The Rise of the NetThe Niepce brothers didn't want to make art, they wanted to sell newspapers. Daguerre wasn't searching for salvation, he was looking to make a buck. Photography as an art form has its roots in industry and capitalism. Although it may not appeal to the romantic notions of some among us, all photographers are disciples of the technocultural machine aesthetic. Its just that the romantics and the visionaries fell in behind the industrial apparatus and bent it to purposes for which is was not originally intended.
Digital technology is following the same curve. Today, both desktop computers and the Internet are direct descendants of yesteryear's top-secret Defense Department research on better ways to kill the Other Guy before he kills Us. Specifically, the original purpose of the Internet was to maintain the US military communications and command infrastructure in the event of a Russian nuclear attack. This began in 1969 as something called ARPAnet, the Advanced Research Projects Agency network, which consisted of three networked computers in California plus one additional computer in Utah. ARPAnet immediately began to expand, with 23 computers on the network by 1971, and a total of 200 computers connected by 1980. At this point, the National Science Foundation (NSF) emerged as a major funding source, and during the 1980's the NSFnet became the main artery, or backbone, of today's Internet. The NSFnet was comprised primarily of government installations, research sites, and educational institutions throughout the country. Through the support of the NSF, the Internet grew to number 5,000 computers by 1986, more than 100,000 computer "hosts" by 1989, and over 700,000 hosts by 1991. Currently, no one knows how large the Internet really is, but recent estimates place it somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5 million host computers serving 25 million users in 237 countries around the globe. The Internet is expanding so rapidly that these figures will be completely inaccurate by the time you read them.
Despite its massive size, the Internet is still limited predominately to a technocratic elite. But recent developments suggest that this is about to change. First of all, the NSF has recently pulled out of its role as the main funding source for the Net. This hardly spells the demise of the Net. Instead, the corporate business world is scrambling to commercialize the Net, and exploit what it sees as a potentially huge market. The Niepce's and Daguerre's of today are probably already on the Net.
Second, and probably of more interest to artists, the Internet is slowly becoming accessible to the average individual. With a moderately priced computer and modem, a person can subscribe to a commercial service such as America Online for a few dollars per month. These services are offering an expanding array of information, culture, and entertainment. So on any given night someone can now dial into America Online and view the latest news headlines, read the current issue of Time Magazine, visit the Smithsonian Institute, or talk to someone about their shared passion for raising exotic tropical fish. These services are rapidly developing more sophisticated mechanisms for transmitting text, images, video, and sound. Currently, America Online enrollment stands at some six million subscribers and, of course, growing.
So what we have here is a large, growing, active community. It doesn't appear on any map and doesn't have any physical shape or boundaries. But it meets all the necessary criteria for describing it as a community. The Internet is populated by a whole variety of social types including entrepreneurs, academics, kids, prophets, saints and sinners, cops and criminals. They are doing just about anything one could think of, from ordering L. L. Bean slippers to something called cybersex, which I admit I'm a little confused about.