The Hi-Tech Gift Economy

The Net is haunted by the disappointed hopes of the Sixties. Because this new technology symbolises another period of rapid change, many contemporary commentators look back to the stalled revolution of thirty years ago to explain what is happening now. Most famously, the editors of Wired continually pay homage to the New Left values of individual freedom and cultural dissent in their coverage of the Net. However, in their Californian ideology, these ideals of their youth are now going to be realised through technological determinism and free markets. The politics of ecstasy have been replaced by the economics of greed.Ironically, the New Left emerged in response to the 'sell-out' of an earlier generation. By the end of the Fifties, the heroes of the anti-fascist struggle had become the guardians of Cold War orthodoxies. Even within the arts, avant-garde experimentation had been transformed into fashionable styles of consumer society. The adoption of innovative styles and new techniques was no longer subversive. Frustrated with the recuperation of their parents' generation, young people started looking for new methods of cultural and social activism. Above all, the Situationists proclaimed that the epoch of the political vanguard and the artistic avant-garde had passed. Instead of following the intellectual elite, everyone should instead determine their own destinies.