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				Dr. Richard Barbrook Defining the digital revolution I'm going to talk about this concept called the digital revolution. This is the general assumption that: - we are moving towards an information society; - there is a new paradigm in the economy; - we are coming to the end of industrialism; - the nation-state is in decline; - all the old beliefs will give way to something new; and - we are moving towards something more hi-tech but more natural at the same time. These theorists argue that we will have a break with the past, and that this break is a redemption of the problems from industrial society. What interests me is that this new rhetoric is actually a very old idea - net hype is the latest version of something one hundred years old: the technological revolution. Post-industrialists claim that the reason we are moving from the past into the future is due to technological convergence, advances in the media and telecommunications. I find recent articles proclaiming the triumph of new values springing from rising ownership of personal computers and presence on the internet interesting because this is exactly what Joesph Stalin said about the industrial revolution. This new paradigm is more natural is what Herbert Spencer, the great Enlgish liberal theorist of the 19th century, said about the the new society in his day. As for globalization, lots of people are talking about it, but the economy has only recently become as globalized as it was in 1914. In fact, if you read 19th century theorists or early 20th century theorists like Max Weber, you find that globalization is not new. On the rhetoric of the revolution We need to understand that this rhetoric of the break is actually a very old rhetoric and hides continuities. For example, in England, in the early 19th century, more than 50 percent of the population was living in the city. This is ony just happening in many parts of the world - huge populations still live in the countryside where they are still peasants and not modern in the sense that we mean it. The point is that traditional societies have been very successful historically speaking, and have produced a steady state of agricultural society. Modernity is a recent phenonoma. The new state of modernity is a process - it is not a constant state; it is forever changing. The precondition of capitalism is that there are no preconditions. This is difficult for many people to accept because it is both negative (creates insecurities) and positive (brings freedom and prosperity). No such thing as the information society We have to understand that there is not a break from industrialism - there is no such thing as the information society or post-industrialization. Instead, there is an intensification of a long historical process; an extension of a process from the heartlands of capitalism right out into the mass of population. The rhetoric of the break tends to obscure this fact. Thinking about the system We need to think about how the following elements are applied: - Financial markets - Global market coordination - Production process intensifying the factory system (This is not a break from Fordism, but a more efficient form of the Fordism.) The major impacts of new technologies are to extend and intensify things that have already existed. One of the major advantages of the net is that people can publish materials to the world. The struggle for press freedom is essential to the modern state, but it has been a very long struggle. The Internet extends in practice the formal rights asserted long ago by the French Revolution, the American Bill of Rights, and other sources. Thus, the net is developing and extending these freedoms; it is creating a space for discussion among the general population. Media freedom allows extension of discussion of politics to the common man. Technology and the state The information revolution is promising a number of things for the state and the democratic process: electronic voting will encourage participation, making state programs more effective and enabling the state actually to deliver what it promises. What we see is not a shift away from the present - the Internet reinforces existing community and social structures. Last year, one of the great accomplishments of the net was to scuttle the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) . Opposition, when organizeed through the net, can reach people on a global scale, thus building on and intesifying things that happened in the past. Public campaigns become more effective. Modern world an extension of industrialism The digital revolution is not a revolution, except in a rhetorical sense. It is not a break from industrialization but an intensification of modernity. Although modernity offers greater wealth, personal freedom, and greater choices, it is a double edged sword. There are evil tendencies contained within; modernity is not necessarily progressive. This century has been dominated by reactionary tendencies in many ways - Nazism, Stalinism, and the present regime in Serbia, for example. Modernity (in the long term) can be progressive but within it come repression and reactionary ideas. The digital revolution has become a substitute for the social revolution. We lack a vision of the future - technology is a mechanical redeemer, because the social revolutions are no longer believable. Our capacity to dream and imagine is being diminished. We are looking for technological solutions for social problems, when practical solutions are needed. For example, genetic modified food will not solve world hunger. We do not require new crops but rather land reform and a cure for poverty. The digital revolution provides a way to avoid thinking about more profound ideas. We need to think about what we can do with technology because at the end of the day, a computer is just sand, plastic and metal. However, with these tools, we can create important relationships between people. Key effects of intensification One positive effect of the intensification of industrialism is that it has revived artisan work. Although the factory system gave us greater wealth, the work itself was alienating and boring. Though the production of media, software, and other high tech products, skilled labor has been revaluized. In the 19th century, we took people off the land, and put them to work on intelligent machines. Now, the digital revolution has made skilled labor important once again. The second key factor is that workers want to control their own factors of production. A great advantage today is that workers have control over not just pace but the technologies used in work. This creates a stronger sense of self identitfication, and fosters pride in one´s work. These are positive, optimistic results from the digital revolution. The gift economy - emergence of non-commercial labor New ways of organizing collective labor are emerging. Traditionally, this has been the role of the market and/or the state. However, over the last decade, the net has highlighted other methods of organizing labor, particularly the gift economy. Strangely enough, there is a joke that the only working example of communism was created in the US by the American military, because the Internet is based on the circulation of free gifts, without copywrites or commodities. The most obvious example is the open source movement, such as Linux. Apache, the most popular Internet server software, is also free. Within the net, the music industry exemplifies the gift economy. MP3, which distributes music on the net for free, is on the cutting edge of the music industry. The point is not that the music is distributed for free, but that it is no longer passively consumed. MP3 distributes original music, which has never been copyrighted and can be remixed by listeners. It is more efficient, like most of the open source products. These are the flagships that people notice. However, what I find most interesting is that there is a general assumption that the net is free. People who try to commodify things have problems - there is a general assumption that you should not have to pay for listservs, or other Internet services. The circulation of gifts is the best way to organize labor. It is 20th century communism, with a small "c." The circulation of gifts is benign now - even the most gung-ho neo-liberal does not pay for websites, and finds himself contributing to listservs and distributing his material for free. Most people take part in the gift economy without even realizing it. This concept does not function in the utopian sense, however. The reason that the net is non-commercial is thanks to the American taxpayer, who subsidized the growth of the Internet and computer software industry through university research. It is hybridized with the market, but does not represent a great break with modernity either. The gift economy always existed - the net just makes it more explicit. Conclusions Rather than seeing the digital revolution as a break with industrialization, it should be viewed as an intensification or speeding up of the process. It is something that we can make choices about - we can choose to emphasis a more emancipatory opening up of the world or we can choose to narrow it down and not realize these potentials within it. Essentially, we are talking about a new vision of the mixed economy, however, instead of the narrow interests of commerce or the state at the center, the interests of labor are at the center. This is best viewed by both the revival of skilled labor and the emergence of non-commercial labor. The cutting edge of new wealth is being created in non-commodified forms. This is not neo-liberal paradigm of the future but a new, more advanced form of social democracy, where labor has the right to wealth and work. We have arrived at the stage where we cannot dream of a new utopia, but because labor is so productive and creative, we can create a better future in practice, in a way that our ancestors could only dream about.
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