HyperNormalisation Page #5

corrupt hierarchies of politics and

power and explore new ways of being.

One of the leading exponents of this

idea was called John Perry Barlow.

In the '60s, he had written

songs for the Grateful Dead

and been part of the acid counterculture.

Now, he organised what he called "cyberthons",

to try and bring the cyberspace movement together.

Well, you know, the cyberthon

as it was originally conceived

was supposed to be...

...the '90s equivalent of the acid test

and we had thought to involve

some of the same personnel.

- You and I and Timmy should sit down and talk.

- OK. That is good.

And it immediately acquired a financial quality

or a commercial quality that was initially

a little unsettling to an old hippy like me,

but as soon as I saw it actually

working, then I thought,

"Ah, well, if you're going to

have an acid test for the '90s,

"money better be involved."

Instead of having a glass

barrier that separates you -

your mind - from the mind of the computer,

the computer pulls us inside

and creates a world for us.

Incorporates everything

that could be incorporated.

It incorporates experience itself.

Barlow then wrote a manifesto

that he called A Declaration

Of Independence Of Cyberspace.

It was addressed to all politicians,

telling them to keep out of this new world.

It was going to be incredibly influential,

because what Barlow did was give a

powerful picture of the internet

not as a network controlled by giant corporations,

but, instead, as a kind of magical, free place.

An alternative to the old systems of power.

It was a vision that would

come to dominate the internet

over the next 20 years.

Governments of the industrial world,

cyberspace does not lie within your borders.

We are creating a world where anyone,

anywhere, may express his or her beliefs,

no matter how singular,

without fear of being coerced

into silence or conformity.

I declare the global social space we are building

to be naturally independent

of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us.

We will create a civilisation

of the mind in cyberspace.

May it be more humane and fair

than the world your governments have made before.

It's begun.

This is the key to a new order.

This code disk means freedom.

But two young hackers in New

York thought that Barlow

was describing a fantasy world,

that his vision bore no relationship at all

to what was really emerging online.

They were cult figures on the early online scene

and their fans followed and recorded them.

They called themselves

Phiber Optik and Acid Phreak

and they spent their time

exploring and breaking in

to giant computer networks that they knew

were the hard realities of modern digital power.

My specific instance, I was

charged with conspiracy

to commit a few dozen

"overacts", they called them.

Among a number of things having to

do with computer trespass and...

and I guess computer eavesdropping, interception.

Unauthorised access to federal interest computers,

which is pretty vague law.

Communications network computers and so on.

In a notorious public debate online,

the two hackers attacked Barlow.

What infuriated them most was Barlow's insistence

that there was no hierarchy

or controlling powers in the new cyber world.

The hackers set out to

demonstrate that he was wrong.

Acid Phreak hacked into the computers of

a giant corporation called TRW.

TRW had originally built the systems

that ran the Cold War for the US military.

They had helped create the

delicate balance of terror.

Now, TRW had adapted their

computers to run a new system,

that of credit and debt.

Their computers gathered up the

credit data of millions of Americans

and were being used by the banks to

decide individuals' credit ratings.

The hackers broke into the TRW network,

stole Barlow's credit history

and published it online.

The hackers were demonstrating

the growing power of finance.

How the companies that ran

the new systems of credit

knew more and more about you,

and, increasingly, used that

information to control your destiny.

But the system that was allowing this to happen

were the new giant networks of information

connected through computer servers.

The hackers were questioning

whether Barlow's utopian rhetoric

about cyberspace might really

be a convenient camouflage

hiding the emergence of a new and growing power

that was way beyond politics.

But cyberspace was not the only

imaginary story being created.

Faced with the humiliating defeat in the Lebanon,

President Reagan's government

was desperate to shore up

the vision of a moral world

where a good America struggled against evil.

And to do this they were going

to create a simple villain.

An imaginary enemy, one that would free them

from the paralysing complexity

of real Middle-Eastern politics.

The perfect candidate was waiting in the wings.

Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya.

The Americans were going to

ruthlessly use Colonel Gaddafi

to create a fake terrorist mastermind.

And Gaddafi was going to happily play along,

because it would turn him

into a famous global figure.

Colonel Gaddafi had taken

power in a coup in the 1970s

but from the very start,

he was convinced that he was more

than just the leader of one country.

He believed that he was an

international revolutionary

whose destiny was to challenge

the power of the West.

Gentlemen, the Queen.

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN PLAYS

When he was a young officer,

Gaddafi had been sent to England for training

and he had detested the patronising racism

that he said he had found at

the heart of British society.

Yes, I attended a course.

I had been in England in 1966

from February to August.

You had the best months.

HE CHUCKLES:

I was in Beaconsfield,

a village called Beaconsfield,

in an army school.

In fact, we were ill-treated in that

place from some British officers.

I think the officers were Jews,

maybe Jews.

Ill-treated in what sort of way?

In many ways.

They ill-treat us every time.

By being rude or by bullying or...?

In their own behaviour towards

us, they ill-treated us.

They hate us in there

because of colonisation.

It is the result of colonising.

Once in power, Gaddafi had developed

his own revolutionary theory,

which he called the Third Universal Theory.

It was an alternative, he said,

to communism and capitalism.

He published it in a green book,

but practically no-one read it.

He had sent money and weapons

to the IRA in Ireland

to help them overthrow the British ruling class.

But all the other Arab leaders

rejected him and his ideas.

They thought that he was mad.

And by the mid-1980s, Gaddafi

was an isolated figure

with no friends and no global influence.

Then, suddenly, that changed.

In December 1985,

terrorists attacked Rome and

Vienna airports simultaneously,

killing 19 people,

including five Americans.

There was growing pressure on

President Reagan to retaliate.

It's time to rename your State Department

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