Almost everybody seems to be fiddling on their homepage. And you would be surprised by how many 'EGO's are out there. Imagine employees at their workstation, grinding their webpages, perhaps lured by the idea of starting a business on the net: start small, build a homepage and call it a business. Mostly this hoax doesn't go much further.

But it is only half a hoax, after all it works along the suggestive lines of possibilities on the net. Represent your company with your name, represent yourself - mostly not much more happens. But already at this basic level the principles of competitive, free markets succeed - with all the implications normally filed under deregulation and globalisation. The ideology of EGO and representation are deeply embedded in the internet. And other topics such as 'independent information' provided by alternative organisations are (if anything) side dishes. Some of the representatives of this 'independence' are also playing this game of representation.

Domains

Naturally, the EGO goes further than bored employees and their homepages. On a more advanced level it is negotiated via the address. The domain speaks volumes about where the user can be found and in what connection s/he stands to the service provider and even what his/her financial and educational situation is. Being represented by an endless line of numbers or a university address means no money. Much more advanced is Astrid@astrid.de, and respectively http://www.ingrid.de. She seems to be in a position to decorate her own domain. She upgrades her 'property' by the space behind the @ and voices her demand for space and definition with her surname. Nowadays -1998 - one has to have one's own domain name, especially in creative circles.

Topdomains

By the year 2000 one has one's own topdomain. This is again about ideology - and influence. There are many interesting attempts to protect one's influence - and sometimes to free oneself from it. Name.Space is such an attempt to liberate the name assignment - at what price? Name.Space wants to influence the definition of space on the level of topdomains. Name.Space wants to break the monopoly over those topdomains, which have been held by a handful of organisations. Not a bad idea, but it leaves a familiar aftertaste: concerns over the free market and Name.Space's right to flog topdomains themselves. Name.Space is one example, but not the only one, of the proximity of so called net-activism to libertarian economics and the closeness of an interventionism (which in Europe is seen as 'leftwing') to free enterprises on the net. Grass roots organisations sometimes show a strange proximity to liberalism. The general anti-governmental attitude unifies very diverse positions, not only on the net. In the end there are more misunderstandings: Name.Space texts include wild phantasies about a Stalinification of the internet and to free it from such is, after all, the intention of Name.Space1. Name.Space writes charters which might as well come from advocates of total globalisation, who always were opposed to 'too much state'.

NoNames

Also the relationship between the traditional 'net terrorists' a.k.a. hackers, and power becomes coquettish - or even reactionary? A 20 year old who is being begged to attend round table negotiations with major companies like the Amt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (Bureau of Information Technology Security) to talk about the state of security feels superior. Earning DM150,000 in 3 days for recovering a crashed intranet tastes like independence. S/he might believe that s/he's playing the game well: hacker, media terrorist AND rich. A Science Fiction myth.

In the end this means that the best hackers factually 'work at IBM', or open shops selling cellular phones: cellular phones are also compatible with both the male-terror-myth AND business. Some hackers like Kevin Mitnick might still cause a sensation: Not too long ago Mitnick was referred to as the 'last hacker', a hero. Mitnick is no longer a hero, because he got caught. He wasn't good enough a business man and seemed to accept his role in the game when admiring the skills of his predator in court. The hacker-hunter who caught him has since dictated a naive book with a martial title to a journalist and cashes in on that. He himself tries to be a hero and is being praised as such by the conservative press: the good cop 3.

Terrorists of Textuality

'Terrorists of Textuality' lead an intellectual struggle: within radical text the representatives of radical freedom feel represented. Here they demand their right to attack - particularly the good taste of the petty bourgeoisie they presume surrounds them. The favourite insult of the text terrorist (usually male) is 'social-democratic'. Therein they assume all narrow-mindedness of the world to be concentrated. The text producers have already developed a new kind of text, adequate for the net - but this writing sounds imprecise and is teemed with future visions unexpectedly close to those of tech-fetishists.

Mistaking Deleuze's 'desiring machine' with technology, and pushed by the desire of having influence, many men-of-text (and a few women) have landed at the desks of governments and now assist with the development of agendas by the European Union - the 'Amsterdam Agenda' is a good exapmple of this. Naturally an internet policy should attempt to be practicable and this agenda adresses some important points2. Compared with the free market concepts described above, it even aquires a funny 'radicality'. But on the other hand, those "artists, who are critical by nature" (A.A.) seem to have no problems with formulations such as: " art and industry can learn and mutually benefit from each other's achievements and talents." Correct, especially in relation to deregulated and un-organised trends in employment.

Artists as Terrorists

Amongst the artists/activists of the net it is fashionable to be radical. Originally the whole thing (being on the net - being an artist) was perceived as radical. Now normality is catching up and never before have business skills and radicalism seemed closer together (therefore the sub-title of this 'input', "businessman and terrorists abroad" ). Shape your electronic outfit, assign names and labels, scan some pictures, develop the occasional concept, and above all: beat the liberty drum. Artists were always good in the department of representation, and the combination of being-radical and being-artist must be one of those special EGO constructions of the net which includes the whole ideological apparatus of the allegedly independent internet. Concepts such as Data Terror seem to have a special fascination. 'Revolution' in Liverpool and 'The Terror' in Manchester play with the ambivalence these words by now seem to carry. Things are simple: in Germany the RAF (Red Army Fraction) has just recently officially disolved, and nothing stands in the way of a complete cultural take-over of the terms ....

---

1. http://namespace.pgpmedia.com, or http://namespace.autono.net
   
2. http://www.dds.nl/~p2p/p2p_journal/agenda.html :
   
   • * The danger that the agendas for the Information Society are purely commercial.
     
   • * The danger of homogenisation and the Disneyification of European culture.
     
   • * The danger that culture may be understood only in terms of entertainment.
     
   • * The need to understand the fundamental transformation of the public domain through privatisation.
     
   • * The need to protect democratic control and cultural diversity.
     
   • * The challenges of privacy, cryptography and copyright - which are cultural as much as legal issues. (...)

Florian Zeyfang [NYMWMWM@aol.com]