Precis for Californian Ideology

In their essay “Californian Ideology,” Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron offer up critique after critique of California’s techno-savvy, “culturally wacky”, blinded-by-ambition entrepreneurs. The two writers coin the term and define “Californian Ideology” as “a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism.” They go on to describe it as an enticing “faith” as well as an exportable “fashion.”

“Implacable in its certainties, the Californian Ideology offers a fatalistic vision of the natural and inevitable triumph of the hi-tech free market – a vision which is blind to racism, poverty and environmental degradation and which has no time to debate alternatives.” (thesis…I think)

In a nutshell, the Californian IT masters of the universe (the “virtual class”), through a “nearly universal belief in technological determinism” believe that pure freedom could be attained online. Their original hippie ideals, however, have been forgone in favor of an elitist, imperialist attitude and the larger picture replaced by a small-minded, damaging world view. Individualistic, democratic self-expression is drained out of the equation in favor of free market greed.

“Already ‘red lined’ by profit hungry telcos, the inhabitants of poor inner city areas can be shut out of the new on-line services through lack of money. In contrast, yuppies and their children can play at being cyperpunks in a virtual world without having to meet any of their impoverished neighbors.”

Instead of realizing a collective community (like the “agora” they refer to), this “ideology” only attains a further stratification of rich and poor where the rich get to plug into a fake reality and forget the bigger problems at hand.

The essay is written as a classic exposé of the corruption and misguidance behind a shiny new product. It is academic, but also sarcastic and humorous; educated, yet colloquial. It is also scathingly critical at every step. Its primary audience is anyone who goes online and enjoys a good blog and who might be unaware of the imperialistic forces at work behind the pretty web pages. In some ways it is a call to action – a wake up call to those who have forgotten all the good things that can come from advanced information technologies because they’re too busy buying and buying in.

The authors use various techniques to critique and discredit the Californian Ideologists. Twice in the paper the Ideology’s future is likened to sci-fi novels – romantic, but unrealistic and unpractical. The founders of the Ideology are constantly referred to as “hippies,” but hippies who lost their way. “…The cultural divide between the hippie and the organization man has now become fuzzy.” They critique the Ideologists for having a “profoundly anti-statist dogma” and priding themselves on being self-made, while gladly accepting government assistance and public funds to further their projects. An interesting point in the essay comes in a section entitled “the myth of the free market.” The first half of the section describes 19th and 20th century government intervention in technological development and ends at Nazi Germany’s failure to produce the first electronic computer. The essay then seamlessly transitions forward from history to the present where the US government pours “unacknowledged and uncosted” billions into the Californian Silicon Valley. The transition is not well explained, but leaves a bad taste in the mind of the reader.

Barbrook and Cameron continue to play up the contradictions embedded in the Ideology when they contrast the “celebrated libertarian individualism of the hippies” with the too-oft-forgotten “political and social demands of the counter-culture.” This critique culminates in an examination of Thomas Jefferson.

“The life of Thomas Jefferson – one of the icons of the Californian ideologists – clearly demonstrates the double nature of liberal individualism. The man who wrote the inspiring and poetic call for democracy and liberty in the American declaration of independence was at the same time one of the largest slave-owners in the country.”

The authors often take on the voice of those they are critiquing in a “so the argument goes” type of attack – one where the argument is easily refuted because the opposition can word it in a satirical way.

The only question mark in the piece comes after the question, “whose progress?” This emphasizes the way in which the original hippies have strayed from the path of altruism and have instead discovered the path to financial enlightenment instead.

In summation of their attacks, Barbrook and Cameron warn the reader of a Brave New World future where “individual freedom is no longer to be achieved by rebelling against the system, but through submission to the natural laws of technological progress and the free market.” (There’s our favorite word again…)