http://www.wmin.ac.uk/media/HRC/ci/calif.html
see also
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/media/VD/MF/MFContents.html



The Californian Ideology

Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron



"Not to lie about the future is impossible and
one can lie about it at will" - Naum Gabo 1


As the Dam Bursts...

At the end of the twentieth century, the long predicted 
convergence of the media, computing and telecommunications into 
hypermedia is finally happening. 2 Once again, capitalism's 
relentless drive to diversify and intensify the creative powers of 
human labour is on the verge of qualitatively transforming the way 
in which we work, play and live together. By integrating different 
technologies around common protocols, something is being created 
which is more than the sum of its parts. When the ability to pro-
duce and receive unlimited amounts of information in any form is 
combined with the reach of the global telephone networks, existing 
forms of work and leisure can be fundamentally transformed. New 
industries will be born and current stock market favourites will 
swept away. At such moments of profound social change, anyone who 
can offer a simple explanation of what is happening will be lis-
tened to with great interest. At this crucial juncture, a loose 
alliance of writers, hackers, capitalists and artists from the 
West Coast of the USA have succeeded in defining a heterogeneous 
orthodoxy for the coming information age: the Californian 
Ideology. 

This new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural 
bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of 
Silicon Valley. Promoted in magazines, books, tv programmes, Web 
sites, newsgroups and Net conferences, the Californian Ideology 
promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and 
the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies. This amalgamation of 
opposites has been achieved through a profound faith in the eman-
cipatory potential of the new information technologies. In the 
digital utopia, everybody will be both hip and rich. Not 
surprisingly, this optimistic vision of the future has been 
enthusiastically embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, 
innovative capitalists, social activists, trendy academics, 
futurist bureaucrats and opportunistic politicians across the USA. 
As usual, Europeans have not been slow in copying the latest fad 
from America. While a recent EU Commission report recommends 
following the Californian 'free market' model for building the 
'information superhighway', cutting-edge artists and academics 
eagerly imitate the 'post-human' philosophers of the West Coast's 
Extropian cult. 3 With no obvious rivals, the triumph of the 
Californian Ideology appears to be complete.

The widespread appeal of these West Coast ideologues isn't simply 
the result of their infectious optimism. Above all, they are 
passionate advocates of what appears to be an impeccably 
libertarian form of politics - they want information technologies 
to be used to create a new 'Jeffersonian democracy' where all 
individuals will be able to express themselves freely within 
cyberspace. 4  However, by championing this seemingly admirable 
ideal, these techno-boosters are at the same time reproducing some 
of the most atavistic features of American society, especially 
those derived from the bitter legacy of slavery. Their utopian 
vision of California depends upon a wilful blindness towards the 
other - much less positive - features of life on the West Coast: 
racism, poverty and environmental degradation. 5 Ironically, in 
the not too distant past, the intellectuals and artists of the Bay 
Area were passionately concerned about these issues.

Ronald Reagan v. the hippies

On 15 May 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan ordered armed police to 
carry out a dawn raid against hippie protesters who had occupied 
People's Park near the Berkeley campus of the University of 
California. During the subsequent battle, one man was shot dead 
and 128 other people needed hospital treatment. 6 On that day, the 
'straight' world and the counter-culture appeared to be implacably 
opposed. On one side of the barricades, Governor Reagan and his 
followers advocated unfettered private enterprise and supported 
the invasion of Vietnam. On the other side, the hippies championed 
a social revolution at home and opposed imperial expansion abroad. 
In the year of the raid on People's Park, it seemed that the 
historical choice between these two opposing visions of America's 
future could only be settled through violent conflict. As Jerry 
Rubin, one of the Yippie leaders, said at the time: 'Our search 
for adventure and heroism takes us outside America, to a life of 
self-creation and rebellion. In response, America is ready to 
destroy us...' 7 

During in the '60s, radicals from the Bay Area pioneered the 
political outlook and cultural style of New Left movements across 
the world. Breaking with the narrow politics of the post-war era, 
they launched campaigns against militarism, racism, sexual discri-
mination, homophobia, mindless consumerism and pollution. In place 
of the traditional left's rigid hierarchies, they created 
collective and democratic structures which supposedly prefigured 
the libertarian society of the future. Above all, the Californian 
New Left combined political struggle with cultural rebellion. 
Unlike their parents, the hippies refused to conform to the rigid 
social conventions imposed on organisation men by the military, 
the universities, the corporations and even left-wing political 
parties. Instead they openly declared their rejection of the 
straight world through their casual dress, sexual promiscuity, 
loud music and recreational drugs.  8 The radical hippies were 
liberals in the social sense of the word. They championed 
universalist, rational and progressive ideals, such as democracy, 
tolerance, self-fulfillment and social justice. Emboldened by over 
twenty years of economic growth, they believed that history was on 
their side. In sci-fi novels, they dreamt of 'ecotopia': a future 
California where cars had disappeared, industrial production was 
ecologically viable, sexual relationships were egalitarian and 
daily life was lived in community groups. 9 For some hippies, this 
vision could only be realised by rejecting scientific progress as 
a false God and returning to nature. Others, in contrast, believed 
that technological progress would inevitably turn their li-
bertarian principles into social fact. Crucially, influenced by 
the theories of Marshall McLuhan, these technophiliacs thought 
that the convergence of media, computing and telecommunications 
would inevitably create the electronic agora - a virtual place 
where everyone would be able to express their opinions without 
fear of censorship. Despite being a middle-aged English professor, 
McLuhan preached the radical message that the power of big 
business and big government would be imminently overthrown by the 
intrinsically empowering effects of new technology on individuals. 

 'Electronic media...abolish the spatial dimension... By 
electricity, we everywhere resume person-to-person relations as if 
on the smallest village scale. It is a relation in depth, and 
without delegation of functions or powers... Dialogue supersedes 
the lecture.' 10

Encouraged by McLuhan's predictions, West Coast radicals became 
involved in developing new information technologies for the 
alternative press, community radio stations, home-brew computer 
clubs and video collectives. These community media activists 
believed that they were in the forefront of the fight to build a 
new America. The creation of the electronic agora was the first 
step towards the implementation of direct democracy within all 
social institutions. 11 The struggle might be hard, but 'ecotopia' 
was almost at hand.  The Rise of the 'Virtual Class'

Who would have predicted that, in less than 30 years after the 
battle for People's Park, squares and hippies would together 
create the Californian Ideology? Who would have thought that such 
a contradictory mix of technological determinism and libertarian 
individualism would becoming the hybrid orthodoxy of the informa-
tion age? And who would have suspected that as technology and 
freedom were worshipped more and more, it would become less and 
less possible to say anything sensible about the society in which 
they were applied?

The Californian Ideology derives its popularity from the very 
ambiguity of its precepts. Over the last few decades, the 
pioneering work of the community media activists has been largely 
recuperated by the hi-tech and media industries. Although com-
panies in these sectors can mechanise and sub-contract much of 
their labour needs, they remain dependent on key people who can 
research and create original products, from software programs and 
computer chips to books and tv programmes. Along with some hi-tech 
entrepreneurs, these skilled workers form the so-called 'virtual 
class': '...the techno-intelligentsia of cognitive scientists, 
engineers, computer scientists, video-game developers, and all the 
other communications specialists...'  Unable to subject them to 
the discipline of the assembly-line or replace them by machines, 
managers have organised such intellectual workers through fixed-
term contracts. Like the 'labour aristocracy' of the last century, 
core personnel in the media, computing and telecoms industries 
experience the rewards and insecurities of the marketplace. On the 
one hand, these hi-tech artisans not only tend to be well-paid, 
but also have considerable autonomy over their pace of work and 
place of employment. As a result, the cultural divide between the 
hippie and the organisation man has now become rather fuzzy. Yet, 
on the other hand, these workers are tied by the terms of their 
contracts and have no guarantee of continued employment. Lacking 
the free time of the hippies, work itself has become the main 
route to self-fulfillment for much of the 'virtual class'. 13

The Californian Ideology offers a way of understanding the lived 
reality of these hi-tech artisans. On the one hand, these core 
workers are a privileged part of the labour force. On the other 
hand, they are the heirs of the radical ideas of the community me-
dia activists. The Californian Ideology, therefore, simultaneously 
reflects the disciplines of market economics and the freedoms of 
hippie artisanship. This bizarre hybrid is only made possible 
through a nearly universal belief in technological determinism. 
Ever since the '60s, liberals - in the social sense of the word - 
have hoped that the new information technologies would realise 
their ideals. Responding to the challenge of the New Left, the New 
Right has resurrected an older form of liberalism: economic 
liberalism. In place of the collective freedom sought by the 
hippie radicals, they have championed the liberty of individuals 
within the marketplace. Yet even these conservatives couldn't 
resist the romance of the new information technologies. Back in 
the '60s, McLuhan's predictions were reinterpreted as an adverti-
sement for new forms of media, computers and telecommunications 
being developed by the private sector. From the '70s onwards, 
Toffler, de Sola Pool and other gurus attempted to prove that the 
advent of hypermedia would paradoxically involve a return to the 
economic liberalism of the past. 14 This retro-utopia echoed the 
predictions of Asimov, Heinlein and other macho sci-fi novelists 
whose future worlds were always filled with space traders, 
superslick salesmen, genius scientists, pirate captains and other 
rugged individualists. 15 The path of technological progress 
didn't always lead to 'ecotopia' - it could instead lead back to 
the America of the Founding Fathers.

Electronic Agora or Electronic Marketplace?

The ambiguity of the Californian Ideology is most pronounced in 
its contradictory visions of the digital future. The development 
of hypermedia is a key component of the next stage of capitalism. 
As Zuboff points out, the introduction of media, computing and 
telecommunications technologies directly into the factory and the 
office is the culmination of a long process of separation of the 
workforce from direct involvement in production. 16 If only for 
competitive reasons, all major industrial economies will 
eventually be forced to wire up their populations to obtain the 
productivity gains of digital working. What is unknown is the so-
cial and cultural impact of allowing people to produce and ex-
change almost unlimited quantities of information on a global 
scale. Above all, will the advent of hypermedia will realise the 
utopias of either the New Left or the New Right? As a hybrid 
faith, the Californian Ideology happily answers this conundrum by 
believing in both visions at the same time - and by not critici-
sing either of them.

On the one hand, the anti-corporate purity of the New Left has 
been preserved by the advocates of the 'virtual community'. 
According to their guru, Howard Rheingold, the values of the  
counterDculture baby boomers are shaping the development of new 
information technologies. As a consequence, community activists 
will be able to use hypermedia to replace corporate capitalism and 
big government with a hi-tech 'gift economy'. Already bulletin 
board systems, Net real-time conferences and chat facilities rely 
on the voluntary exchange of information and knowledge between 
their participants. In Rheingold's view, the members of the 
'virtual class' are still in the forefront of the struggle for 
social liberation. Despite the frenzied commercial and political 
involvement in building the 'information superhighway', the 
electronic agora will inevitably triumph over its corporate and 
bureaucratic enemies.  17

On the other hand, other West Coast ideologues have embraced the 
laissez faire ideology of their erstwhile conservative enemy. For 
example, Wired - the monthly bible of the 'virtual class' - has 
uncritically reproduced the views of Newt Gingrich, the extreme-
right Republican leader of the House of Representatives, and the 
Tofflers, who are his close advisors. 18 Ignoring their policies 
for welfare cutbacks, the magazine is instead mesmerised by their 
enthusiasm for the libertarian possibilities offered by new 
information technologies. However, although they borrow McLuhan's 
technological determinism, Gingrich and the Tofflers aren't 
advocates of the electronic agora. On the contrary, they claim 
that the convergence of the media, computing and telecom-
munications will produce an electronic marketplace: 'In 
cyberspace..., market after market is being transformed by 
technological progress from a "natural monopoly" to one in which 
competition is the rule.' 19

In this version of the Californian Ideology, each member of the 
'virtual class' is promised the opportunity to become a successful 
hi-tech entrepreneur. Information technologies, so the argument 
goes, empower the individual, enhance personal freedom, and 
radically reduce the power of the nation-state. Existing social, 
political and legal power structures will wither away to be repla-
ced by unfettered interactions between autonomous individuals and 
their software. These restyled McLuhanites vigorously argue that 
big government should stay off the backs of resourceful 
entrepreneurs who are the only people cool and courageous enough 
to take risks. In place of counter-productive regulations, 
visionary engineers are inventing the tools needed to create a 
'free market' within cyberspace, such as encryption, digital money 
and verification procedures. Indeed, attempts to interfere with 
the emergent properties of these technological and economic 
forces, particularly by the government, merely rebound on those 
who are foolish enough to defy the primary laws of nature. 
According to the executive editor of Wired, the 'invisible hand' 
of the marketplace and the blind forces of Darwinian evolution are 
actually one and the same thing. 20 As in Heinlein's and Asimov's 
sci-fi novels, the path forwards to the future seems to lead back 
to the past. The twenty-first century information age will be the 
realisation of the eighteenth century liberal ideals of Thomas 
Jefferson: '...the...creation of a new civilisation, founded in 
the eternal truths of the American Idea.'  21

The Myth of the 'Free Market'

Following the victory of Gingrich's party in the 1994 legislative 
elections, this right-wing version of the Californian Ideology is 
now in the ascendant. Yet, the sacred tenets of economic 
liberalism are contradicted by the actual history of hypermedia. 
For instance, the iconic technologies of the computer and the Net 
could only have been invented with the aid of massive state 
subsidies and the enthusiastic involvement of amateurs. Private 
enterprise has played an important role, but only as one part of a 
mixed economy.

For example, the first computer - the Difference Engine - was 
designed and built by private companies, but its development was 
only made possible through a British Government grant of  17,470, 
which was a small fortune in 1834. 22 From Colossus to EDVAC, from 
flight simulators to virtual reality, the development of computing 
has depended at key moments on public research handouts or fat 
contracts with public agencies. The IBM corporation only built the 
first programmable digital computer after it was requested to do 
so by the US Defense Department during the Korean War. 23 Ever 
since, the development of successive generations of computers has 
been directly or indirectly subsidised by the American defence 
budget. As well as state aid, the evolution of computing has also 
depended upon the involvement of d.i.y. culture. For instance, the 
personal computer was invented by amateur techies who wanted to 
construct their own cheap machines. The existence of a 'gift eco-
nomy' amongst hobbyists was a necessary precondition for the 
subsequent success of products made by Apple and Microsoft. Even 
now, shareware programs still play a vital role in advancing 
software design.

The history of the Internet also contradicts the tenets of the 
'free market' ideologues. For the first twenty years of its 
existence, the Net's development was almost completely dependent 
on the much reviled American federal government. Whether via the 
US military or through the universities, large amounts of tax 
payers' dollars went into building the Net infrastructure and 
subsidising the cost of using its services. At the same time, many 
of the key Net programs and applications were invented either by 
hobbyists or by professionals working in their spare-time. For 
instance, the MUD program which allows real-time Net conferencing 
was invented by a group of students who wanted to play fantasy 
games over a computer network.  24

One of the weirdest things about the rightwards drift of the 
Californian Ideology is that the West Coast itself is a creation 
of the mixed economy. Government dollars were used to build the 
irrigation systems, highways, schools, universities and other 
infrastructural projects which makes the good life possible in 
California. On top of these public subsidies, the West Coast hi-
tech industrial complex has been feasting off the fattest pork 
barrel in history for decades. The US government has poured 
billions of tax dollars into buying planes, missiles, electronics 
and nuclear bombs from Californian companies. For those not 
blinded by 'free market' dogmas, it was obvious that the Americans 
have always had state planning: only they call it the defence 
budget. 25 At the same time, key elements of the West Coast's 
lifestyle come from its long tradition of cultural bohemianism. 
Although they were later commercialised, community media, 'new 
age' spiritualism, surfing, health food, recreational drugs, pop 
music and many other forms of cultural heterodoxy all emerged from 
the decidedly non-commercial scenes based around university campu-
ses, artists' communities and rural communes. Without its d.i.y. 
culture, California's myths wouldn't have the global resonance 
which they have today. 26

All of this public funding and community involvement has had an 
enormously beneficial -  albeit unacknowledged and uncosted - 
effect on the development of Silicon Valley and other hi-tech 
industries. Capitalist entrepreneurs often have an inflated sense 
of their own resourcefulness in developing new ideas and give 
little recognition to the contributions made by either the state, 
their own labour force or the wider community. All technological 
progress is cumulative - it depends on the results of a collective 
historical process and must be counted, at least in part, as a 
collective achievement. Hence, as in every other industrialised 
country, American entrepreneurs have inevitably relied on state 
intervention and d.i.y. initiatives to nurture and develop their 
industries. When Japanese companies threatened to take over the 
American microchip market, the libertarian computer capitalists of 
California had no ideological qualms about joining a state-sponso-
red cartel organised to fight off the invaders from the East. 
Until the Net programs allowing community participation within 
cyberspace could be included, Bill Gates believed that Microsoft 
had no choice but to delay the launch of 'Windows '95'. 27 As in 
other sectors of the modern economy, the question facing the 
emerging hypermedia industry isn't whether or not it will be 
organised as a mixed economy, but what sort of mixed economy it 
will be.

Freedom is Slavery

If its holy precepts are refuted by profane history, why have the 
myths of the 'free market' so influenced the proponents of the 
Californian Ideology? Living within a contract culture, the hi-
tech artisans lead a schizophrenic existence. On the one hand, 
they cannot challenge the primacy of the marketplace over their 
lives. On the other hand, they resent attempts by those in 
authority to encroach on their individual autonomy. By mixing New 
Left and New Right, the Californian Ideology provides a mystical 
resolution of the contradictory attitudes held by members of the 
'virtual class'. Crucially, anti-statism provides the means to 
reconcile radical and reactionary ideas about technological 
progress. While the New Left dislikes the government for funding 
the military-industrial complex, the New Right attacks the state 
for interfering with the spontaneous dissemination of new 
technologies by market competition. Despite the central role 
played by public intervention in developing hypermedia, the 
Californian ideologues preach an anti-statist gospel of hi-tech 
libertarianism: a bizarre mish-mash of hippie anarchism and 
economic liberalism beefed up with lots of technological determi-
nism. Rather than comprehend really existing capitalism, gurus 
from both New Left and New Right much prefer to advocate rival 
versions of a digital 'Jeffersonian democracy'. For instance, 
Howard Rheingold on the New Left believes that the electronic 
agora will allow individuals to exercise the sort of media freedom 
advocated by the Founding Fathers. Similarly, the New Right claim 
that the removal of all regulatory curbs on the private enterprise 
will create media freedom worthy of a 'Jefferson democracy'.  28  
The triumph of this retro-futurism is a result of the failure of 
renewal in the USA during the late '60s and early '70s. Following 
the confrontation at People's Park, the struggle between the 
American establishment and the counter-culture entered into a 
downward spiral of violent confrontation. While the Vietnamese - 
at the cost of enormous human suffering - were able to expel the 
American invaders from their country, the hippies and their allies 
in the black civil rights movement were eventually crushed by a 
combination of state repression and cultural co-option. The 
Californian Ideology perfectly encapsulates the consequences of 
this defeat for members of the 'virtual class'. Although they 
enjoy cultural freedoms won by the hippies, most of them are no 
longer actively involved in the struggle to build 'ecotopia'. 
Instead of openly rebelling against the system, these hi-tech 
artisans now accept that individual freedom can only be achieved 
by working within the constraints of technological progress and 
the 'free market'. In many cyberpunk novels, this asocial liberta-
rianism is portrayed by the central character of the hacker, who 
is a lone individual fighting for survival within the virtual 
world of information. 29 

The drift towards the right by the Californian ideologues is the 
helped by their unquestioning acceptance of the liberal ideal of 
the self-sufficient individual. In American folklore, the nation 
was built out of a wilderness by free-booting individuals - the 
trappers, cowboys, preachers, and settlers of the frontier. The 
American revolution itself was fought to protect the freedoms and 
property of individuals against oppressive laws and unjust taxes 
imposed by a foreign monarch. For both the New Left and the New 
Right, the early years of the American republic provide a potent 
model for their rival versions of individual freedom. Yet there is 
a profound contradiction at the centre of this primordial American 
dream: individuals in this period only prospered through the 
suffering of others. Nowhere is this clearer than in the life of 
Thomas Jefferson - the chief icon of the Californian Ideology. 

Thomas Jefferson was the man who wrote the inspiring call for 
democracy and liberty in the American Declaration of Independence 
and - at the same time - owned nearly 200 human beings as slaves. 
As a politician, he championed the right of American peasants and 
artisans to determine their own destinies without being subject to 
the restrictions of feudal Europe. Like other liberals of the pe-
riod, he thought that political liberties could only be protected 
from authoritarian governments by the widespread ownership of 
individual private property. The rights of citizens were derived 
from this fundamental natural right. In order to encourage self-
sufficiency, he proposed that every American should be given at 
least 50 acres of land to guarantee their economic independence. 
Yet, while idealising the small farmers and businessmen of the 
frontier, Jefferson was actually a Virginian plantation-owner 
living off the labour of his slaves. Although the South's 
'peculiar institution' troubled his conscience, he still believed 
that the natural rights of man included the right to own human 
beings as private property. In 'Jeffersonian democracy', freedom 
for white folks was based upon slavery for black people.  30 

Forward Into the Past

Despite the eventual emancipation of the slaves and the victories 
of the civil rights movement, racial segregation still lies at the 
centre of American politics - especially on the West Coast. In the 
1994 election for governor in California, Pete Wilson, the 
Republican candidate, won through a vicious anti-immigrant cam-
paign. Nationally, the triumph of Gingrich's Republican party in 
the legislative elections was based on the mobilisation of 'angry 
white males' against the supposed threat from black welfare 
scroungers, immigrants from Mexico and other uppity minorities. 
These politicians have reaped the electoral benefits of the in-
creasing polarisation between the mainly white, affluent 
suburbanites - most of whom vote - and the largely non-white, 
poorer inner city dwellers - most of whom don't vote.  Although 
they retain some hippie ideals, many Californian ideologues have 
found it impossible to take a clear stand against the divisive 
policies of the Republicans. This is because the hi-tech and media 
industries are a key element of the New Right electoral coalition. 
In part, both capitalists and well-paid workers fear that the open 
acknowledgement of public funding of their companies would justify 
tax rises to pay for desperately needed spending on health care, 
environmental protection, housing, public transport and education. 
More importantly, many members of the 'virtual class' want to be 
seduced by the libertarian rhetoric and technological enthusiasm 
of the New Right. Working for hi-tech and media companies, they 
would like to believe that the electronic marketplace can somehow 
solve America's pressing social and economic problems without any 
sacrifices on their part. Caught in the contradictions of the 
Californian Ideology, Gingrich is - as one Wired contributor put 
it - both their 'friend and foe'.  32

In the USA, a major redistribution of wealth is urgently needed in 
the long-term economic well-being of the country. However, this is 
against the short-term interests of rich white folks, including 
many members of the 'virtual class'. Rather than share with their 
poor black or hispanic neighbours, the yuppies instead retreat 
into their affluent suburbs, protected by armed guards and secure 
with their private welfare services. 33 The deprived only partici-
pate in the information age by providing cheap non-unionised la-
bour for the unhealthy factories of the Silicon Valley chip 
manufacturers. 34 Even the construction of cyberspace has become 
an integral part of the fragmentation of American society into 
antagonistic, racially-determined classes. Already 'red-lined' by 
profit-hungry telcos, the inhabitants of poor inner city areas are 
prevented from accessing the new on-line services through lack of 
money. 35 In contrast, members of the 'virtual class' and other 
professionals can play at being cyberpunks within hyper-reality 
without having to meet any of their impoverished neighbours. 
Alongside the ever-widening social divisions, another apartheid is 
being created between the 'information-rich' and the 'information-
poor'. In this hi-tech 'Jeffersonian democracy', the difference 
between masters and slaves endures in a new form.

Cyborg Masters and Robot Slaves

The fear of the rebellious 'underclass' has now corrupted the most 
fundamental tenet of the Californian Ideology: its belief in the 
emancipatory potentiality of the new information technologies. 
While the proponents of the electronic agora and the electronic 
marketplace promise to liberate individuals from the hierarchies 
of the state and private monopolies, the social polarisation of 
American society is bringing forth a more oppressive vision of the 
digital future. The technologies of freedom are turning into the 
machines of dominance.

At his estate at Monticello, Jefferson invented many clever 
gadgets for his house, such as a 'dumb waiter' to deliver food 
from the kitchen into the dining room. By mediating his contacts 
with his slaves through technology, this revolutionary indivi-
dualist spared himself from facing the reality of his dependence 
upon the forced labour of his fellow human beings. 36 In the late-
twentieth century, technology is once again being used to 
reinforce the difference between the masters and the slaves. 

According to some visionaries, the search for the perfection of 
mind, body and spirit will inevitably lead to the emergence of the 
'post-human': a bio-technological manifestation of the social 
privileges of the 'virtual class'. While the hippies saw self-de-
velopment as part of social liberation, the hi-tech artisans of 
contemporary California are more likely to seek individual self-
fulfillment through therapy, spiritualism, exercise or other 
narcissistic pursuits. Their desire to escape into the gated 
suburb of the hyper-real is only one aspect of this deep self-ob-
session. 37 Emboldened by supposed advances in 'Artificial 
Intelligence' and medical science, the Extropian cult fantasises 
of abandoning the 'wetware' of the human state altogether to 
become living machines. 38 Just like Virek and the Tessier-
Ashpools in Gibson's 'Sprawl' novels, they believe that social 
privilege will eventually endow them with immortality. 39 Instead 
of predicting the emancipation of humanity, this form of 
technological determinism can only envisage a deepening of social 
segregation. 

Despite these fantasies, white people in California remain 
dependent on their darker-skinned fellow humans to work in their 
factories, pick their crops, look after their children and tend 
their gardens. Following the L.A. riots, they increasingly fear 
that this 'underclass' will someday demand its liberation. If 
human slaves are ultimately unreliable, then mechanical ones will 
have to be invented. The search for the holy grail of 'Artificial 
Intelligence' reveals this desire for the Golem - a strong and 
loyal slave whose skin is the colour of the earth and whose 
innards are made of sand. As in Asimov's 'Robot' novels, the 
techno-utopians imagine that it is possible to obtain slaveDlike 
labour from inanimate machines. 40 Yet, although technology can 
store or amplify labour, it can never remove the necessity for 
humans to invent, build and maintain these machines in the first 
place. Slave labour cannot be obtained without somebody being 
enslaved.

Across the world, the Californian Ideology has been embraced as an 
optimistic and emancipatory form of technological determinism. 
Yet, this utopian fantasy of the West Coast depends upon its 
blindness towards - and dependence on - the social and racial 
polarisation of the society from which it was born. Despite its 
radical rhetoric, the Californian Ideology is ultimately pessi-
mistic about real social change. Unlike the hippies, its advocates 
are not struggling to build 'ecotopia' or even to help revive the 
New Deal. Instead, the social liberalism of New Left and the 
economic liberalism of New Right have converged into an ambiguous 
dream of a hi-tech 'Jeffersonian democracy'. Interpreted 
generously, this retro-futurism could be a vision of a cybernetic 
frontier where hi-tech artisans discover their individual self-
fulfillment in either the electronic agora or the electronic 
marketplace. However, as the zeitgeist of the 'virtual class', the 
Californian Ideology is at the same time an exclusive faith. If 
only some people have access to the new information technologies, 
'Jeffersonian democracy' can become a hi-tech version of the plan-
tation economy of the Old South. Reflecting its deep ambiguity, 
the Californian Ideology's technological determinism is not simply 
optimistic and emancipatory. It is simultaneously a deeply 
pessimistic and repressive vision of the future.

There are Alternatives

Despite its deep contradictions, people across the world still 
believe that the Californian Ideology expresses the only way 
forward to the future. With the increasing globalisation of the 
world economy, many members of the 'virtual class' in Europe and 
Asia feel more affinity with their Californian peers than other 
workers within their own country. Yet, in reality, debate has 
never been more possible or more necessary. The Californian 
Ideology was developed by a group of people living within one 
specific country with a particular mix of socio-economic and 
technological choices. Its eclectic and contradictory blend of 
conservative economics and hippie radicalism reflects the history 
of the West Coast - and not the inevitable future of the rest of 
the world. For instance, the anti-statist assumptions of the 
Californian ideologues are rather parochial. In Singapore, the 
government is not only organising the construction of a fibre-
optic network, but also trying to control the ideological suit-
ability of the information distributed over it. Given the much 
faster growth rates of the Asian 'tigers', the digital future will 
not necessarily first arrive in California. 41

Despite the recommendations of the Bangemann Report, most European 
authorities are also determined to be closely involved within the 
development of new information technologies. Minitel - the first 
successful on-line network in the world - was the deliberate crea-
tion of the French state. Responding to an official report on the 
potential impact of hypermedia, the government decided to pour 
resources into developing 'cutting edge' technologies. In 1981, 
France Telecom launched the Minitel system which provided a mix of 
text-based information and communications facilities. As a 
monopoly, this nationalised telco was able to build up a critical 
mass of users for its pioneering on-line system by giving away 
free terminals to anyone willing to forgo paper telephone 
directories. Once the market had been created, commercial and 
community providers were then able to find enough customers or 
participants to thrive within the system. Ever since, millions of 
French people from all social backgrounds have happily booked 
tickets, chatted each other up and politically organised on-line 
without realising they were breaking the libertarian precepts of 
the Californian Ideology. 42

Far from demonising the state, the overwhelming majority of the 
French population believe that more public intervention is needed 
for an efficient and healthy society. 43  In the recent 
presidential elections, almost every candidate had to advocate - 
at least rhetorically - greater state intervention to end social 
exclusion of the unemployed and homeless. Unlike its American 
equivalent, the French revolution went beyond economic liberalism 
to popular democracy. Following the victory of the Jacobins over 
their liberal opponents in 1792, the democratic republic in France 
became the embodiment of the 'general will'. As such, the state 
was believed to defend the interests of all citizens, rather than 
just to protect the rights of individual property-owners. The 
discourse of French politics allows for collective action by the 
state to mitigate - or even remove - problems encountered by  
society. While the Californian ideologues try to ignore the 
taxpayers' dollars subsidising the development of hypermedia, the 
French government can openly intervene in this sector of the 
economy. 44

Although its technology is now dated, the history of Minitel 
clearly refutes the anti-statist prejudices of the Californian 
ideologues - and of the Bangemann committee. The digital future 
can be a hybrid of state intervention, capitalist entrepreneurship 
and d.i.y. culture. Crucially, if the state can foster the deve-
lopment of hypermedia, conscious action could also be taken to 
prevent the emergence of the social apartheid between the 
'information rich' and the 'information poor'. By not leaving 
everything up to the vagaries of market forces, the EU and its 
member states could ensure that every citizen has the opportunity 
to be connected to a broadband fibre-optic network at the lowest 
possible price. 

In the first instance, this would be a much needed job creation 
scheme in a period of mass unemployment. As Keynesian employment 
measure, nothing beats paying people to dig holes in the road and 
fill them in again. Even more importantly, the construction of a 
fibre-optic network into homes and businesses could give everyone 
access to new on-line services and create a large vibrant commu-
nity of shared expertise. The long-term gains to the economy and 
to society from the building of the 'infobahn' would be 
immeasurable. It would allow industry to work more efficiently and 
market new products. It would ensure that education and infor-
mation services were available to all. No doubt the 'infobahn' 
will create a mass market for private companies to sell existing 
information commodities -  films, tv programmes, music and books - 
across the Net. At the same time, once people can distribute as 
well as receive hypermedia, a flourishing of community media and 
special interest groups will quickly emerge. For all this to 
happen, collective intervention will be needed to ensure that all 
citizens are included within the digital future. 

The Rebirth of the Modern

Even if it is not in circumstances of their own choosing, it is 
now necessary for Europeans to assert their own vision of the 
future. There are varying ways forward towards the information 
society and some paths are more desirable than others. In order to 
make an informed choice, European hi-tech artisans need to develop 
a more coherent analysis of the impact of hypermedia than can be 
found within the ambiguities of the Californian Ideology. The 
members of the European 'virtual class' must create their own 
distinctive self-identity.

This alternative understanding of the future starts from a 
rejection of any form of social apartheid - both inside and 
outside cyberspace. Any programme for developing hypermedia must 
ensure that the whole population can have access to the new on-
line services. In place of New Left or New Right anarchism, a 
European strategy for developing the new information technologies 
must openly acknowledge the inevitability of some form of mixed 
economy - the creative and antagonistic mix of state, corporate 
and d.i.y. initiatives. The indeterminacy of the digital future is 
a result of the ubiquity of this mixed economy within the modern 
world. No one knows exactly what the relative strengths of each 
component will be, but collective action can ensure that no social 
group is deliberately excluded from cyberspace. A European 
strategy for the information age must also celebrate the creative 
powers of the hi-tech artisans. Because their labour cannot be 
deskilled or mechanised, members of the 'virtual class' exercise 
great control over their own work. Rather than succumbing to the 
fatalism of the Californian Ideology, we should embrace the 
Promethean possibilities of hypermedia. Within the limitations of 
the mixed economy, hi-tech artisans are able to invent something 
completely new - something which has not been predicted in any 
sci-fi novel. These innovative forms of knowledge and 
communications will sample the achievements of others, including 
some aspects of the Californian Ideology. It is now impossible for 
any serious movement for social emancipation not to include de-
mands for feminism, drug culture, gay liberation, ethnic identity 
and other issues pioneered by West Coast radicals. Similarly, any 
attempt to develop hypermedia within Europe will need some of the 
entrepreneurial zeal and can-do attitude championed by the 
Californian New Right. Yet, at the same time, the development of 
hypermedia means innovation, creativity and invention. There are 
no precedents for all aspects of the digital future.

As pioneers of the new, the hi-tech artisans need to reconnect 
themselves with the theory and practice of productive art. They 
are not just employees of others - or even would-be cybernetic 
entrepreneurs. They are also artist-engineers - designers of the 
next stage of modernity. Drawing on the experience of the Saint-
Simonists and Constructivists, the hi-tech artisans can create a 
new machine aesthetic for the information age. 45  For instance, 
musicians have used computers to develop purely digital forms of 
music, such as jungle and techno. 46 Interactive artists have 
explored the potentiality of CD-rom technologies, such as Sass's 
Anti-Rom. The Hypermedia Research Centre has constructed an expe-
rimental virtual social space called J's Joint. 47 In each 
instance, artist-engineers are trying to push beyond the 
limitations of both the technologies and their own creativity. 
Above all, these new forms of expression and communications are 
connected with the wider culture. The developers of hypermedia 
must reassert the possibility of rational and conscious control 
over the shape of the digital future. Unlike the elitism of the 
Californian Ideology, the European artist-engineers must construct 
a cyberspace which is inclusive and universal. Now is the time for 
the rebirth of the Modern.

'Present circumstances favour making luxury national. Luxury will 
become useful and moral when it is enjoyed by the whole nation. 
the honour and advantage of employing directly, in political 
arrangements, the progress of exact sciences and the fine 
arts...have been reserved for our century.'  48

Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron are members of the Hypermedia 
Research Centre of the University of Westminster, London. We would 
like to thank Andrej kerlep, Dick Pountain, Helen Barbrook, Jim 
McLellan, John Barker, John Wyver, Rhiannon Patterson and the 
members of the HRC for their help in writing this article.

For the theory and practice of the Hypermedia Research Centre, 
see: http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/


1  Naum Gabo and Anton Pevsner, 'The Realistic Manifesto, 1920', 
in John E. Bowlt (ed.), Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and 
Criticism, London 1976, p. 214. 

2  For over 25 years, experts have been predicting the imminent 
arrival of the information age, see Alain Touraine, La Soci t  
post-industrielle, Paris 1969; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two 
Ages: America's role in the Technetronic Era, New York 1970; 
Daniel Bell, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society, New York 
1973; Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, London 1980; Simon Nora and 
Alain Minc, The Computerisation of Society, Cambridge 1980 and 
Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom, Harvard 1983.

3  See Martin Bangemann, Europe and the global information 
society, Brussels, 1994 (available through http://www.echo.lu) and 
the programme and abstracts of the Warwick University's 'Virtual 
Futures '95 Conference' on 
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/WWW/faculties/so-
cial_studies/Philosophy/events/vf 

4  See Mitch Kapor, 'Where is the Digital Highway Really Heading?' 
in Wired, July/August 1993.

5  See Mike Davis, City of Quartz, Verso, London 1990, Richard 
Walker, 'California Rages Against the Dying of the Light', NLR 209 
January-February 1995 and the records of Ice-T, Snoop Dog, Dr Dre, 
Ice Cube, NWA and many other West Coast rappers. 

6  See George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: a 
Global Analysis of 1968, Boston 1987, p. 124. Jerry Rubin, 'An 
Emergency Letter to my Brothers and Sisters in the Movement' in 
Peter Stansill and David Zane Mairowitz (eds.), BAMN: Outlaw 
Manifestos and Ephemera 1965-70, London 1971, p. 244.

7  For the key role played by popular culture in the self-identity 
of
the American New Left, see Katsiaficas, op. cit., and Charles 
Reich, The
Greening of America, New York 1970.

8  In a best-selling novel of the mid-'70s, the northern half of 
the West Coast has seceded from the rest of the USA to form a 
hippie utopia, see Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia, New York 1975. 
This idealisation of Californian community life can also be found 
in John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider, London 1975, and even in 
later works, such as Kim Stanley Robinson, Pacific Edge, London 
1990. 

9  Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, London 1964, pp. 255-6. 
Also see Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the 
Massage, London 1967; Gerald Emanuel Stern (ed.), McLuhan: Hot & 
Cool, London 1968. 

10  See John Downing, Radical Media, Boston 1984.

11  Arthur Kroker and Michael A. Weinstein, Data Trash: the theory 
of the virtual class, Montreal 1994, p. 15. Back in the '60s, some 
New Left theorists believed that these scientific-technical 
workers were leading the struggle for social liberation through 
their factory occupations and demands for self-management, see 
Serge Mallet, The New Working Class, Nottingham 1975. In contrast, 
futurologists thought that members of these professions as an 
embryo of a new ruling class, see Daniel Bell, op. cit..

12  See Dennis Hayes, Behind the Silicon Curtain, London 1989, for 
a description of contract work in Silicon Valley. For more 
theoretical examinations of post-Fordist labour organisation, see  
Alain Lipietz, L'audace ou l'enlisement, Paris 1984; Mirages and 
Miracles, Verso London 1987; Benjamin Coriat, L'atelier et le 
robot, Paris 1990; and Toni Negri, Revolution Retrieved: Selected 
Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Crisis & New Social Subjects 
1967-83, London 1988.

13  For McLuhan's success on the corporate junket circuit, see Tom
Wolfe, 'What If He Is Right?', The Pump House Gang, London 1968. 
For the
use of his ideas by more conservative thinkers, see Alvin Toffler, 
op.
cit., Ithiel de Sola Pool, op. cit., Daniel Bell, op. cit., and 
Zbigniew
Brzezinski, op. cit.

14  Heroic males are common throughout classic sci-fi novels, see 
D. D. Harriman in Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon, New 
York 1950, or the leading characters in Isaac Asimov, The 
Foundation Trilogy, New York 1953, I, Robot, London 1968, and The 
Rest of the Robots, London 1968. Hagbard Celine - a more 
psychedelic version of this male archetype - is the central 
character in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminati 
Trilogy, New York 1975. In the timechart of 'future history' at 
the front of Robert Heinlein's novel, it predicts that, after a 
period of social crisis caused by rapid technological advance, 
stability would restored in the 1980s and '90s through '...an 
opening of new frontiers and a return to nineteenth-century 
economy'!

15  See Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: the 
future of work and power, New York 1988. Of course, this analysis 
is derived from Karl Marx, Grundrisse, London 1973; and 'Results 
of the Immediate Process of Production' in Albert Dragstedt (ed.), 
Value Studies by Marx, London 1976.

16  See Howard Rheingold, Virtual Communities, London 1994, and 
his home pages on http://www.well.com/user/hlr/ 

17  See the gushing interview with the Tofflers in Peter Schwartz, 
'Shock Wave (Anti) Warrior', Wired, November 1993, and, for the 
magazine's characteristic ambiguity over the Speaker of the 
House's reactionary political programme, see the aptly named in-
terview with Newt Gingrich in Esther Dyson, 'Friend and Foe', 
Wired, August 1995. 

18  The Progress and Freedom Foundation, Cyberspace and the 
American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age, 
http://www.pff.org/position.html, p. 5. 

19  See Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: the New Biology of Machines, 
London 1994.

20  Progress and Freedom Foundation, op. cit., p. 13. Toffler and 
friends also proudly proclaim that: 'America...remains the land of 
individual freedom, and this freedom clearly extends to 
cyberspace', op. cit., p. 6. Also see Mitch Kapor, op. cit..

22  Simon Schaffer, Babbage's Intelligence: Calculating Engines 
and the Factory System, 
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/media/schaffer/schaffer01.html

23 The Dream Machine, Palfreman and Swade, London 1991. See pages 
32 - 36 for an account of how a lack of state intervention meant 
that Nazi Germany lost the opportunity to build the world's first  
electronic computer. In 1941 the German High Command refused 
further funding to Konrad Zuze, who had pioneered the use of 
binary code,  stored programs and electronic logic gates. 

24  See Howard Rheingold, op. cit..

25  See Ann Markusen, Peter Hall, Scott Campbell and Sabina 
Detrick, The Rise of the Gunbelt, New York 1991.

26  For an account of how these cultural innovations emerged from 
the early acid scene, see Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid 
Test, New York 1968. Interestingly, one of the drivers of the fa-
mous bus was Stewart Brand, who is now a leading contributor to 
Wired. 

27  Dennis Hayes, op. cit., points out that the American computer 
industry has already encouraged by the Pentagon to form cartels 
against foreign competition. Gates admits that he'd only recently 
realised the 'massive structural change' being caused by the Net, 
see 'The Bill Gates Column', The Guardian, 20 July 1995.  

28  See Howard Rheingold's Web pages, op. cit., and Mitch Kapor, 
op. cit.. Despite the libertarian instincts of both these writers, 
their infatuation with the era of the Founding Fathers is shared 
by the neo-fascist Militia and Patriot movements, see Chip Berlet, 
Armed Militias, Right Wing Populism & Scapegoating, on 
http://www.paul.spu.edu/~sinnfein/progressive.html  

29  See the hacker heroes in William Gibson, Neuromancer, London 
1984, Count Zero, London 1986, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, London 
19889, or in Bruce Sterling (ed.), Mirrorshades, London 1988. A 
prototype of this sort of anti-hero is Dekker, the existential 
hunter of replicants in Ridley Scott's Bladerunner.

30  According to Miller, Thomas Jefferson believed that black 
people could not be members of the Lockean social contract which 
bound together citizens of the American republic. 'The rights of 
man...while theoretically and ideally the birthright of every 
human being, applied in practice in the United States only to 
white men: the black slaves were excluded from consideration 
because, while admittedly human beings, they were also property, 
and where the rights of man conflicted with the rights of pro-
perty, property took precedence', see John Miller, The Wolf by the 
Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery, New York 1977, p. 13. 
Jefferson's opposition to slavery was at best rhetorical. In a 
letter of 22

27  Dennis Hayes, op. cit., points out that the American computer 
industry has already encouraged by the Pentagon to form cartels 
against foreign competition. Gates admits that he'd only recently 
realised the 'massive structural change' being caused by the Net, 
see 'The Bill Gates Column', The Guardian, 20 July 1995.

28  See Howard Rheingold's Web pages, op. cit., and Mitch Kapor, 
op. cit.. Despite the libertarian instincts of both these writers, 
their infatuation with the era of the Founding Fathers is shared 
by the neo-fascist Militia and Patriot movements, see Chip Berlet, 
Armed Militias, Right Wing Populism & Scapegoating, on 
http://www.paul.spu.edu/~sinnfein/progressive.html

29  See the hacker heroes in William Gibson, Neuromancer, London 
1984, Count Zero, London 1986, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, London 
19889, or in Bruce Sterling (ed.), Mirrorshades, London 1988. A 
prototype of this sort of anti-hero is Dekker, the existential 
hunter of replicants in Ridley Scott's Bladerunner.

30  According to Miller, Thomas Jefferson believed that black 
people could not be members of the Lockean social contract which 
bound together citizens of the American republic. 'The rights of 
man...while theoretically and ideally the birthright of every 
human being, applied in practice in the United States only to 
white men: the black slaves were excluded from consideration 
because, while admittedly human beings, they were also property, 
and where the rights of man conflicted with the rights of pro-
perty, property took precedence', see John Miller, The Wolf by the 
Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery, New York 1977, p.13. 
Jefferson's opposition to slavery was at best rhetorical. In a 
letter of 22 April 1820, he disingenuously suggested that the best 
way to encourage the abolition of slavery would be to legalise the 
private ownership of human beings in all States of the Union and 
the frontier territories! He claimed that '...their diffusion over 
a greater surface would make them individually happier, and 
proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their eman-
cipation, by dividing the burden on a greater number of coadjutors 
[i.e. slave-owners]', see Merill Peterson (ed.), The Portable 
Thomas Jefferson, New York 1975, p. 568. For a description of his 
life on his plantation, also see Paul Wilstach, Jefferson and  
Monticello, London 1925. 

31  For California's turn to the Right, see Richard Walker, 
'California Rages Against the Dying of the Light', NLR 209,  
January-February 1995.

32  See Esther Dyson, op. cit.. Esther Dyson collaborated with the 
Tofflers in the writing of The Peace and Progress Foundation's 
Cyberspace and the American Dream, op. cit., which is a futurist 
manifesto designed to win votes for Gingrich from members of the 
'virtual class'.

33  For the rise of the fortified suburbs, see Mike Davis, City of 
Quartz, London 1990 and Urban Control: the Ecology of Fear, New 
Jersey 1992. These 'gated suburbs' provide the inspiration for the 
alienated background of many cyberpunk sci-fi novels, such as Neal 
Stephenson, Snow Crash, New York 1992. 

34  See Hayes, op. cit..

35  See Reginald Stuart, 'High-Tech Redlining', Utne Reader, 68
March-April 1995.

36  See Paul Wilstach, op. cit.

37  See Dennis Hayes, op. cit..

38  For an exposition of their futurist programme,  see the 
Extropians' FAQ on http://www.C2.org/~arkuat/exi/faq/exifaq.html 

39  See William Gibson, op. cit..

40  See Isaac Asimov, op. cit..

41  See William Gibson and Sandy Sandfort, 'Disneyland with the 
Death Penalty', Wired, September/October 1993. Since these 
articles are an attack on Singapore, it is ironic that the real 
Disneyland is in California, whose repressive penal code includes 
the death penalty! 

 42  For the report which led to the creation of Minitel, see 
Simon Nora and Alain Minc, op. cit.. An account of the early years 
of Minitel can be found in Michel Marchand, The Minitel Saga: A 
French Success Story, Paris 1988. 

43  According to a poll carried out during the 1995 presidential 
elections, 67% of the French population supported the proposition 
that "the state must intervene more in the economic life of our 
country", see 'Une majorit  de Fran ais souhaitent un vrai "chef" 
pour un vrai "Etat"', Le Monde, 11 Avril 1995, p. 6. 

44  For the influence of Jacobinism on French conceptions of 
democratic rights, see Richard Barbrook, Media Freedom: the 
contradictions of communications in the age of modernity, London 
1995. Some French economists believe that the very different his-
tory of Europe has created a specific - and socially superior - 
model of capitalism, see Michel Albert, Capitalism v. Capitalism, 
New York 1993, and Philippe Delmas, Le Matre des Horloges, Paris 
1991.

45  See Keith Taylor (ed.), Henri Saint-Simon 1760-1825: Selected 
Writings on Science, Industry and Social Organisation, London 
1975, and John E. Bowlt, op. cit..

46  As Goldie, a jungle music-maker, puts it: "We have to take it 
forwards and take the drums 'n' bass and push it and push it and 
push it. I remember when we were saying that it couldn't be pushed 
anymore. It's been pushed tenfold since then...", see Tony Marcus, 
'The War is Over', Mixmag, August 1995, p. 46.

47  For information on Anti-Rom, see http://cyan.media.wmin.ac.uk/ 
If you would like to visit J's Joint, go to: 
http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/J'sJoint/ 

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