In opposition to Idoru Island that consists of gigantic malls and shopping centers, San Francisco bay bridge represents a historical monument that shares the same cultural significance with Kowloon Walled City that remains the last location to be taken over by the capitalistic development. Skinner, Chevette, and Fontaine used to be living on the bridge before the city reconstructed itself after the quake. Skinner, the first generation dweller of the bay bridge, collaborates in building the bridge and helps to maintain the bridge's subversive strength in challenging the totality of power and against the commodification of the city. Chevette and some bridge dwellers left the bridge after the quake. Some are like Fontaine (obsessed with old things), who does not move away from the bridge but renovates his shop and still sells old-fashioned watches. Chevette thinks that those old treasures are the things that get Skinner to tell his own stories. To prevent these individual stories from being overtaken by the capitalist narratives, Laney, the Walled City dwellers, Idoru, and Silencio collaborate to reconfigure the capitalist schemata. Laney and Walled City dwellers spy on the capitalist project; Idoru burns the commercialized part of the Bay Brdige; Silencio searches for the Futurematic (an automatic watch), which Harwood the capitalist is manipulating.
William Gibson has discussed the issue of media manipulation and explosion in the first episode of the bridge trilogy, Virtual Light (1993). Mainly concerned with the position of television and the film industry in people’s daily lives, he suggests that the reality effects those media produce have a conspicuous influence on reality. Three years later, he published Idoru (1996), a novel that focuses on a virtual singer’s
transformation from a messenger of media corporations that manipulate the masses to a posthuman that transgresses the media control. All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999) continues the discussion of the ambivalent role of the media in shaping reality, and further explores the postmodern dynamism in the configuration of the future.
In this Chapter I will expose how a capitalist-driven modernization fosters the forgetting of personal histories by deploying historical monuments, and how the opponents to modernization resist it by reconfiguring urban development. Behind the urban development as a utopian program, Harwood (a combination of Bill Gates and Woody Allen) is the one who designs, proposes and controls the process of city modernization. He plays with a miniaturized model of the world as a toy in his office.
By means of cyberspace as a network that connects people from all over the world, he watches over and manipulates the world (as a chess game) to fit into his utopian proposal: modernization of the city as the manifestation of a utopia. Nonetheless, in the name of progress, modernization implies the negligence of individual memories and total control of capitalism. Tessa (a media sciences student) witnesses the sneer of modernization and decides to make a documentary focusing on Chevette and bay bridge (before it becomes theme-parked). To contravene Harwood, Idoru, Laney and the Walled City denizens collaborate to checkmate Harwood's king. I will elaborate the re/shaping of the histories between the universal history and the individual histories based on Walter Benjamin’s concept of the history.
Hinted at in the Idoru episode, the world in the post-earthquake period is a place of instability and turmoil as it prepares for the moment of change, the emergence of a nodal point. All the signs, signifiers, and images are constructed beforehand to generate a new phase of history that is to occur as the year 1999 leaps to the new
millennium, with expectation of a new-born system, and worries about the Y2K disaster. In this chapter, the issue of history will be discussed in terms of informatics. Under Katherine Hayles’s definition, “informatics’ (a term appropriated from Donna Haraway, who uses it in a somewhat different sense),” refers to
the material, technological, economic, and social structures that make the information age possible. Informatics includes the late capitalist mode of flexible accumulation; the hardware and software that have merged telecommunications with computer technology; the patterns of living that emerge from and depend upon access to large data banks and instantaneous transmission of messages; and changing habits of posture, eye focus, hand motions, and neural connections that are reconfiguring the human body in conjunction with information technologies. (“The Materiality of Informatics” 148)
In other words, informatics explains the fluid and web-like interactions among the posthuman within given socioeconomic relations. The new paradigm of relationships changes the way we perceive and think into a new pattern of history. Will this dynamism complicate the way information technologies interacting with the formation of history? What is its impact on the inscription of culture?
My aim is to expose how the late capitalist scheme tricks the masses into forgetting history by means of deploying architecture and urban development that project the city as a phantasmagoria that triggers the desire to consume. Architecture and cityscapes are rendered texts to be read by citizens and written by various kinds of ideologies. What will happen if the social condition is composed of large-scale
forgetting, image-worshipping, and information overload? In terms of transforming the base into culture, I would argue that the role of media and information technologies is ambivalent. I will explore how modernity modifies the shaping or manipulating of history, and how is it possible to prevent the capitalist future from happening. On the one hand, the constant consumption of information leads to a mass forgetting and a loss of history. This is nonetheless how human beings are able to reach for happiness, by going beyond, and transforming history through forgetting.
On the other hand, re-memorizing is a way to release the forgotten history of the oppressed past.
All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP) is a signal warning that exposes the mechanism of
late capitalism to eliminate minor or repressed history, as well as a remark on the autonomous potentiality cyberspace brings in the shaping of histories. The totality of history is in the hands of Harwood, a hidden figure behind the strings of the media and the global network, who regards the world as a toy. The spirit of modernity is rendered as an Enlightenment myth that transcends and lures the masses. By looking back into the not-yet-consciousness of history, the messianic power of minor history (composed of individual memories) tries to reveal the sneer of the modern phantasmagoria. In Gibson’s Idoru and ATP, cities are reconstructed so rapidly after an earthquake that people forget the cities have been destroyed. This quake not only refers to a tremor in earth’s crust, but also refers to a rupture in people’s memories.
The infofault (appropriated from geological term, Gibson uses the word “fault” to denote discrepancies between the Grand History and petit histories) or memory gap (discovered by the collaboration of Laney and his tech-savvy geeks in the Walled City) smoothed out by the capitalistic modernity will open up the closure of the universal
history that has silenced the petit histories.
The medium that reshuffles between the superstructure and base structure is not limited to the literary texts. The human body as well as architecture and cityscape are also possible platforms that contain messages. There has long existed a tension between Marxism and Fascism in configuring the media that disseminate the culture and messages. In terms of modern culture, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin have different attitudes. Adorno is more serious and pessimistic with regard to popular culture that he sees contaminating high culture. He theorizes the popular culture as an industry that has a system that normalizes the masses. It is the large amount of free time in modern society that makes possible the capitalist’s manipulation of the masses.
It is very easy for the capitalist class to write their own history disregarding the life of the masses in this respect. The victory of fascism can be attributed to its lure “in the name of progress,” and the fact that “its opponents treat it as a historical norm”
(Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” 392). To neutralize Adorno’s pessimistic view of the culture as an industry, Benjamin sees a new way of perceiving media culture. The new media bring forth a new perception of experiences that will revolutionize the perception of art itself. Moreover, he believes that there is hope in tracing back the history at present. There is a way to detect the capitalist scheme by sensing the treasure that is not overwhelmed by the phantasmagoria in the name of progress.
The mission of modernist texts is to “make it new” (in historical sense) and criticize its modernity simultaneously. The schemata of Enlightenment rationality lead to the myth of progress in which the idea of time is linear. The representation of
“make it new” transforms reality into a far-fetched future that is a
highly-technologically and industrially dominated world. This myth of progress and a better life is promoted through the mass media that are controlled by an invisible hand—late capitalism and the culture industry. In ATP and Idoru, we can observe two images of the cityscape: one is a phantasmagoria projected by Harwood’s international firms, and another is a not-yet-modernized one maintained by denizens of the Bay Bridge and the online Walled City.
The former represents the culture industry’s aspect of monopoly and mechanical reproduction. This modernity is the Enlightenment rationality that carries the name of progress and exhausted modern men and women. A utopia constructed and reified by false ideology and information technologies is destroyed by the contradicting power itself—the media. The consumerism of popular culture is leading the masses to a culture assembly-line, in which everyone is obsessed with the image of celebrity created by the culture industry. Idoru is a manifestation of collective utopian desires.
She is projected from the collective utopian imagination, calculated by Famous Aspect (her production company) and transmitted through media corporations. With the innovation of technologies, the scheme of late capitalism goes global and permeates every aspect of daily life. The mass media become accomplices of late capitalist ideology to manipulate the way of life. That is to say the reality is represented in collections of the videos, photographs, and data, but is subject to manipulation by the media.
It is the administration itself that functions in the culture industry. Beneath the veil of modernity, there lies the desire of consuming happiness, which is manipulated by the culture industry that consists of industries of production, reproduction and dissemination. The homogenous culture is secretly deployed through administrating
nodes of information and traces of signs. In terms of the impact that capitalist modernity brings, Walter Benjamin has a more positive view regarding to capitalist society in the cultural context. His take on Marxist criticism is stated in the preface of
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”:
He [Marx] went back to the basic conditions underlying capitalistic production and through this presentation showed what could be expected of capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself.
(Benjamin 217)
Benjamin discusses the pros and cons that the capitalist mode of production brings to the works of art. He observes that there is an emphasis on display value rather than on ritual value in the capitalistic mode of production which changes the artistic function of art—from ritual to politics. The capitalistic mode of production with the invention of new technology introduces the politics of art. The reproduction not only changes the way of representing realities but also our perceptions and reception of reality.
He lists two major negative impacts of reproduction: (a) an absence of aura:
reproduction represents the absence of space and time. (b) corruption of ownership:
reproduction loses the originality and authenticity of an art work. These negative impacts, however, viewing it reversely, can be positive ones because it includes the participation of the masses. In other words, art in the age of mechanical reproduction not only increases the loss of historicity which generate mass forgetting but also encourages participation of the masses in the negotiation process between high and
low art.
Adorno’s worst nightmare will be Harwood who conspires to commercialize the bridge, thus attracting tourists and preventing the autonomous mobility the masses might have. He proudly admits that making the bridge a tourist attraction “would encourage walk-on tourism, and that is a crucial aspect of normalization” (ATP 209).
In other words, to turn the bridge into a work of art is part of the operation for normalization/standardization (ATP 210), or cultural assimilation. The commercialization of the art on the bridge itself, as Harwood states, aims to wipe out the “[b]ohemias,” the “[a]lternative subcultures” (ATP 201). In other words, he is going to wipe out all bohemian spirit, and to make extinct the “substance or substances of choice” (ATP 201). Without a self-conscious existence as individuals, modern people are as Yamazaki observed: “the crowd descending like a single organism into the station’s airless heart,” in which the masses are orchestrated into a collective entity, performing the same action, and are “[e]volved to cope with jostling elbows, oversized Ginza shopping bags, ruthless briefcases” (ATP 1).
Benjamin’s critique of the capitalistic mode of production points out not only a loss of aura in the mechanical reproduction that might hypnotizes the masses into not thinking but also pronounces a messianic vision that promises the possibility of abolishing capitalism in the new structure of perception. But some leisure activities are to be implemented in daily life, in order to release post-earthquake trauma. “The Western World” is a bar that offers this service. Laney is pondering its role from different points of view. As an existential sociologist, Yamazaki positions this bar as
“a response to trauma and subsequent reconstruction” (Idoru 212); whereas for a Belgian journalist, the scene of the bar “resembled a cross between a permanent mass
wake, . . . as though the city, in its convulsion and grief, had spontaneously and necessarily generated this hidden pocket universe of the soul, . . . an open secret, an urban legend” (Idoru 212-3). The quake represents the condensed collectively forgotten and unbearable memories people want to leave behind in order to move on.
“The Western World” records the mass removal of traumatic memory, and also responds to the struggles between the ruling and the repressed. The recreational function of the bar again reflects back to the dialectic activities between art as a warning that reveals fascistic tricks or as a part of the fascistic manipulation.
After the quake, Tokyo is quickly reconstructed by nanotech assembler, the
“[m]achines too small to see” (Idoru 60), refurnished “with light” (Idoru 40) and
“translucent materials” (Idoru 76). The use of nanotechnology in reconstructing the cityscape on the one hand hints at the micro scale of the inscription and on the other suggests that even the node is only an infinitesimal fragment within the web of history, albeit is pivotal in shaping future urban development. The city being reproduced as a phantasmagoria implies hope and progress. Moreover, this is a world made of “walls of animated light, sign and signifier twisting toward the sky in the unending ritual of commerce, of desire. Vast faces fill the screens, icons of a beauty at once terrible and banal” (Idoru 7). Everyone is implemented/tattooed with the marks of Slitscan, a popular reality TV show that supports global franchises. “It was impossible to work at Slitscan without a sense of participating in history, . . . or . . . in replaced history”
(Idoru 51) declares Laney’s boss, the head of the company, Kathy Lorrance. As a Slitscan employee, Laney does not judge the material of the show, nor watches it, only accepting it as “a fact of life” (Idoru 52). The media explosion renders the world the product of media companies, which reproduce realities. That is to say,
accepting the message and reality created by the media as a fact implies being disoriented and trapped in the media narrative.
In “Walter Benjamin and the Tectonic Unconscious: Using Architecture as an Optical Instrument,” Detlef Mertins remarks that fragmented traces will reveal the truth of the history. The iron balcony expresses the desire to live a life out of confined society, as well as embodies the “awakening from the false dream-consciousness of the bourgeoisie” (211). Traces are nodes of information and fragments of history to be remade. In other words, every node is connected to the web of nodes that reshuffles to construct history. Architectures, places and spaces are nodes susceptible to being manipulated and re-interpreted. In this respect, the cityscapes are surfaces to be written, and part of mediated realities.
Laney says to a technician that “[p]lace has too much of a history” (Idoru 109).
Urban development, the sites of preservation of the forgotten histories are to be overthrown by the phantasmagoric decorations which project the ideology of progress.
Histories of the forgotten are the repressed histories deplored by universal history. The discourses of the forgetting and the forgotten are dynamically interpolated. The architectural expressions serve as metaphors for preserving the forgotten histories.
The architecture preserves the marks of the cultural heritage.
The messianic power of history can be found in the process of land-reclamation, in which the history of the forgotten can be regained. In the second episode of the bridge trilogy, Rez exchanged Tokyo Bay—a not-yet-developed landfill in the Bay—
with the Russian mafia for the nanotech assembler that is used to quickly reconstruct the unused land. In Tokyo, the undeveloped and not-yet-modernized land is replaced by another big modern development. The urban development in Tokyo is not a
singular case. In the final episode, we can get a stealthy glance at the urban development of San Francisco through Harwood’s eyes. “He [Harwood] is looking east, from the forty-eighth and ultimate floor of the city’s tallest building, toward the shadow of the ruined Embarcadero, the gypsy glow of the bridge, the feral darkness of Treasure Island” (ATP 207). Overcast by the shadow of the skyscraper (situated in the east, signifying the rise of the sun), the Embarcadero is placed in the west, signifying the fall of Treasure Island, the formal loss of the precious things.
Both Tokyo Bay and Embarcadero are sites of decayed or historical monuments that preserved the memories and traces of the past. Under modernization, these sites are losing their cultural-historical heritages. Fortunately, the Walled City is rebuilt by the Etruscan crew who are professional conspirators that spy on the project of city planning. The quakes in Tokyo and San Francisco signify the turbulences or dynamic activities between two forces in shaping the history, whereas the infofault implies the gap of ideology and unveils the scheme that renders mass forgetting. The abolition of flesh and the embrace of information are the new solidarities and myth that the masses hope for. Nonetheless, it is also a conspiracy made up by big corporations, a fascist move of controlling the collective mob. Harwood is the wizard of the ritual of
Both Tokyo Bay and Embarcadero are sites of decayed or historical monuments that preserved the memories and traces of the past. Under modernization, these sites are losing their cultural-historical heritages. Fortunately, the Walled City is rebuilt by the Etruscan crew who are professional conspirators that spy on the project of city planning. The quakes in Tokyo and San Francisco signify the turbulences or dynamic activities between two forces in shaping the history, whereas the infofault implies the gap of ideology and unveils the scheme that renders mass forgetting. The abolition of flesh and the embrace of information are the new solidarities and myth that the masses hope for. Nonetheless, it is also a conspiracy made up by big corporations, a fascist move of controlling the collective mob. Harwood is the wizard of the ritual of