"Welcome to the expanding universe of radical pragmatism", writes Dutch net-activist Geert Lovink. His article scrutinizes some of the "failed" projects within the mediascape. His contention is that we have as much to learn from these "failed" projects as from projects which have been successful. by GEERT LOVINK, Index 2/98

"You may not be interested in political economy, but the political economy is interested in you." André Simon A state of confusion is emerging in the simultaneous condemnation and embrace of pragmatics. Between cold cynicism and overheated optimistic theodicies, a new belief system is on the rise: the blurry logic of communicative capitalism. What are "new media" beyond their embryonic state of the hype? What is media theory after the age of speculation? What is interaction design beyond fascinating demos? Game over, next player? Will the developers of early media architectures slip into the mainstream, or will they show civil courage and reinvent the exhausted notion of 'underground' once again? It is neither/nor. This is the age of cybernetic promiscuity, exploring the deep, gray spaces of the (un)productive. Innovative media cultures are connecting many to many, as long as it works: art, design, content merging with software with TV, the Internet, radio and music for communities, commerce and other (non)governmental organizations. Even dramatic failures count as instructive tenets. What counts now is quick and dirty production-not the unique 'concept' as such but, rather, serial production fueled by the hope that one of them will be the killer application, the next big thing, the golden mean, the perfect combination. Welcome to the expanding universe of radical pragmatism. IRATIONAL http://www.irational.org/ "We shape the things we build-after they shape us." The starting point here is the ambiguity we feel towards the successful and the recent express growth of the mediascape in particular. It should come as no big surprise that big corporations are taking over, and that nation-states are responding with regulatory efforts. But what puzzles us are the models of our own micro-economy. How does one run a media lab, a (profitable?) Internet provider, a radio station, a design studio, a media cafe, or even a website or mailing list? So many models, so many different traditions, some local, some national, some international or cosmopolitan-so many that it's becoming less and less clear what exactly we mean when we talk about exchanging 'concepts.' Recently, we've spent a great deal of time-too much-presenting and listening to successful projects. Now it's time to look at the failures and appreciate them in the same way.     Take the metaphor of the city, for example. Where the Amsterdam 'digital cities' were successful public-access 'freenet'-though not without their problems-analogous projects in Vienna and Berlin fell apart, and other cities have other stories to tell. VIENNA In the Viennese case, the BBS (mailbox) system "Black Box" began with an initiative to bring together local users and content coming from the arts, culture, and politics; but this construction didn't really work out. Some saw the project as too closely tied to the city council (and to the social-democratic party in particular). Yet the huge municipal agencies developed their own system. At last, the users set out to decide the future of this project. They stayed away, partly because their own Black Box BBS system (now with an e-mail gateway) kept on flourishing. In the end it was the art content server Public Netbase that survived all the storms and is still continuing its public-access functions. BERLIN Internationale Stadt started with "Handshake," which connected several clubs via IRC (chat rooms) and merged with the small provider 'contrib.de.' The concept of IS was blurry from the start: sometimes it claimed to be a public-access network like other freenets, but, by and large, it presented itself as a content provider for culture and the arts-which was closer to the truth. As an access provider, it never grew above the 300 paying users, but this never seemed to be a big problem. Their connectivity problems, on the other hand, were legendary: in one case, they went offline for three full weeks. Insiders can laugh about this gesture of genial amateurism, but Berlin is not an easy place for telecoms. So, most of all, IS turned out to be a work-in-progress, in the 'hacker' sense-endlessly tinkering with a system, never very concerned about the commitments implied in the idea of 'service.' Indeed, not-working was proclaimed to be part of the art piece (a perfectly legitimate position). RHIZOME http://www.rhizome.org/     When Internet-hype hit Germany in 1996, IS transmuted itself into a company and took on several big clients. In a perfect world-or maybe just a better one-this commercialism might have financed the non-commercial public effort. But it didn't work out that way: being a collective, IS had severe management problems, and soon the artists began to leave. Documenta X played a mysterious part in this development. IS didn't get the contract to support the Internet component of DX; instead, two individuals were chosen to be 'net artists.' And the Real Audio server 'Radio IS,' a rich collection of samples and audio files, was a success. Yet, at the same time, the commercial aspect came to the fore, and IS as a whole lost direction. The bankrupt city hall never understood anything about these dynamics, obsessed as it was with stubborn Berlin stoneware. Unbelievable mistakes, fatal misjudgments of the local media situation, resulted in the group eventually falling apart, and the members returned to their previous endeavors as 'true' artists, videomakers, programmers, and so on. IS finally shut down on April 1, 1998: a black day for independent European cyberculture-and for everyone who collaborated with them internationally-a day that is comparable to the closure of the Berlin station Radio 100 in 1990, just as the techno club scene in the Eastern section began to flourish. If you understand how long it takes to build up such lively, informal networks in which artists, musicians, activists and critics can work, you'll understand how much was lost. But what emerged from the rubble of IS was the 'sero.org' server, and the 'mikro' group-a project that will first and foremost focus on the (re)organisation of the Berlin indy-cyber scene on a basic, social level. Yet it remains to be seen how long an electronic culture like this will last without its own technical (and economic) infrastructure. AMSTERDAM http://amsterdam, the fancy net.capital of Europe, with its post-liberal so-called 'polder' model that fostered an economic boom. Still, the internet business in Holland is as shaky as elsewhere: start-ups fall down as easily as anywhere else. Especially when cultural capital and venture capital prove to be a volatile mixture. Take the case of Netural Objects: That story began in the early days of the Digital City, which in 1994 commissioned five well-designed public terminals/computer chairs. These stations were to embody the ideal of public access in libraries, cafes, and schools. With the unprecedented rise of both public and commercial IT activities in Amsterdam, the Society for Old and New Media was formed; this group of designers, programmers, and organizers took over De Waag, a decrepit castle in the city center. One of their first efforts was to build a "reading table for old and new media," a model public terminal with free internet access, which was to debut in the cafe/restaurant in De Waag. They worked from the ground up, developing a physical and virtual interface; and their design won the Rotterdam design prize in 1997. Soon thereafter, the organizers decided to start to mass-produce these 'kiosks.' The venture capitalists quickly took over, appointing a manager, renting space, hiring personnel. And within six months, 'Netural Objects' went bankrupt, as a result of the completely unrealistic expectations of financial returns imposed upon hardware and software that wasn't ready for the market and has attracted only a few customers. The SONM's commitment to the public domain didn't suffer too much from the fiasco; but a new kind of realism set in.     The clash with venture capital and its brash business methods has clearly put the limits of entrepreneurialized political culture into stark relief. So was this the Waterloo of 'Dutch digital imperialism'? Probably not-so beware. Even in the legendary Silicon Valleys and Alleys and Gulches and Glens, only a handful of startup companies survive, let alone prosper. And for those thrifty Protestant conceptualists involved, the process-and especially the result-is a kind of shock therapy they never expected. VUK COSIC http://www.vuk.org/ NEW YORK February 1998: the Ada'web website, "one of the most dynamic destinations for original Web-based art," has been cancelled. Benjamin Weil, its co-founder, announced that Digital City, Inc., the site's publisher, had withdrawn its financing: Ada'web will cease to produce new artistic content (Ada'web presented about 15 Web-specific projects by such "high-profile" contributors as Lawrence Weiner and Jenny Holzer). No sooner had Weil made this announcement than a fierce debate erupted on the nettime mailing list over (net)art's dependence on corporate money. Video/net activist Paul Garrin stated that corporate sponsorship necessarily amounts to censorship: "Next time you get caught off guard and lose your "free" net resources or your sponsorship.... Don't be surprised! There is no free lunch. Everything has its price." Weil responded thus: "This reminds me of those people who keep on saying that artists have to starve in order to produce good work. It is at best romantic, at worst idiotic. Art has always been supported by wealth, be it individual patrons, corporations, or the state[....] The whole notion of a disinterested state that is so much better than the corporate world, in that it supposedly does not have any agenda, is again one of the most worn-out and preposterous statements that can be made at this point." Here is a fine example of everyday pragmatism par excellence: Can you make your own money, or will you get it from sponsors or the state? Now that the wild Wired years of speculation on the metaphysical essence of the 'cyber' are over, the hard years of survival have begun. Who will survive? Will it be long-term non-commercial projects? Or, on the contrary, will it be those who are prepared for economies of scale? For the Belgian web designer Michael Samryn, the answer was quite clear: "Nowadays culture, society, capitalism have become our 'nature.' It's our environment. Ignoring it is not revolutionary. It is silly and there is no point in it. You can fight nature but you cannot win from it. Your best option is to try and make it more comfortable, maybe even fun. Marginality equals non-existence." Keith Sanborn opposed such equations: "To equate the corporation, the state and the individual might be called "cynical or disingenuous," but I would say it is simply nonsensical. [Weil's] line about 'wake up and smell the coffee, it's the 90s not the 60s,' is precisely the smug 'end of history' rhetoric of a Fukuyama or Bloom. Therefore, are we to conclude that we should all lie down and accept the "inevitable" march of history over our dead bodies towards the greater glory of capitalism in this best of all possible worlds?" Instead, Sanborn called on us to make our own websites: "Start your own war. Or else pursue that hybrid corporate museological career and don't forget your most Bohemian tin cup." The critic Ted Byfield found a way out. In his nettime contribution he stressed fluid networks, rather than the nodes, of the cybereconomy: "Just 'where' is nettime? At desk.nl? At The Thing in New York? In Ljubljana? In Berlin? In London? In Budapest? To be sure, this distribution-as much between people as between sites-is both our strength and weakness. In the wake of our meeting in Ljubljana, I heard some grumbling about disorganization, about how there were no solid resolutions, no definitive programs or advances. And I thought to myself that this was great: it's very easy to cement social organization around Programs, but harder to preserve looser bonds-loyalties, trust, a certain faith." THE THING http://bbs.thing.net/ The invisible, social network aspect of the internet makes it different from previous broadcast media. And yet, perhaps there are no fundamentally new aspects to this cybereconomy. After all business is business, and the same can be said of politics, the arts, and so on. The magic of (shared) communication remains untouched by these developments. What counts is illusion and imagination, in whatever environment. But it is precisely these fluid, untamed elements which are beeing endangered now. We cannot turn back to previous positions of visionary sales talks or neo-Luddite antitechnological 'positions.' Now it is time for sophisticated forms of negative pragmatism: living paradoxes rooted in messy praxis, uncompromisingly friendly to the open spaces that are being closed elsewhere at this very moment. ~