Slightly abridged Hakim Bey poem from the book, The Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ), with motion graphics, soundtrack and voice by James Koehnline, 2001.
Hakim Bey
Interview With Peter Lamborn Wilson
If we take the net as a metaphor for that global society then it’s inevitable that Coca-Cola and Disney World will take over. Because that is the one world – if the net retains its anarchic quality, its egalitarianism, its horizontal structure, as opposed to its pyramidical structure, then a plurality of different personhoods are possible. True communicativeness, not so much communication as communicativeness, a quality of communication not just a spectacle of communication, with a deep heart to heart or what Sufi called a ‘breast to breast.’ It’s possible the net could be a tool for this, and that is why I have retained some interest in it, though I have become more and more cynical and pessimistic. In as much that the net will be taken over by the Coca-Cola culture, it’s just going to be another medium like all other media. If the net can resist the centralization of capital and the centralization of militarism then it could fight against false globalism for a real solidarity of peoples, but is this going to happen I don’t know.
Seduction of the Cyber Zombies
The following is a great essay on the internet by Hakim Bey :
The implied question:—does the Net further the purpose of communicativeness, and can it be used as a tool to “maximize the potential of the emergence” of convivial situations? Or does there exist a “paradoxical counterproductive effect” (as Illich would say)? In other words: the sociology of institutions shows that certain systems (e.g. education, medicine) attain a monopolistic rigidity and begin to produce the opposite of their intended effect (education stupefies, medicine sickens). Media can also be analyzed in this way. The mass media, considered as a paradoxical entity, has approached the limit of total image-enclosure—a crisis of the stasis of the image—and of the complete disappearance of communicativeness. The unique structure of the InterNet was considered to be its “many-to-many” patterns, the implication being the possibility of an electronic popular democracy. The Net is an institution, at least in the loose sense of the word. Does it serve its “original” purpose, or is there a paradoxical counter-effect?
