Home computing and global networking seemed to have truly revolutionary potential. We all felt that putting computing, communicating power in the hands of the individual was going to change everything. Yet we see that the promised revolution hasn't happened so far, and that, in the hands of artists, digital technology has had some profoundly counter-revolutionary side-effects.

IT has served to consolidate established power-bases, not helped to break them apart. IT manufacturers have, in effect, annexed artists' creativity, then sold it back to them in safe, non-toxic doses.

Artists have been disempowered. Arts centres, universities and galleries have acquired suites of expensive computers, taking control of artists' tools of production Ü the tools with which artists might have bypassed the need for those institutions altogether.
Artists struggling for digital independence have to devote more and more of their time to financing their IT habit through intensive fund-raising or demanding additional careers.
Only a limited quantity of grant money is available. Are we content to accept that an ever increasing proportion of that money will be spent on short life span technological products rather than on other aspects of production? Are we happy about the commercialisation of creativity through graphic design, video production, and the host of other creative-but-not-actually-art careers that artists take up in order to get access to the latest technology?

Much art produced using computers is anodyne and contentless. Sponsorship for creative technological projects is widely available, particularly from hardware and software producers. These two facts may not be unconnected. Somewhere along the line many artists' productions tend to metamorphose into sales demonstrations of their sponsors' products.
I still believe in the revolutionary potential of IT Ü but I caution that to realise that potential digital artists and activists have to get smarter. I suggest that it's only now, when decent 386's and better are hitting street level (check out your local skip) that digital empowerment can really kick in. Now is the time to explore exciting new ways to use zero-cost, old technology and stop being hypnotised by the newest, fastest, however-many frames per second real time streaming counter-revolution.

James Wallbank [rti@lowtech.org]