de Haight Ashbury a Silicon Valley

o la relación entre psicodelia sesentosa y la cibercultura actual. Lo insinué en un post anterior; ahora uno de los 10 monos zen hace un buen resumen del tema y da cuenta de cosas como esta:

(traducción casera)

“Aunque a lo largo de los años han existido numerosas discusiones implícitas – incluso alguna explícita- sobre estas asociaciones, nadie realmente intento rastrear las conexiones hasta el 2005 cuando John Markoff publicó What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer.
La narrativa de Markoff da vueltas principalmente sobre las figuras de Douglas Engelbart y Stewart Brand.(…)
Engelbart, en contraste con el mainstream informático de la época empezó a pensar a las computadoras como algo que podría aumentar y expandir la capacidad de la mente humana. Al mismo tiempo, otro grupo de Palo Alto, California investigaba y experimentaba con el LSD como una herramienta para aumentar y expandir la mente humana. Y después, junto con ello llego todo el movimiento anti-guerra y anti stablishment de los sesenta y todas estas tendencias empezaron a estar cada vez más interconectadas mientras un cultura informacional de “la gente” evolucionaba en y alrededor del área de la bahía de San Francisco”.

La interconexión (y la deuda ideológica con aquellos años) viene no tanto por los hombrecitos de colores del LSD y los hologramas digitales, sino más bien por una forma de pensar el mundo (descentralizado, democrático y comunitario) que termina derivando en la mentalidad de código abierto” encarnada en Linux, Wikipedia y etcéteras. Todas herramientas que representan y han conseguido encarnar la alternativa a la concentración de poder de las grandes corporaciones mediáticas o estatales, y que han logrado el fortalecimiento y visibilidad de organizaciones y grupos activistas minoritarios.

Y que hoy nos mantiene en plena revolución democratizadora.

Claro que esa es la visión más optimista. Porque en el mundo “en.red.ado” de hoy la comunicación de las ideas no es ni tan abierta ni tan anárquica como parece. Aunque siga siendo cierto que –como afirma el mono zen- si no fuera por las redes construidas por ciertos hippies que no estaban ávidos por trabajar con la DARPA o para grandes corporaciones, el activismo opositor estaria hoy mucho más oculto, la “apertura,” la “flexibilidad”, y democratización de esas redes no es tan asombrosa como se pinta. La era digital abierta y super democrática no deja de ser hoy otra utopia sesentosa.

La pregunta que hay que hacerse entonces es: ¿cómo y quien controla la comunicación de ideas en la era de las redes de información? ¿y qué alternativas hay para evitar ese control? Hay un artículo en Ctheory que habla sobre esto. Vale la pena leerlo entero. De todas formas resumo algunas ideas clave:

1. "No doubt there are innumerable ways networks communicators and their
communicative actions are governed. I would like to provide a background to this issue by highlighting four generic types of control of communication that operate in countless instances in various networks. (...)

The first and most obvious way communication is controlled is by the exclusion of people from communication networks (...) The second way communicators are governed in networks is by inclusion and assimilation to a network form of subjectivity. This is the central form of network governance to which every networker is subject. Castells argues that there are two main classes: those who "interact" and those who are "interacted" upon, and who fits in which class is determined by economic class, race, gender and country. (...) The third way the flow of knowledge is controlled is through the action of the more powerful nodes in any network. The popular image of networks as flexible, open and democratic governance communities or partnerships tends to hide this feature. (...)

2. The first answer to our question of the possibility of critical action, therefore, is just to raise explicit awareness of the distinctive background context in which we communicate today, by means of various background sketches.(...) Rendering networks and network governance explicit thus puts us in the position of being able to call into question and have a say over the relations of power through which our communication is governed and the norms that are advanced to legitimate them, that is, of acting democratically.

3. So, our question can be reformulated as: what are the possibilities and examples of democratic communicative action?
Two general types of democratic communicative action are possible.[45] The first is
to subject communication networks to the traditional legal and political institutions of existing nation states, international law and the United Nations. (...)
The second general strategy, accordingly, is to democratize communication networks directly, so networkers and those excluded yet effected can call into question and have a say in contextually appropriate practices of democratic discussion, negotiation and decision-making in the nodes in which they network (or from which they are presently excluded).

4. The first step is to realize that the possibilities and opportunities for democratic communicative action exist here and now, wherever we communicate. Democratic communicative action is not only possible in some abstract sense. It is an "opportunity" in any node. First, the most popular vehicle for democratic communicative action in the network age is without doubt non-governmental organizations (NGOs). However, their role is ambivalent.
(...) NGOs have also been instrumental in reproducing and expanding some of the undemocratic features of existing networks. Over 70 percent of the 50,000 INGOs (international NGOs) are registered in Europe and North America and funded by Northern governments and corporations to promote their agendas.
From the pioneering activities of Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in confronting and opening closed channels of communication to
the latest small scale, alternative network globalization from below, such as providing e-mail for rural doctors and missionaries in Zambia by high-frequency
radio and Sailmail, there are countless other examples from which we can learn."