The temporary autonomous zone

 

9

somewhere. It lies at the intersection of many forces, like some pagan power- spot at the 

junction of mysterious ley-lines, visible to the adept in seemingly unrelated bits of terrain, 

landscape, flows of air, water, animals. But now the lines are not all etched in time and 

space. Some of them exist only "within" the Web, even though they also intersect with 

real times and places. Perhaps some of the lines are "non-ordinary" in the sense that no 

convention for quantifying them exists. These lines might better be studied in the light of 

chaos science than of sociology, statistics, economics, etc. The patterns of force which 

bring the TAZ into being have something in common with those chaotic "Strange 

Attractors" which exist, so to speak, between the dimensions. 

 

The TAZ by its very nature seizes every available means to realize itself--it will come to 

life whether in a cave or an L-5 Space City--but above all it will live, now, or as soon as 

possible, in however suspect or ramshackle a form, spontaneously, without regard for 

ideology or even anti- ideology. It will use the computer because the computer exists, but 

it will also use powers which are so completely unrelated to alienation or simulation that 

they guarantee a certain psychic paleolithism to the TAZ, a primordial-shamanic spirit 

which will "infect" even the Net itself (the true meaning of Cyberpunk as I read it). 

Because the TAZ is an intensification, a surplus, an excess, a potlatch, life spending 

itself in living rather than merely surviving (that snivelling shibboleth of the eighties), it 

cannot be defined either by Tech or anti-Tech. It contradicts itself like a true despiser of 

hobgoblins, because it wills itself to be, at any cost in damage to "perfection," to the 

immobility of the final. 

 

In the Mandelbrot Set and its computer-graphic realization we watch--in a fractal 

universe--maps which are embedded and in fact hidden within maps within maps etc. to 

the limits of computational power. What is it for, this map which in a sense bears a 1:1 

relation with a fractal dimension? What can one do with it, other than admire its 

psychedelic elegance? 

 

If we were to imagine an information map--a cartographic projection of the Net in its 

entirety--we would have to include in it the features of chaos, which have already begun 

to appear, for example, in the operations of complex parallel processing, 

telecommunications, transfers of electronic "money," viruses, guerilla hacking and so on. 

 

Each of these "areas" of chaos could be represented by topographs similar to the 

Mandelbrot Set, such that the "peninsulas" are embedded or hidden within the map--such 

that they seem to "disappear." This "writing"--parts of which vanish, parts of which efface 

themselves--represents the very process by which the Net is already compromised, 

incomplete to its own view, ultimately un-Controllable. In other words, the M Set, or 

something like it, might prove to be useful in "plotting" (in all senses of the word) the 

emergence of the counterNet as a chaotic process, a "creative evolution" in Prigogine's 

term. If nothing else the M Set serves as a metaphor for a "mapping" of the TAZ's 

interface with the Net as a disappearance of information. Every "catastrophe" in the Net 

is a node of power for the Web, the counter-Net. The Net will be damaged by chaos, 

while the Web may thrive on it. 

 

Whether through simple data-piracy, or else by a more complex development of actual 

rapport with chaos, the Web- hacker, the cybernetician of the TAZ, will find ways to take 

advantage of perturbations, crashes, and breakdowns in the Net (ways to make 

information out of "entropy"). As a bricoleur, a scavenger of information shards, 

smuggler, blackmailer, perhaps even cyberterrorist, the TAZ-hacker will work for the 

evolution of clandestine fractal connections. These connections, and the different 

information that flows among and between them, will form "power outlets" for the coming-

 

10 

into-being of the TAZ itself- -as if one were to steal electricity from the energy- monopoly 

to light an abandoned house for squatters. 

 

Thus the Web, in order to produce situations conducive to the TAZ, will parasitize the 

Net--but we can also conceive of this strategy as an attempt to build toward the 

construction of an alternative and autonomous Net, "free" and no longer parasitic, which 

will serve as the basis for a "new society emerging from the shell of the old." The 

counter-Net and the TAZ can be considered, practically speaking, as ends in 

themselves--but theoretically they can also be viewed as forms of struggle toward a 

different reality. 

 

Having said this we must still admit to some qualms about computers, some still 

unanswered questions, especially about the Personal Computer. 

 

The story of computer networks, BBSs and various other experiments in electro-

democracy has so far been one of hobbyism for the most part. Many anarchists and 

libertarians have deep faith in the PC as a weapon of liberation and self-liberation--but no 

real gains to show, no palpable liberty. 

 

I have little interest in some hypothetical emergent entrepreneurial class of self-employed 

data/word processors who will soon be able to carry on a vast cottage industry or 

piecemeal shitwork for various corporations and bureaucracies. Moreover it takes no 

ESP to foresee that this "class" will develop its underclass--a sort of lumpen yuppetariat: 

housewives, for example, who will provide their families with "second incomes" by turning 

their own homes into electro-sweatshops, little Work-tyrannies where the "boss" is a 

computer network. 

 

Also I am not impressed by the sort of information and services proffered by 

contemporary "radical" networks. Somewhere--one is told--there exists an "information 

economy." Maybe so; but the info being traded over the "alternative" BBSs seems to 

consist entirely of chitchat and techie-talk. Is this an economy? or merely a pastime for 

enthusiasts? OK, PCs have created yet another "print revolution"--OK, marginal 

webworks are evolving--OK, I can now carry on six phone conversations at once. But 

what difference has this made in my ordinary life? 

 

Frankly, I already had plenty of data to enrich my perceptions, what with books, movies, 

TV, theater, telephones, the U.S. Postal Service, altered states of consciousness, and so 

on. Do I really need a PC in order to obtain yet more such data? You offer me secret 

information? Well...perhaps I'm tempted--but still I demand marvelous secrets, not just 

unlisted telephone numbers or the trivia of cops and politicians. Most of all I want 

computers to provide me with information linked to real goods--"the good things in life," 

as the IWW Preamble puts it. And here, since I'm accusing the hackers and BBSers of 

irritating intellectual vagueness, I must myself descend from the baroque clouds of 

Theory & Critique and explain what I mean by "real goods." 

 

Let's say that for both political and personal reasons I desire good food, better than I can 

obtain from Capitalism-- unpolluted food still blessed with strong and natural flavors. To 

complicate the game imagine that the food I crave is illegal--raw milk perhaps, or the 

exquisite Cuban fruit mamey, which cannot be imported fresh into the U.S. because its 

seed is hallucinogenic (or so I'm told). I am not a farmer. Let's pretend I'm an importer of 

rare perfumes and aphrodisiacs, and sharpen the play by assuming most of my stock is 

also illegal. Or maybe I only want to trade word processing services for organic turnips, 

but refuse to report the transaction to the IRS (as required by law, believe it or not). Or 

maybe I want to meet other humans for consensual but illegal acts of mutual pleasure 

---