<nettime> Re: killing shakespeare

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@yahoo.com>]

>Did you ever wonder what would happen ... what was suppose to happen ...
>when 500 million people connect? When your mind imagined the possibilities
>did it get stuck? Did it stop? Did you believe Wall Street and Madison
>Avenue when they told you what the Internet was ... and how it was to be
>used?
>
>I hope you didn't.

Apparently the so-called "new media" hype is an ongoing and persistent fallacy.

There was always a large number of con-men and con-women gathering around new
trends, "giving new meanings to words", saying utter idiocies and looking at
you expectantly while their peers with vested interests applaud.

It works.

But never was a trend - computing machines in this case - so deeply intertwined
with big, no scratch that - HUGE money. This is the first time ever. Bozos that
were selling us new hyper-cyber-human-liberating space are still around and get
paid to talk.

So let's look at the "new media," as promoted by technologically illiterate
social engineers.

There is image delivery and sound delivery, there is some interaction with the
machine, which was previously encoded and executes either locally or remotely
over the network (local example would be a computer program executing on your
PC, or a flash code within the browser; classic web is the best example of the
remote encoding.) And there is networking between connected machines.

We had image and sound delivery for almost hundred years. Nothing new there.

How about interaction ? I have seen several amusing flash programs, and apart
from games I have not seen much interaction in the artistic sense where author
conveys his ideas through predicted interactiveness.

Compare this to theatre - actors *could* take direction from the public, and
sometimes they do. But such improvisations are rarely anything more than
hermetic amusement for local fans. You don't see them turn into anything other
than ephemeral experiences. And, face it, majority of people are dumb, empty
and with no ideas. Common folks that no one is dying to hear. Staged and
rehearsed performances, on the other hand, do get global exposures and do
attract global interest - be it theatre or film.

So how are computers to deliver anything new in the interaction arena ? Unless
one counts autistic kids jerking playstation buttons - and it seems to me that
most "interactive artists" want a cut from that market - no way.

Networking, then ?

Millions talking to millions, new renaissance of humankind and similar bs ?

How many people do you know ? Pathological cases aside, most of us know up to
100-200 others. That was the max size of the tribe in the past million years.
Granted, those few hundred can now be spread over the planet ... but it's done
with telephone and e-mail. Nothing amazingly new there.

Do you videoconference ?

I tried. And so did others.

I have all the bandwidth I need, yet after few face-to-face encounters, even
with some telesex, the interest goes away.

Millions talking to millions is a simple propaganda tool. What they mean is
"5-10 megacorps talking (one-way) to billions". New networked media conartists
are mercenaries for the industry. That's why they get paid.

There is no such thing as new media.

Just a desperate canvas, paint and brush industry.


Morlock





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