Cultural Responses 1-Ezines
What is an ezine? Ezines are electronic magazines, with or without a paper version. This cultural phenomena is probably the most interesting and promising development on the Web. Ezines are platforms for interest groups- a search on any good search engine will reveal just how diverse these groups are, my own recent search using Yahoo! revealed 647 sites covering interests from disability to paganism and bizarre bodily modification practices.
Ezines are the the primary vehicle for subversion on the Web. The first amongst these and still the most important is "Wired", a forum for discussion on all aspects of the technology you should visit this site @ www.wired.com. As with most good sites there are also links to related sites (eg www.suck.com) but the content at Wired itself is of some significance. It was wired that spawned much of the discussion that has surrounded the early development of the notion of cyberculture.
In the early days of the Web a predecessor of Wired- Mondo 2000 became a forum for what has been called "the evolution of a bohemian technochip subculture" (Jon Lebkowsky 1996). In reality Mondo 2K was to be a seminal publication of the development of cyberculture itself.
It should be borne in mind that in 1989 the area of computer technology was seen as the exclusive preserve of Geeks- Mondo as much for it's graphical content was to change this perception forever. The artist responsible for much of the graphical content was Bart Nagel who developed for Mondo 2K a unique computer enhanced graphical style.
Just as importantly in the early nineties Mondo was the only popular representation on the Web of the "Hacker ethic" described by Andrew Ross as "Libertarian and crypto-anarchist in its right to know principles and its advocacy of decentralised knowledge. [It] asserts the basic right of users to free access to all information. It is a principled attempt, in other words to challenge the tendency to use technology to form information elites" ("Technoculture" p116).
The writers and producers of Mondo were also aware that organised resistance to this libertarian ethic was likely to bring them into conflict with State and economic power interest groups- so aware that they used alias names to disguise their identity. The most influential of the writers- R.U. Sirius left Mondo in 1993 but has contributed to Wired and published a number of books in the US including "How to Mutate and Take over the World".
However the Web as I have indicated on many previous occasions is beyond control the positive aspects of this is represented by Wired, Mondo and many of the ezines I have referred to - the negative (depending on your point of view) is the existence of web pages originating from organisations for example promoting white supremacy and eugenics.
These crank groups however should be seen as just that -outside the mainstream of even the US dominant ideology both the Hacker ethic and the KKK are largely ignored as the Web becomes ever more dominated by corporate and governmental interests. This trend will accelerate as information flow control software becomes more sophisticated.
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