Subject: Universal Page + "Eulogy for the Utopian Dream of the Net"
NINCH-ANNOUNCE (david@ninch.org)
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 15:56:50 -0400
Message-Id: <v0421010fb61cd3679d93@[192.100.21.22]> Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 15:56:50 -0400 To: ninch-announce@cni.org From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org> Subject: Universal Page + "Eulogy for the Utopian Dream of the Net"
NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources
from across the Community
October 25, 2000
Universal Page
Natalie Bookchin + Alexei Shulgin
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/universalpage/
http://www.universalpage.org/
Eulogy for the Utopian Dream of the Net
by Randall Packer
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/universalpage/universal_eulogy.html
From the ever innovative Walker Art Center comes an online exhibit
centered around the web art piece, "Universal Page." With the
following introduction to the piece, the Walker has added Randall
Packer's interpretive essay, "Eulogy for the Utopian Dream of the
Net." A reminder to us all of the gap between our visions and
practical achievements.
David Green
===========
======================================================================
==About Universal Page
"From the first moment of the new millennium all public content on
the World Wide Web has come together for the first time in history
to form the single largest collaboration ever known to humankind.
From the start of the new millennium onward, with a public opening
on the occasion of the Walker Art Center exhibition Let's Entertain
and Art Entertainment Network, Universal Page will display all
content on the Web, merged together as one, and will be available
for viewing twenty-four hours a day. All users on the Internet are
invited to join together to witness the consummation of global
collectivity.
Universal Page is the objective average of all content of the Web. A
special script, developed by a team of American and Russian
programmers, crawls and searches the Web, analyzing and processing
current data and generating an average according to precise
algorithms. In order to keep up with the pace of the always changing
Web, all content on Universal Page is continuously updated in real
time.
A manifestation and proclamation of the utopian dream of world unity
and the realization of democratic global communication, Universal
Page articulates the historic and momentous effects of constant
flows of creation, communication, exchange, collectivity,
connectivity and interactivity where no one with a computer and a
modem is excluded, no one with a web server is unheard, and no one
with a software client is ignored. This ultimate commemorative living
magnum opus utilizes the work, play and input of every single
participant, human and robotic, of the World Wide Web, and mandates a
universal commitment to a unified peaceful new millennium, where
subjects of the world will live together in shared harmony.
Universal Page is a pulsating, living monument commemorating no
single individual or icon but instead, celebrating the global
collective known as the World Wide Web. Universal Page offers the
world a once in a lifetime opportunity to honor and observe our
networked past, present and future as it boldly initiates our entry
into the new millennium.
Universal Page has been funded by the Jerome Foundation and the
Walker Art Center. The project was first envisioned and is now being
orchestrated by Natalie Bookchin and Alexei Shulgin.
======================================================================
=
>From: webwalker-admin@maillist.walkerart.org
>To: "WebWalker" <webwalker@maillist.walkerart.org>
>Subject: [WebWalker] eulogy for the utopian dream of the net_102500
>Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 01:24:58 -0500
Eulogy for the Utopian Dream of the Net
by Randall Packer
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Universal Page
Natalie Bookchin + Alexei Shulgin
http://www.universalpage.org/
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/universalpage/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"The Dream is over."
The Universal Page has, finally, put to rest the Utopian Dream of a
collectively-engaged, harmonious world united by the invisible
impulses of the Net. I am delivering my Eulogy to praise this noble
effort, as well as honor the past, that has brought to an end once and
for all an age of naive aspirations and fatal ideologies.
Natalie Bookchin and Alexei Shulgin, the co-creators behind the
Universal Page, devised the precise and deadly Lethal Algorithm that
dealt a quick death to the Utopian Dream of the Net. Driven by
overwhelming cynicism, a yearning for hope and renewal, and a cool,
detached need to topple teetering Theories, their Special Script
"scrawls and searches the entire Web," gathering in its path the
endless torrent of on-line rants, musings, pleas, and
declarations--thrashing and churning a once hopeful and misguided
idealism into a heap of meaningless ASCII. "Brx gbtfl rj'sff gcmw hf
p7xc¯ oGgurnc qæypw6 jé," the Universal Page reads, is all we have
left of the Dream.
Where once we dreamed of a world of One, a Global Village, a
democratized Art, radical new participatory forms and the destruction
of rigid hierarchies, we can now only look back with a sigh of
nostalgia and a sad tear. It was a beautiful Dream--a grand one at
that--since the earliest days of the telegraph. Wasn't it Samuel
Morse, ushering in the era of the Victorian Internet in 1846 when he
sent the first telegraph message from Washington, DC to Baltimore, who
declared, "What Hath God Wrought."
Such words are now so poignant. One fondly remembers the touching
proclamations that followed the laying of the first trans-Atlantic
cable in the 1850s. The Atlantic Telegraph became "that instantaneous
highway of thought between the Old and New Worlds." "We are one!" they
cried, as Nations clasped hands in belief of the new Age of
Information.
It was a heady time, intoxicating, filled with commemorations,
speeches, and excessive hope for a new bright future in which man
could extend his reach into the unknown territory of the Electronic
Frontier. "The greatest event in the present century," they claimed,
"now [that] the great work is complete, the whole earth will be belted
with electric current, palpitating with human thoughts and emotions."
One has to hold back intense feelings while recalling these now
distant memories.
Yes, those brave Victorians believed the electronic media would heal
the world of its problems, in which old prejudices and hostilities
should no longer exist. The terrible and inevitable forces of human
nature would yield to man's great Invention. Of course we laugh at
such naiveté, now that the veil of illusion has been stripped clean by
the Universal Page, but at the time, they believed that world peace
would be achieved by the "constant and complete intercourse between
all nations and individuals in the world." Steam power may have been
"the first olive branch offered to us by science," they proclaimed,
but the electric telegraph "enables any man who happens to be within
reach of a wire to communicate instantaneously with his fellow men all
over the world."
Remembering these profound aspirations is overwhelming. Devastating.
It is painful to continue, but I must.
As communications technology evolved, the telegraph would come to join
the hemispheres, unite distant nations, making them feel they are
members of one great family. Information would flow freely and
globally. By the early 20th Century, HG Wells envisioned a World Brain
that gathered together all of mankind's knowledge into a vast library.
Vannevar Bush, America's Scientist during the Second World War,
believed that we would build memory machines so that we could "find
delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous
mass of the common record." Science would bring us all together!
Uniting our Knowledge, our Culture, our Dreams, our Fantasies!
There were many hopeful scientists and cultural theorists who emerged
during the social transformation that took place in the 1960s, who
believed passionately in the Dream. We must not forget their committed
and touching dedication to the creative possibilities of the new
technologies. J.C.R. Licklider believed in the Symbiosis, the merging
as One, of man and machine; Douglas Engelbart's idea was to use the
network to "Boost the Collective IQ" to "solve the world's complex
problems"; Ted Nelson, believed that "Everything is Deeply
Intertwingled," and someday, we would all live united in the
Hypertext; and of course the great media sociologist Marshall McLuhan,
whose proclamations touched the hearts and minds of artists and
thinkers of his time, declared emphatically: "Today after more than a
century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous
system itself in a Global Embrace, abolishing both space and time as
far as our planet is concerned."
The Global Embrace would come to be called the Telematic Embrace, as
artists such as Roy Ascott saw in the potential of telecommunications
"the harmonization and creative development of the whole planet." Like
their Victorian predecessors, it seemed anything was possible. And
yet, the final cornerstone of the Utopian Promise was about to be
laid. It is very difficult to speak of this moment in history without
deep sorrow. But when the World Wide Web was born in 1989, Tim
Berners-Lee, and such a humble man he was, announced that the Net
would allow us, as he mused philosophically, to "Enquire Within Upon
Everything."
The World flocked to the Web. The Dream had become a reality. How
could anyone resist and not pluck the fruit? And so too the artists
came, in droves, emancipated by this new found power to reach anyone
and everyone with their message. And there was more! For not only
could the artist bypass the now archaic bastion of cultural
distribution, the Museum, they could join with the Masses, interact
with them joyously in the bliss of the Collaborative Artwork.
Ubiquitous computing and networking has led to democratization, they
rallied!! Every citizen of the Net could be part of the process of the
creation of Art!
But ultimately it was this great potential of the Net to include
everyone that proved to be its fatal flaw. It was their duty, those
two, to put an end to the Utopian Dream with their Universal Page,
"the Last Web Page. The Ultimate Web Page!" That Lethal Algorithm has
delivered the death blow to rampant Idealism by revealing to us the
profoundly meaningless nature of the homogenized, democratizing
synthesis of Web chatter, as culled by the Universal Page from every
single Web page on the face of the Earth. Yes, the brownification of
Information.
The Universal Page. This is what it took to put an end to the Dream
and we must now take this moment to remember, to reflect, and to
remorse. A moment of silence, please...
At this sad moment, looking back, it is heartbreaking to realize it is
over. But it was the conviction of Alexei and Natalie that the Dream
must be shattered, and we must have absolute faith in their decision.
The greater danger, they felt, of making grandiose and "Universal
Statements" via the Net would have been destructive to our Art and so
too, our Human Condition. That they have protected us from the Hype,
the Generalizations, the Grand Proposals, the Flowery Rhetoric--the
menacing forces that poisoned the Dream--we should be forever
grateful.
I understand you feel empty now. But things are not hopeless. We can
only wonder what will replace the Utopian Dream of the Net which has
nourished us for more than a century. Perhaps this poem by the Great
American HyperNovelist Mark Amerika will provide us with new Hope, new
Inspiration -- taken from a message he posted on one of the now defunct
projects of the past era, the Telematic Manifesto:
Hello Fellow Listmember Selves
Telepistmologically-Enabled Kin
Curatorially-Linked Writer-Mediums
Net -Conditioned Lurkers
Those of Us Swimming in American - produced Autopoiesis
Infomatic Sha(wo)men Filtering the White Noise
Computer-Mediated Consciousnesses
Virtual Subjectivities Splayed in a Network Environment
Gardeners of Edenic Robotry
Principled Language Disseminators Intertwingling
Rhizomatic Nomads, Monads, Gonads, and Phonads
Galactic Singularities Enmeshed in Hypermediated Context
Your Exchange Continues To Stimulate
Neurons Pumping
Intelli-Blood Rush
Fusing
Dissolving
Coagulating
Leaking...
Thank you fellow Artists, Theorists, Thinkers, Dreamers. Ever-Hopeful,
let us together seek renewal in a world no longer encumbered by the
Dream. The Dream is now Dead. Gone. Over. Finished. "We won't get
fooled again..."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Randall Packer's work as a composer, media artist and producer/curator
has focused on the integration of live performance, technology and the
interdisciplinary arts. From the revival of avant-garde music theater
to the creation of new interactive media work, he has bridged current
issues in art and technology with seminal interdisciplinary ideologies
from throughout the 20th century.
http://www.zakros.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
----------------------------------------
Steve Dietz
Director, New Media Initiatives
Walker Art Center
subscribe Webwalker:
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/webwalker/
_____________________________________________
WebWalker: http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/webwalker/
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