We've been bouncing this idea around.
Jim Lasser started the ball rolling with:
>>> The web is today's punk rock. Agree? Disagree?
No surprise, this spawned a chain of emails. Interesting ones. And an observation: I've never seen Jim and Johnny Rotten in the same room together. hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Frankly, I don't know what Punk Rock is, even after Jelly Helm showed me Punk Rock's Wikipedia entry. I do know the Sex Pistols (described by the BBC as "the definitive English punk rock band") were a manufactured boy band - kind of a messy, drug-taking, knife-wielding Backstreet Boys that couldn't dance to save themselves. And marketing got a hold of Punk. Some would say it created Punk. And to a lot of folks, being punk now means buying a Green Day album, a Black Flag vintage retro t-shirt or a concert ticket (but not at CBGB's anymore). Or deciding between the 8 hole or 12 hole Doc Marten's. Or Grinders. Or GripFasts. Or Rangers. Or whatever is cool and street appropriately "anarchic".
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The web is something different.
Vastly different.
For one thing, it's the one mass medium that hasn't been co-opted yet. That hasn't sold out, like the Sex Pistols did when they signed with CBS. In Al Gore's Assault on Reason, he distinguishes the Internet from all other media in this way:
"[it] is not just another platform for disseminating the truth, it's a platform for pursuing the truth and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas." - p.260
At its lightest, Punk Rock can be an accessory (a ripped S&M shirt and pants, or eyeliner). At its best and most anarchic, it attacked institutions. But only in song. Net Neutrality is more than the new "Anarchy in the UK". It's part of what should be our new eras global "Bill of Digital Rights".
Until the Internet, to be "heard" in mainstream media (TV, radio, print) required a marketing budget.
But is the Internet the new Punk Rock?
According to Punk magazine founder John Holmstrom, punk rock was "rock and roll by people who didn't have very much [sic] skills as musicians but still felt the need to express themselves through music". A lot of folks would say the same about bloggers, but Gore thinks they've been unfairly discounted:
"what is significant about blogging may be the process itself. By posting their ideas online, bloggers are reclaiming the tradition of our founders of making their reflections on the national state of affairs publically available...Larry Lessig states: 'People post when they want to post, and people read when they want to read...blogs allow for public discourse without the public ever needing to gather in a single public space."
Punk Rock gave a voice to disaffected youth. It spawned fashion trends and music genres. But it was a specific taste. Punk music is not for everyone.
But the Internet is for everyone. And it is vitally, desperately important. James Moore calls it the "connective tissue" of the "second superpower" of world opinion in The Second Superpower Rears Its Beautiful Head. Al Gore calls it the potential salvation of the American Republic.
"the internet is perhaps the greatest source of hope for reestablishing an open communications environment in which the conversation of democracy can flourish.
It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and a universe of knowledge.
But the Internet must be developed and protected in the same way we develop and protect markets - through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise and rule of law. The same Ferocity our founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of the republic."
- Al Gore, The Assault on Reason, pgs. 260-261
The Internet lowers the barriers to participate in the marketplace of ideas. Allows any voice to rise. To connect. Eliminates the ante. And we desperately need that. We are at a historical moment. Our institutions and democracy are at risk. Our media channels are choked with Britney and Paris and Nicole. Our voices are muffled.
"The present state of America is truly alarming...legislation without law; wisdom without a plan..the multitiude is left at random...nothing is criminal; there is no such thing as treason. When my country...was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir."
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Log on, Thom P., log on.
Hey, I remember Punk Rock. I was there. Although I didn't understand that at the time. A few years later, in 1982, I got a lesson in the true nature of punk, from an Irish guy - a burly sweet natured tough, complete with earing, crappy tatoos, shaved head and missing teeth from too many football riots - who was visiting me in the Atacama desert in northern Peru. I was working there (don't ask, it's too weird) and he was wandering the world, disillusioned, looking for an authentic experience. He had dozens of bootleg punk tapes with bands I'd never heard of and don't remember. This was punk, he said, and it was already dead.
I would argue that the WELL, that forerunner of our more commercialized web, is a better analogy to punk. Where it's buyer beware on the web, the WELL had, and still has, an authenticity that has eroded on the web.
A better analogy to today's web (and the computer I'm typing on), is the early postal system, (and the printing press) which could deliver your inner-most thoughts to the world in a ridiculously short amount of time for a relatively small sum. That was a revolution. Which was repeated with the telegraph, the telephone, community radio and television, and now the web, each time with an exponential magnification in information transfer. Like the web, each could deliver everything from slime to sublime.
I'm not sure how much information was ever transfered between Punk Rock participants, but apparently it was really authentic for a short period. I wish I had been paying attention at the time...
So here's a question that you've already thought of I'm sure, but I'll ask it anyway. What's the next exponential leap that makes the web look quaint?
Posted by: Peter Schoonmaker | 2007.09.21 at 16:05
Jimm certainly raises an interesting analogy, but the short answer is no, the web is not today's punk rock. Punk Rock is a lifestyle, a form of self expression-- and one of the most galvanizing forms of self expression in our modern time at that. Being/understanding Punk is like the difference between Democrats and Republicans, true believers and atheists. You either get it or you don't. Sure, you can have empathy for differing opinions, but that doesn't mean you truly "get" it.
The web on the other hand is merely an outlet for that expression. Without input the medium is meaningless.
If you want to make correlations, the web equivalent of punk rock might be the original WELL, napster or craigslist. Those were/are properties with a true DIY spirit and groundswell of support. Sadly, most of today's "web" is more like Brittney Spears than Punk thanks to too many corporations with deep pockets asserting their own agendas. That said, the Punk spirit is still alive and well as long as you know where to look for it and know how to see it for what it is.
Posted by: Todd | 2007.09.06 at 12:17