The Net The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet

DVD Lutz Dammbeck, 2003
language: German subtitle english

«It emerged during my research work on the topic of art and new technologies. Around 10 to 15 years ago, concepts like multimedia, virtuality etc. appeared for the first time in the art context.[...]
In a way, it is possible to understand people like David Gelernter or Marvin Minsky, one of the pioneers of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and their technocratic world. They simply wanted to be involved in the development of things like cyberspace, virtuality and artificial intelligence. Set against the background of the dismal fifties and sixties, computers and the first technological networks were very glamorous; as insiders, they felt a bit like the Good Lord himself. Now things have developed further - and differently - and one has to ask oneself whether the technicist utopias and abstract ideas that originated from these people should actually be realised at all. »
Lutz Dammbeck interviewed by Helmut Merschmann for okno.be

Ultimately stunning in its revelations, THE NET explores the incredibly complex backstory of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. This exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th Century web of technology ? a system that he grew to oppose. A marvelously subversive approach to the history of the Internet, this insightful documentary combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting countercultural responses to the cybernetic revolution.[...]
For those that embrace it, as did and do the early champions of media art like Marshall McLuhan, Nam June Paik, and Stewart Brand, the promises of worldwide networking and instantaneous communication outweighed the perils. Dammbeck's conceptual quest links these multiple nodes of cultural and political thought like the Internet itself. Circling through themes of utopianism, anarchism, terrorism, CIA, LSD, Tim Leary, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, THE NET exposes a hidden matrix of revolutionary advances, coincidences, and conspiracies.
in thepiratebay/torrent/details

Extracts from The Net
The Cybernetics and the Macy conference

----------

fr

La fascination pour la vision positive d'une mise en réseau mondiale, à laquelle participeraient des citoyens du monde plutôt que des ressortissants de pays, est au centre du film de Lutz Dammbeck. Mais le réalisateur allemand la met en lumière à travers le prisme d'une vision négative..[...]
Qui se cache derrière les attaques contre des scientifiques en informatique aux Etats-Unis entre 1978 et 1995 ? [...] Les cyber-théoriciens comme Stuart Brand prônent la création de systèmes ouverts sur la base de la nouvelle science clef : la cybernétique de Norbert Wiener. Malgré la tournure de toute évidence militaire des premiers réseaux, on n?est surpris qu?au premier regard par les liens avec la scène hippie californienne. Alors que pour eux le cerveau n'est plus qu'un organe de chair et que l'on étudie la transmission d?informations des machines et des êtres vivants, la drogue LSD fait le lien: elle est à la fois utilisée pour élargir le champ de la conscience, mais elle se trouve aussi au centre des recherches psychologiques qui portent sur la reprogrammation des individus.[...]
in riam01

infos
The Net website

nathalie
meetopia