vidual, while still promoting the idea of the collective and the
common good.

1960