Adilkno: The Media Archive Writing in the Media "The archive! It cannot count on my wholehearted support. The A. is a philological and dusty thing, that interests no-one; even the Nietzsche-A.: - who knows of it, who ever visited it, whom has it impressed?" - Gottfried Benn To write about media is to raise the question of what gives writing the presumption to speak for other media. Language presents itself as the metamedium to contain all past and future media. In Western textual culture, phenomena are only considered understood once they have been included in a final story. Theory is believed to possess an extraordinary gift, lacking in audio and video, to solve the mysteries that drive the phenomenal universe. Whereas the word still maintains that the question of the world is in writing, the symbol has long since assumed it is a geometrically representable master plan. Once, the harmony of the spheres was a musical program. Preaching, drama, cinema, television, museum, sports, and concerts all unite their audience in a collective ceremony. Conversely, solitary reading creates a distance from the receptive ritual's shared experience, so that the reader feels as if he or she were the only one receiving this medial transmission. The immanent silence in reading creates an imaginary space where language appears to soar above the immediate tumult of the mass media. The idea of order, which gives language its charm, is a medial effect that is abruptly disturbed when someone reads over your shoulder. Insight is as much the technological circuit's noise as it is an authentic source of information unique to primates. Writing is no exception to the rule. Media constitute a closed system which sends off sparks into the cosmic void every once in a while. Amidst the media landscape, we are never more than tourists who keep stubbornly looking for landmarks. Media writing ought to situate itself within the media network. Even those who believe they can place themselves outside it in some heroic gesture and deny the omnipotence of the media remain just one among many media figures. This puritanical, old-fashioned ambition, as surely as any other, will result in an end product to be included in the universal media archives. The consistent response to this is to destroy one's complete oeuvre, which will not only serve to create a legend but a mountain of waste as well, at the disposal of many an inquisitive generation to come. The halfway approach - to merely shut down all links to normality for a time, in order to lead the personal medium to ecstasy within an artificial desert - is to dream of conquering all other modes of expression on one's return. All that the outsiders ever notice of this totalitarian claim by certain media tribes is a brilliant book, a good film, or a pleasant evening. No matter how one-dimensional the talented presentation, in the media sphere the unique commodity is always and instantly classifiable as part of a genre, period or development. The figure of the alien who grazes on history and deposits its droppings in it may be real enough - at the end of the day, it's just another modern artist who realizes the state of its art and acts accordingly. The media text is not concerned with the secret intentions lurking behind an information transmission. Media are not carriers of cultural or ideological values. Rather than transporting messages from A to B, they form a parallel world of their own which never touches on classical reality. Media see the world as raw material for their own project, nothing else. Writing in the media does not seek the media's internal logic within their processed material, but within their ecstatic strategies. Media are forced to constant development, since all their ecstatic routes can be taken only once, after which the technique used becomes obsolete. Media never mature past the trial stage. Every medium must, time and again, discover its own dynamics in order to bring itself to a new conclusion. The path followed by the various media thus far is the subject of textual-materialist media theory. The way in which media suck up material from reality is the theme of communication studies, while the field of cultural studies sides with the viewers. The media text, on the other hand, forgets about dialectics and strives for ecstasy, having understood itself to be part of the media. The media text, like the media themselves, can never produce a final understanding that might be established in a dissertation or magnum opus. Caught in the stage of experiment, it carries on in its own irresponsible but methodical way. The media text looks for trajectories, models of thought, tactical maneuvers, and magic words that will help it spell itself out to the point of exhaustion. The media text describes no reality or ideas beyond the text. Its material are the media themselves - not their equipment or programs, but their possibilities. The electrosphere is full of potential media and media forms. Their present or future being is uncertain, but nonetheless open to examination. The media text offers an irresponsibly rash insight into them. It speculates on chance, danger, dream, nightmare. It challenges potential media to get real, starting with the media text itself. It provokes language to take on these forms. Potential media exist only as options, but once they are described, you run into them everywhere. Liquid theory does not aim at an overall text, to be constructed chapter by chapter. The media text is no rhizomatic elaboration on schizoid currents, nor is it about stretching difference yet further. It focuses on the vaguest possible contours with the utmost sharpness. In its compelling will to text, it treats any concept or info that breezes by with systematic arbitrariness. It does not need to categorize its subjects - the magic words just cling to the media text, refusing to let go until they've crystallized. A media overview is by definition unfeasible. The media text enables the potential media field to download on the level of language, so as to condense the mega data package which scrolls by as the limited, but (to us) comprehensible, Compact Text format. Generation, manipulation and recording are no longer sequential stages in data handling, but always take place simultaneously. Preservation does not take place after the fact, in the service of history, but is a technological a priori (F10). The unlocking of the media archives does not take place in the post-medial world, though they anticipate it will. The archives wish neither to raise an ode to transience and its traces nor to unleash protest against it. The construction of a new freeway attracts previously immobile traffic. To switch on a medium is to conjure up previously unregistered data. To establish a media archive is to attract files that would otherwise never have been compiled. To compile is no less to generate, than to generate is to compel to compilation; simultaneity works both ways. Starting an archive is sufficient to have it fill up with new material. There exists no more gratifying task than to write for the desk drawer. Passive storage is not enough; data must be retrievable as quickly and efficiently as possible. While it is relatively easy to optimize access to one's personal archives, the real trouble starts with visits to other people's datasheds. On the other hand, this inaccessibility is an essential condition for amazing discoveries. Permanence is the hallmark of all structured attempts at preservation. The media archives will prove to be modernity's Alexandria, and likewise go up in smoke. Once the bookshelf has fallen over, it may be a small disaster to the author, but a giant step for the readers. The greater the gibberish beheld by the writer, the more clarity is gained by the audience. The media archives are open to any unsuspected cross-connections, and generously invite misreadings. They do not strive for the ultimate aha-experience, but anticipate the metamorphosis of their own content. To read books = to destroy books. The Media Archive presents computer-aided theory (CAT) from the era of word processing (WP 4.2). The empty screen is an essential feature of word perfection, an electronic tabula rasa whose only known factors are the coordinates of the theory-to-come (Doc Pg Ln Pos). The soft page has not yet supplanted the letter-size thinking of the typewriting era ("to the end of the page and no further"), a poor use of computing capacity that shifts the computer into suspension gear: The PC processes nothing, the LCD screen's restricted parking area leaves all options open. Menu bars, sidekicks, windows next to or behind the text, even simple subscreens: They were either missing or remained unused. CAT is as flat as a pancake. No hidden codes, no footnotes, no registers. The keyboard's greatest literary achievement is the delete key. The computer serves as an unprecedented text compression tool, and this is where it comes in handy in media archiving. Compact hermeneutics rears its head as a compressed file, unzipped by the reader when requesting a book into an overall text, suddenly rich in slanted distinctions. The theoretical signal has been divested of its superfluous profundity. Even with 70 percent of the argument omitted, discourse still comes through loud and clear. There is no question of clandestine advertising for other registered authors. Our subliminal discomfort, which would like to have the diagonal text related to something at least, is not rewarded with specific clues. Those in dataland who believe they have the hang of pattern recognition soon embark on a quest for the exclusive keyword to disclose new universes. Such magic words, however, may also settle in from outside, and start to suck up charged particles of theory, factoids and semi-quotes. The massive assault on keywords continues until the inevitable overload occurs: time to reset. Unidentified Theoretical Objects (UTOs) are chance theoretical field compressions. Their vocabulary is discovered on desert islands in the web of scanned-in text. UTOs are crystal balls gleaming with the dim light of a yet nonexistent theorem. The peremptory essay ends the discussion before it has even begun. The arguments surrounding a given problem area are surveyable and refutable from the start. This fact lies at the basis of theoretical modesty, of its hope that all existing problems seem so familiar because they are never more than extensions of the twentieth century. To take debates never held to their logical conclusion holds a promise that beyond every existing issue there lies a hinterland, the "world after the media," in which the eve of destruction will not be repeated again, but we will end up way beyond World War IV instead. Deconstruction, like semiotics, is a traditional method of reading. It is not an intellectual project to dismantle culture as a whole, but a faculty which - provided it is exercised a little - enables you to get your own show on the road. Once everything has been analyzed, it's time to think through the non-deconstructible remainder. Text destruction launches word processing. Critical casuistry test drills a promising topos, taking a maniacal interest in paradigmatic splinters. It tries to say as much as it can about the smallest imaginable clues, without paying much attention to the entire exegetic field that surrounds them. It provides precision arguments about the how, not the why, of phenomena breezing by. By contrast, the study of disciplines - with its expanded-theory toolkit - carries out full-time research of the overall outline and places miscellaneous partial issues within a framework that provides insight as to why things are experienced as problematic in the first place. It seeks an arbitrary methodology that will suggest hitherto nonexistent relations. Since it claims no truths, it is dismissed as pseudo-science by the schools of thought analyzed by it. A negative thinking which denies all claims to unicity and the universality of actually existing attempts to interpret the world, is itself the gay science par excellence. Media theory cracks up over the determination whereby movie theory, art history, or dramaturgy defend their specific "extensions of man" and challenge their rivals by accusing them of cultural deterioration. The media archives contain all the data in the world. The adilkno branch is a scant and paltry thing; all this archive contains is instructions on the impressionability of the media, and proposals as to how to get rid of them. It was unpremeditatedly compiled in the period between 1988 and 1995, in response to the short summer of the media. Now that autumn is on its way and permanent tourism is likewise coming to an end, the question of the media is becoming more urgent. Both the global and alternative use of media have become stuck in perfect professionalism. Even without a Gulf War, infotainment is just no fun. The reality effects are superseded more quickly than technology can produce them. Now that it becomes clear that the media have no answer to their own global questions, we see a revival of premedial affairs, so that after a period of liberating breakdown and decline there threatens a dismal stage of reconstruction. The archives, on the other hand, stumble blindly into the postmedial world's state of uncertainty. It is only from that future that they can look back with pleasure on the media, without bitterness or nostalgia. Sovereign Media "I cue you." - DFM In this age of media overproduction, information immunity is a question of life or death. When the defense mechanism fails and the consumer is overwhelmed by strange impressions, doom seems near. To call a halt to crippling indifference, a media diet is prescribed. The pressure exerted on world citizens to constantly adapt their own image of the world and put technological innovations into practice puts them into a permanent state of insecurity. The urge to create disappears, and we are merely able to react to the overwhelming array of choices. Data are no longer stimuli to interest, but an inimical barrage constituting a physical threat. From exchange to effacement: communication is preying on naked existence. Sovereign media insulate themselves against hyperculture. They seek no connection; they disconnect. This is their point of departure; we have a liftoff. They leave the media surface and orbit the multimedia network as satellites. These do-it-yourselfers shut themselves up inside a self-built monad, an "indivisible unit" of introverted technologies which, like a room without doors or windows, wishes to deny the existence of the world. This act is a denial of the maxim "I am connected, therefore I am." It conceals no longing for a return to nature. They do not criticize the baroque data environments or experience them as threats, but consider them material to use as they please. They operate beyond clean and dirty, in the waste system ruled by chaos pur sang. Their carefree rummaging in the universal media archive is not a management strategy for jogging jammed creativity. These negative media refuse to be positively defined and are good for nothing. They demand no attention and constitute no enrichment of the existing media landscape. Once detached from every meaningful context, they switch over in fits and starts from one audio/video collection to the next. The autonomously multiplying connections generate a sensory space which is relaxing as well as nerve-racking. This tangle can never be exploited as a trend-sensitive genre again. All the data in the world alternately make up one lovely big amusement park and a five-star survival trek in the paranoid category, where humor descends on awkward moments like an angel of salvation and lifts the program up out of the muck. Unlike the antimedia, which are based on a radical critique of capitalist (art) production, sovereign media have alienated themselves from the entire business of politics and the art scene. An advanced mutual disinterest hampers any interaction. They move in parallel worlds which do not interfere with each other. No anti-information or criticism of politics or art is given in order to start up a dialogue with the authorities. Once sovereign, media are no longer attacked, but tolerated and, of course, ignored. But this lack of interest is not a result of disdain for the hobbyist amateur or political infantilism; it is the contemporary attitude towards any image or sound that is bestowed on the world anyway. Sovereign media are equipped with their own starters and do not need to push off from any possible predecessors or other media. They are different from the post-'68 concept of alternative media and from the autonomous "inside" media of the '80s. The alternative media work on the principle of antipublicity and mirror the mainstream media, which they feel needs to be corrected and supplemented. This strategy aims to make individuals aware of their behavior as well as opinions. This process will ultimately be seen in a changed public opinion. These little media have no general claims but work with a positive variant of the cancer model, which assumes that in the long term everyone, whether indirectly or through the big media, will become informed about the problem being broached. They presuppose a tight network stretched around and through society, so that in the end the activism of a few will unleash a chain reaction by the many. Until that time, they direct themselves at a relatively small group, in the certainty that their info will not stay stuck in a ghetto or start feeding back in the form of internal debates. This "megaphone model" aims in particular at liberal-leftist opinion leaders, who have no time to accumulate information or invent arguments and get politically motivated specialists to do this thankless work. Movements in the '60s and '70s gave themes like feminism, the third world and the environment a great range this way. Professionalization and market conformism in those circles, however, have caused people to switch to the "real" media. The laboratories where information and argumentation get tested are currently an inseparable part of the media manufacturing process, now that their movements have become just as virtual as the media they figure in. At the end of the '70s, radicals who had gotten tired of waiting for the other's change of consciousness founded the so-called "inside media." At precisely the moment that the official media started emancipating themselves and terms like "press" and "public opinion" vanished from the scene, a group of activists gave up the belief in their deaf fellow citizens and got to work themselves. Although to unknowing outsiders they seemed a continuation of the alternative media activity, they let go of the cancer model and, like the official media, went gliding. The mirror of the alternative media was shattered. It had become pointless to keep appealing to public responsibility; they needed to look for a different imaginary quantity to concentrate on: "the movement." Although they were only locally available, they had no concern for the regional restrictions which the ascending local media impose upon themselves. They no longer wanted to be alternative city papers. In form as well as content they became transnational, like their global peers. They wanted nothing to do with growth. Their brilliant dilettancy turned out to be not a childhood illness, but an essential component. As a leftover product of vanished radical movements, which flare up every now and then, their continuity and unchangingness remain breathtaking to this day. It cannot be reduced to their dogma. They turn away from the short media time and create their own space-time continuum. Sovereign media are the cream of all the missionary work performed in the media galaxy. They have cut all surviving imaginary ties with truth, reality and representation. They no longer concentrate on the wishes of a specific target group, as the "inside" media still do. They have emancipated themselves from any potential audience, and thus they do not approach their audience as a moldable market segment, but offer it the "royal space" the other deserves. Their goal and legitimacy lie not outside the media, but in practicable "total decontrol." Their apparently narcissistic behavior bears witness to their being sure of themselves, which is not broadcast. The signal is there; you only have to pick it up. Sovereign media invite us to hop right onto the media bus. They have a secret pact with noise, the father of all information. And time is not a problem; there is room for the extended version as well as the sampled quotation. This is only possible through the grace of no-profile. Without being otherwise secretive about their own existence, the sovereigns remain unnoticed, since they stay in the blind spot that the bright media radiation creates in the eye. And that is the reason they need not be noticed as an avant-garde trend and expected to provide art with a new impetus. The reason sovereign media are difficult to distinguish as a separate category is because the shape in which they appear can never shine in its full lustre. The program producers do not show themselves; we see only their masks, in the formats familiar to us. Every successful experiment that can possibly be pointed to as an artistic or political statement is immediately exposed to contamination. The mixers inherently do not provoke, but infect chance passersby with corrupted banalities which present themselves in all their friendly triviality. An inextricable tangle of meaning and irony makes it impossible for the experienced media reader to make sense of this. The atmosphere inside the sealed cabin conflicts with the ideology of networking. As a central coordination machine, the computer subjects all old media to the digital regime. The sovereign media, conversely, make their own kind of connections, which are untranslatable into one universal code. High-tech is put to the test and turned inside out. But this trip to the interior of the machine does not result in a total multimedia artwork. Disbelief in the total engagement of the senses and technically perfect representation is too great for that. The required energy is simply generated by short-circuits, confusion of tongues, atmospheric disturbances and clashing cultures. Only when computer-driven networks begin to break their own connections, and scare off their potential users, will it be time for the sovereigns to log in. Normal Media In the long run, everything becomes interesting; such is the fate of normal media. The only surviving Mayan text may reveal the deepest mysteries to us or turn out a department store ad: neither would make it any less fascinating. Normal media are characterized by the fact that they cannot be interpreted as cultural expressions during their time of appearance. It is only after they become a collection with the appropriate chronology or an object of study for the science of normal history that they acquire that little extra of a misaddressed letter or conversation at the next table. Only through such annexations can the imagination be stimulated to practice the hermeneutics of everyday life. Normal media, when planted into their natural environment, are so obvious that they exclude all metalevels. They are so much a part of their own space-time that they do not allow for the necessary distance to observe them in an anthropological sense, or simply for pleasure. They are like the tiny bone from which the whole dinosaur is deduced, or the one scene through which the entire movie can be reconstructed. As long as they remain submerged in everyday life, they are of minimal information value. But as paradigmatic splinters, they reveal the entire landscape in which they once figured. Untimely normal media can only be conceived of as the inconceivable. Normal media require no advertising. They are handed out uninvited in inescapable editions. Waste is a precondition. Direct mail has achieved its goal if three percent of the recipients react. Normal media institutions abuse the statutory obligation to receive mail. Thus, we find descriptions of stray cats, announcements for nextdoor parties, Scientology leaflets about Hubbard's latest, an invitation to the official opening of Harry's Butcher's, interior design catalogues, respectable students seeking apartments, a salsa dance class, supermarket special offers, various local papers, a book club catalogue, Chinese takeout and Italian delivery menus, the neighborhood newsletter, a personal message "to all those at the designated address," political flyers, and cultural teasers. A similar category survives in the news sphere in the form of personal ads and obituaries, personal announcements and readers' letters. The white and yellow pages, too, enjoy regular contact with average folks. Uninvited media ignore the contemporary consumer habit to compile one's own, personal media package. The classic unilateral model in which recipient B had no choice but to accept the message from source A has been renounced as undemocratic. The adage of "choose your own message" has turned reception into an act of volition. The media for the millions cut right through this conscious selection, sovereign to the extent that they are uninterested in market penetration or spiritual incorporation. They feel at home in a stack of old newspapers, down the hallway, out in the street, on top of a garbage can. Normal media design requires a certain period of incubation before it can be recognized as such. In their layout, normal media neither plunder the work of risqué avant-gardists nor make an appeal to nostalgia. They inadvertently succeed in short-circuiting the field of tension between folk and mass culture. Their problem is how to draw attention without becoming interesting. They must avoid their instant degradation into a message for a single market sector at all costs. They combine the amateurish clumsiness of the anniversary and marriage song with the professional charisma of the quizmaster and revue artist. Desktop publishing, handycamcorders and autozoom see to it that neither level is ever attained. They reveal a carefully edited normality in which there is room for everyone. This is where contempt fails. Average media may be copied, but they cannot be parodied. Letters by the city council or local industries may be a standard weapon in the Spaßguerrilla repertoire, but the first ironic mail order catalogue has yet to be written. To turn to normal media for innovative content is useless. They have turned McLuhan's brilliant analysis - that the content of the media consists of the preceding media - into their editorial policy. They are shopwindows in print, visual radio shows, screen adaptations of myth, digitized town criers, neighbors by phone, motorized billboards. Whereas sovereign media still manage to produce some alienating effects by broadcasting movies on radio, filming novels by the page, screening radio plays or word processing in cyberspace, watching the radio on television has become common practice, what with talk shows, game shows and the news. Tolerant media aren't necessarily conservative, just because they elaborate on the preceding situation. They do not long for the return of God, country and the family, but offer a new security. Vegetarians are not upset by horsemeat mailings. On the other hand, racist propaganda is instantly exposed by its display of prewar typography and Nazi palette. Normal media merely annoy us because of their overwhelming numbers and the certainty that this particular stream will never dry up. Dominant images may be scratched, stilled, or sampled, but they cannot be turned into camp. Normal media are distributed far beyond the reaches of kitsch. The only way to increase banality is through outdated pictures. For instance, there are no recorded instances yet of an ironic use of laptops or other mobile immaterials. Meanwhile, the solid wares that gave consumer society its material charm give one plenty to go on. Normal media are always one step ahead of the banality fans. Their emptiness is so much a product of its age that even the artistic avant-garde of durability radically overlooks it. Only as foundered cultural values can the maxima normalia become discourse carriers, and thus fit for artistic recycling. Vague Media "The magna of culture: confused traditions, mono-opinions, inconsequent discourses and quasi-argumentations." - Alex in "Xuxem" Vague media do not respond to success. They do not achieve their goals. Their models are not argumentative, but contaminative. Once you tune in to them, you get the attitude. But that was never their intention; their vagueness is not an ideal, it is the ultimate degree of abstraction. The ability to avoid specific questions is combined with answers which lack any depth of field. This is why vague media still manage to appear diplomatic and polite. Their social critique is troubled by an unsteady world view. For them, crisis does not lead to a new beginning, but to a gradual evaporation of the problem area. Doubt doesn't merely arise; it's a sixth sense. The senselessness of existence renders everything a sensible activity which can be given up whenever desired, so that nothing ever gets finished. Here, no one works; rather, one devotes oneself to taking apart and putting back together undefined objects and projects. The liquid being of vague-media adherents never crystallizes into definite forms. When beginning and endpoint have disappeared from view, existence can be experienced in peace. Having obliterated the factor of time, the vague ones distribute their concentration over n years and transmit their broadcasts only on homeopathic frequencies. They are no less present for that. Vague media do not depend on any network requiring construction or maintenance. The lines of the net are dissolved in an astral mist. In lieu of distribution decisions, a random selection is offered, and eagerly snapped up. In this post-atomic business culture, uncertainty is the foundation of efficiency. The untrustworthiness of agreements is not a result of other activities, but a sign of good will. The field of possibilities is left open at all times. There is a willingness to get caught up in anything, be it a meeting, party, or accident. Parallel to transparent society, there unfolds a cloud of vague structures through which the subject moves in Brownian motion. This nonlinearity defies the rhizomatic dogma that prescribes endless switching. These hard-luck pilots do not wander, but stumble from one discontinuity to the next. Nor is it a case of trees or roots. With vague media, a veiled belief in progressive bifurcation gives way to mist on the window to eternity. Undirected recreations form temporary compressions in the random distribution of particles that roam the vague ether. Whatever order may be discovered in this chaos, it fails to impress the insiders. The brilliant conspiracy will be heard out for a while, then forgotten. Vague media are impossible to follow. Their fuzzy logic frustrates signifiers in search of uni- or multivocality. The result is a fluffy sign (information value 0.34 or 2.74). Nothing is concealed or intentionally distorted. One simply does not know exactly, and this message comes through. In spite of it all, the other gets plenty of room to voice its revolutionary message. There is no fear of data here. The historical excursion is a strenuous exertion gladly undertaken, though the history of vagueness has yet to be written. There are still plenty of shadowy Greek philosophers and not-so-lucid theologians to be discovered who didn't quite get around to making their statements, or brilliant Renaissance painters who never came into their own. The B movie rose above pulp and started being taken seriously a long time ago; there is no reason why the same fate should not befall B thinkers (e.g., Russell), B literature, and the rest of illegible culture. Certain historical figures have found their natural habitat in vague media: Mao, Gysin, Manson, Reich, Jesus, Debord, Meinhof, Fromm, Hitler, Hendrix, Castaneda, Goldman, Marley, Pippi Longstocking; furthermore, cookbooks, weapons, children's drawings, witches, blood, skulls and crossbones, and animals (by all means, animals). As long as it's cut up, overloaded with text, dark and intense, with heavy black-and-white illustrations. The vague medium as object and the vague one as determinant subject are inseparable. Their shared foggy concept of barriers prevents man & media from growing apart. Comprehensibility arises only when the subject succeeds in extracting an object, thus rendering himself obsolete. Vagueness is not so much a strategy as it is a style of media. The matching design, as rugged as it is blurred, does not signify a lack of concept, but something like an essentialist approach. Media are not used as homes or garments, but as durable nutrition that will last for years. Media, housing and clothing become interesting only after they've lost all practical or exchange value and any hope of ever becoming youthful, nice, hip, or risqué - in short, modern - again. Because the vague ones lack the team spirit that distinguishes most fashionable trends and movements, they immediately recognize the foreign as their own, whereas the normal is alien to them. They have passsed through the doors of perception without realizing it and are incapable of finding anything normal in normality. This explains their immense rage against anything or anyone who tries to force things on them that are "only part of the complex society we live in." Far from profound, their indignation lashes out unreservedly, to be as quickly forgotten again - until the next clash. Not wishing to be irresponsible, they reject all responsibility. Johnsons in a mediascape full of shitheads, they subscribe to the slogan, "Mind your own business and let other people mind theirs." Their only means of attack is the boycott, the active denial of the enemy: Don't smoke, don't buy, don't go, don't drink, don't refuel. The achievement of the campaigns is to burden activists with impossible standards. Vague media are not out of focus, badly printed, or amateurishly edited - or are they? Their technological presumption is unshakable. Their appearance has been carefully prepared. But these nebulous media do not consider themselves products, but atmospheres. It's much harder to generate a cloud than it is to cover up in the hype blown up by fleeting contacts. All information is admitted to a dimension where the whole is not distinguished from the obsolete detail. Overload does not occur, as time knows no bounds and chaos is part of the mystery of the world. Information and noise only differ when you're in a hurry. The issue of hazy media results from a spring cleaning of the personal archive. In contradiction to Third World scrap collectors who scrutinize garbage dumps in search of recyclable goods, the transmitters of crap patiently comb the public domain for material to embellish their private dumps with. Another example of Grassmuck-Unverzagt's Law: Waste can be transferred but not destroyed. Ongoing research in the semi-scientific domain consists exclusively of sources, and is not concerned with such trivia as surveys, summaries or final conclusions. Vague media adhere to the teachings of Claude Shannon, who holds that views and opinions can be deciphered only as information. The preference for torn-out newspaper photographs does not mean they see them as illustrations or works of art; instead they are a collection of possible meanings, none of which takes preference over the others. Even the more powerful signs and symbols (such as the star or swastika) that keep popping up on their pages and frequencies are blessed with this charm. Like crystal-ball media, they are simultaneously maximally and minimally abstract. From the viewpoint of vague media, meaning is a matter best left to users. To them, the blurred relationship between sign and meaning is a social achievement. Far from being particularly obsessive or passionate, vague media harp forever on the same subject. Whereas sovereign media are on a perpetual journey of discovery, the vague channels pitch their tents for an indefinite time or stick around forever. The universe is all around, so why mobilize? For vague media, the greatest mystery is their own functioning. This existential moment sees to it that individual expressions never take on a definite or immutable form, yet make a point. The travelers of the "terrain vague" find their way in wastelands where even the hot-spot tourists du moment get lost. Vague media are not concerned with forms, but with the empty spaces in between, which are timeless. This is why they will long outlive the rising and setting of other media. Topical Media "Real time means less than three seconds, so that anything giving news within five goes under the umbrella of historical information." - Reuter Information as such radiates such availability that it evokes only pure revulsion. As being per se, it is just a little more than life can handle. Data can never be taken for granted. They must be made to resonate and processed through state-of-the-art equipment. Processing technology must be continually updated to prevent data from escaping and regaining their obstinate parasitical silence. Decay and erosion are major issues in the world of the recording and processing industries. Data recorded on magnetic tapes or CDs instantly cover themselves up in soothing static, soon giving up all legibility in terms of significance, listening pleasure or other methods of pacification. It is only when the smooth generators have brought them to life that data become amusing. No recreation without creation. Watching the telephone or listening to movie reels is no longer a form of entertainment, but a sign of real obsession. Back in the days when messages were still carried by sailing vessels, they were allowed to ripen into reports. Data developed into news because they had a chance to mature. Only when accompanied by opinions and commentaries could the message escape such crushing remarks as, "What business is that of mine?" By consolidating and concentrating the mixture of incoming messages, editors could impart their daily coherent worldviews. The substantialist presentation of ephemeral sensation enabled citizens to absorb the news as a segment of the daily package. It successfully provoked a general interest by appearing as a regulated encroachment on the ritual of personal existence. News originated outside. Inside, it caused the necessary reactions, spreading through the national community as the topics that gave it the required solidarity. The notion of topicality originates with the acceleration of transport. The significance of the event was increasingly determined by absolute time. The interval left for the message to parade itself as today's item was reduced ever further. For example, on January 23rd, 1766, the "Amsterdamsche Courant" reports that the King of Denmark has fallen seriously ill. On January 28th, it informs us that "Copenhagen is plunged into bitter mourning over the passing of its beloved Monarch," even though in fact he had already died on January 14th. In other words, the moment of the monarch's death lasted two weeks. In telematics, this regime of the interval is utterly defeated, while reports of tales from elsewhere become neverending stories. Reports are no longer delivered in segments, but as part of a continuous flow centered around local time. News no longer reaches you, but is permanently present. Instead of occupying a fixed place within daily routine, it can be consumed whenever desired. Until recently, obstinate personal timetables were still curbed by the programed media. They managed to lend an aura of news to info by selecting, saving and dressing it so that the ritual digestion of international titbits regained its air of collectivity. News reports became platforms for local nationalities. The dictates of time imposed by the programers and their television guides gave one the comfortable feeling of having made a personal choice by switching on the set. Programed media presumed that the consumer as subject would naturally collaborate with the makers in giving a meaningful context to the presentation. It is when data succeed in escaping such dictates and television becomes a piece of furniture like sideboard family pictures that topical media are introduced. Topical media appear as an interruption of the program. The fatal topicality of traffic (traffic information broadcasts, ghost drivers) is used as a means of coercion to stay tuned, even at home. Life itself is conceived of as a traffic flow that must never be interrupted. One unexpected result of the capacity of topicality to suggest relevant hierarchies that justify jumping the queue was the media users' fragmentation as subjects: As far as topical media were concerned, they no longer had a say. The equality between news and entertainment was restored by settling topical media on a wavelength of their own. At first, news still interrupted the regular program, but this invasion was soon allotted its own channel. But at the same time this eliminated the pretense that topical media have a universal right to all those aged 8 to 88. Every minority was delivered its own message. Thus, the notion of conquerable markets became an integrated part of the medial and the liberal proliferation of channels could commence. The secret of topical media is that they present themselves as separate media to the point where all programed media are temporarily switched off or banished to tiny subscreens. Topicality's now or never is incompatible with lasting ratings. To everybody's surprise, the inflammatory character of spontaneous news bursts soon turns out to be the ultimate stage-managed affair. Those who are looking for in-depth information are better off having a chat with the neighbours or reading a book. Topicality and news are mutually exclusive. Once topical media start broadcasting live press conferences so that journalists will have something to write about, the interval in which events can turn into news is destroyed, as we watch the reporters on screen get up to report what we've just been watching. Long before the cameras arrive at the scene, we have already videotaped the stills of the camcorder witness. When we can watch Nobel prize writers write their awardwinning novels via bulletin boards, or witness the shooting of a Hollywood feature to be released next spring via movie channels, or listen to live broadcasts of telephone conversations between world leaders, or follow the studio takes of a world-famous musician's CD live on radio, and when the only reports we see are about the production process of special reports: then the end product lags so much behind topicality that it can only be appreciated as waste. Why bother to buy the disc at all, when all of us have just spent months listening to the new track's recordings, minutely evaluating the various takes? The public is placed into the position of permanent journalists, while the viewers must keep on switching to get the message. Thus, the period of reception is given an active interpretation. Waste has always been a pure object. One promising consequence of the silly urge to consolidate collected data into an end product screaming for a cool design is that all it does is attract more waste. Nobody needs to read the magazines, because everybody knows what graphic programs they were made with. But that which loses its meaning regains its secret. Obsolete media have succesfully restored their silence. By nature, data evoke suspicions that they are not alone. They are always found in groups. Data may operate but cannot be received as such. Every single bit of data counts; data never lose their obstinate character. One cannot simply adress data, one must know which language to speak. To look at data is to objectify them - as waste. Topical media are media in progress. No longer able to produce instant documents, they roam the regions of raw material forever. At present, the avant-gardes of hard info study the next phase, in which the redundancy of end products will go without saying. They frantically test the data-vacuum cleaners developed in their own laboratories. The collection, attraction, gathering, tapping, clipping, copying, categorizing, storing, restructuring and, above all, saving of data is their life fulfillment. In perfect keeping with sovereign media, they no longer require an audience to tackle their chosen subject. They are more and more amazed at the inexhaustibility of their data sources. Like traditional computerized societies, they perform a ritual to exorcize the social data surplus. But this anthropological approach to archaic modes of reconciliation ignores the fact that the problem of waste concerns all of society. There is a great danger of the amount of data exceeding its critical limit and exploding. A handful of priests wielding their data-vacuum cleaners can do little to avert the threat of crucial data carriers going up in flames: The incident as event. Even the miniaturization of data storage cannot prevent the impending overload, but merely contributes to its amplification. Compressed nanodata are still objects, with all the power to strike back. Just like material waste, data can only be relocated, not destroyed. The ecological answer consists of data prevention ("Prevention is better than storage"). But this magic formula inevitably creates Gulag-style media-free zones and an educational censorship to erase data-intensive periods from history, for example. These solutions are as conceivable as they are outdated. Only the strategy of data recycling - to compost information as the manure for fresh events and phenomena so that they in turn may revolve through the wheel of mythical history as data - offers some hope of an effective reduction of immanent data accretion. Incorrect Media "Conceivably, the departing train will carry only a few passengers - just the ones who made it in time. But perhaps most of them prefer to miss it, because they find the railway station more pleasant, more comfortable, more intimate than the journey." - Ernst Jünger Incorrect media are found to have defected to the enemy. They prescribe set courses, forcing our protracted stay on a single channel. They're nondemocratic in that they prohibit independent rambles through the mediascape. They demand absolute reception. People who get on halfway down the line are quickly rejected, often resulting in a grudge held for life. Incorrect media ignore the immediate availability that characterizes accessible society, giving rise to suspicion concerning the intentions that preceded reproduction. But no positive response is forthcoming. Incorrect media refuse to discuss the discomfort they cause; they're masters of concealment when it comes to hidden agendas. Behind these media lurks a world which is continually copied through the successive stages of the technological era, but is never brought to light. There exists a terrible suspicion that these media not only contain but have long since analyzed technological consciousness, while the innocent observer is still trying to come to terms with it. Contemporary media are always on. So, by definition, the program has been running for a long time before we come in. We are visitors in a world that will keep transmitting with or without us. Loyal media keep resetting, explaining their function and usage every half hour. But with incorrect media, the point of entry - our possible point of initiation - is nowhere to be found. If we'd understood what they were about, their complexity might have been acceptable. If we begin at their moment of conception, with much study, we might still grasp their deeper knowledge. But we are so far in arrears and have so little time, there can be no question of catching up. The walls that have been erected can only hide the secrets of some evil genius. But the subject behind this medium demonstrates no tyrannical urge to control the democratic media. It guards a spiritual treasure, and refuses to share it with us. Then why does it share our reproductive impulses? Is it the agent of extramedial forces, a sorcerer perhaps? Whatever caused this work to appear in the first place? The modern phenomenon of the introductory chapter cannot come to grips with incorrect media. This is where all education fails. Incorrect media annoy us because they appear either too soon or too late. Too small to offer an alternative, they're too big to be ignored. They force themselves on us like some mysterious oeuvre or magnum opus. Their potential is enormous, but never finds room to unfold. Their works remain miserably limited to a circle of adept initiates. They contain possible solutions or events that never took place or may offer relief tomorrow. They're manuals to the wrong universe. Incorrect media carefully distinguish between themselves and transmitters of the wrong information. The latter rest assured of their animated interaction with the medial environment. Once they make their dubious statement, communication can commence. The miscue fuels public discourse. Misguided content is not an attack on those who think differently; it is an application for membership in the media sphere. Prior to coming out as renegades, the incorrect could still speak freely in the cozy premedial climate. Generation after generation, on street corners, in coffeehouses and in pubs, the disaffected have vented their unpopular views on religion, revolution and race. But once they enter the media, all fuses blow. Collaboration in the age of technological reproduction: Let the shit hit the fan, the microphones are wide open. For a moment, a lack of opinions seems averted, as the nation turns to face the question of media collaboration. Now the opinion leaders and their info brokers face the task of swiftly eliminating the threat of all those personal opinions by making them the subject of public debate. Attempts to establish communication with the impervious incorrect media commonly use the trick of pointing out the dubious statements they contain. This is based on the presumption that all writers and artists are collaborators, except those who haven't had the chance yet. The further we are removed from the twentieth century, the more obvious it becomes that the era has known nothing but traitors. Those who did nothing should have gotten involved; the ones who did should have shut up. Refugees should have stayed put; the people who stayed home should have scrammed. Artists should have explored the nature of technology; technologists should have left art well alone. Communists should have manipulated sexual desire; Fascists should have looked towards the other. Democrats should have woken up; the rich should have looked beyond their class interests. The colonies should have been liberated sooner so blacks would have stayed in their homelands. The Reformed, Catholics, and Protestants shouldn't have bitched, since they all turned Christian Democrat anyway. Instead of allowing its non-normative abuse, science should have founded a world government of experts to solve problems, of which the century saw plenty. The ones who caused them were given free play, while the little rational intellect that remained sat morosely aside. What on earth did those twentieth-century folks do with all the energy and resources they wasted? Incorrect media are never of this age. Untimeliness is their central feature. Attempts to extract anything from them might prove fatal. It's when the makers of incorrect media try to put their ideas into practice that things really get out of hand. The art of incorrect thinking is to ignore any invitations by the Zeitgeist. It takes a lot of alertness and flexibility to be consistently off the mark. Means to this end are polemical silence or radical naiveté, undeterring perseverance on one's own set course (even if it intersects with modernity), ruthless negativism or willful amnesia, thinking modernity through to its most radical conclusions, carefree escapism into history or a touristic self-image, an alienating view of personal screw-ups or an anthropological approach to local rituals, regular contact with extraterrestrials, spurious use of philosophies and women's magazines, mixing up lines of incompatible thought, and incoming phone calls - you always get called. Incorrect media are never springboards; they are ladders ascending to black holes. They painfully transcend their condition of being always in the right. Up there, the view of the moral landscape fascinates. All is seen, and none of it is of any use. This experience is what incorrect media are all about. Old Media Old media are back in force. Authenticists claim they have rediscovered the tools to call forth the spirit from matter once more: delicate shades of grey that flow from a pencil, the relief conjured up by oil paint, the magic of decaying nitrate films, the perennial eloquence of world literature, the astonishing relevance of ancient symbols, the sheer beauty of Bakelite phones, the elasticity of organic textiles, the ultimate poetry of typewriters, the stained-glass window's magical display of interweaving light rays. All these techniques are thought to inform us about the true nature of human life, pointing to the emptiness of the modern media world. The old tools are thought to lead us back to a universe that predates industrial media, a place where sense still made sense. In this Golden Age, in which consciousness had not yet been eroded by the blur of images or the cacaphony of radio and people still awoke each day to tune in to their cultures, pure reception observed a world of vivid forms and acoustic space was filled by the song and warble of birds (by all means worthy of rerecording). In this primeval era, there was still ample room for the message to contain secrets, not interpretations. Although contact with the gods had been lost after Homer, one could still profess faith in the deceased geniuses as a longing for the most ancient of media. Furthermore, there remained the possible miracle of spirit merging with matter to produce the perfect work of art. To be misunderstood by one's contemporaries was not a case of failed marketing strategies or of malafide agents taking the loot, but a quintessential feature of genius. One could still be unrecognized instead of just uninteresting. Today Manhattan harbors 100,000 painters, more than the entire globe had back then. In those days, there was still room for artisanship, for masters and apprentices, lunatic rulers dishing out ducats, bishops requesting new opuses by the week. Flourishing cultures produced masterpieces, masterpieces caused cultures to flourish; who wouldn't like to set their time machines for such space-time coordinates? The authentic artist's charge against pulp culture is that civilization gets the art it deserves. Artists who exploit this state of affairs are celebrated as enlightened thinkers. Authenticists with an ironic understanding of contemporary profundities transform their cultural discomfort into works of artisanal banality, and are liberally rewarded for their efforts by investors. Others use their authentic reappraisal of outdated techniques as a sales technique. Their convincing presentations offer welcome relief from the collection of postmodern curiosities, which owes its existence to overinterpretation. The most inaccessible regions of the sublime have been democratized, yet our artists succeed in reactivating an exalted remainder. Deconstructed fragments are spontaneously shattered in their hands, revealing a landscape of true images. All those French reflections on language, signs, simulations, fractal power, result in the conservation of forgotten or lost destinies as truth and labor. Old media are not aware of their purity. They are here to stay. Once the media, always the media. Ornate instruments have no quarrel with wax cylinders or CDs. It would be more consistent of the authentic performers if they would render their historical timbre only within the old medium of the parlor, and tried to convince us that microphones cause their viola da gambas and hammer dulcimers to go out of tune. Even if medial disruption of the instruments could be scientifically proven, and this knowledge converted into a truly authentic sound, the essence of the thing would never penetrate the ear molded to media. Even authentic art performances cannot exist without recording and reproduction. The old-music circles lack the will to dissociate themselves from the media. Since contemporary concert halls no longer regulate admission (unlike European squatter's bars, which have banned recording equipment), they are deprived of premedial ambiance. By reproducing ancient charisma through state-of-the-art techniques, the authenticists automatically end up as folklorists; the end point of all culture, the repository of old media, out of which they can celebrate their comeback in the new. By nature, media seek to associate with their peers. Old media will not be forced back into a historical village, like cute old handicrafts, wielding the same brief power of nostalgia as a spinning wheel in action. The old media are as intoxicating and empty as the new playthings. Their age is no guarantee of wisdom. Nor can we accuse the old media of dull or demented behavior. Their chronicling continues; they perceive with the one sense to which they have been doomed. With a little exercise, old media may serve us just fine, amidst all the contemporary telematic machinery. The hybrid character of media means that anything can be linked to anything. In posthistory, the opposite is equally true. The cinema has always shown great interest in the dressed-up past. Visconti's extras were not just required to wear original attire; he forced them to wear corresponding underwear, supposedly conducive to the old ways of moving. Likewise, Stanley Kubrick thought it necessary to shoot "Barry Lyndon" using late eighteenth-century candlelight, for which he had to develop a special kind of highly sensitive film. Techno artists also exhibit a persistent urge to prove they can make real music on stage. The latest trend is movie adaptations of computer games. Soundtracks often far exceed actual movie popularity, and may even lead to the rerelease of pictures that were otherwise complete failures. Any major picture worth its salt appears as a novel soon after. Due to overwhelming response, the video clip is now available on compact disc. Now all we have to wait for is a video game adaptation of Rilke's "Neue Gedichte." Have you read "Cyberspace: The Manual" yet? To say that interactive CDs are making world literature more accessible is stating the obvious. Great literature has always been interactive. Only those who failed to comprehend it ever thought of it in terms of CD-ROM. This memory-only attitude considers the past a closed area, inaccessible to data input. Things only get going once media are falsely hooked up. Only misconnections can produce sparks. Old media should be treated as RAM and accessed at random. Data processing is unthinkable without the use of old media. They supply the materials to be processed. Computer peripherals are meant to absorb this material. There's a whole world waiting to be scanned. Only when the computer world has liberated itself of all its peripheral equipment, and the central processing unit functions autonomously, will the status of old media ever change. Only then will the computer create an intractable data world in which the human archive has been fully assimilated. At present, integrated circuits still need TV screens to communicate progress, and printouts on their performance are still available. Only when computers refuse to tell us what data manipulations have been carried out will they have become a pure metamedium. The possibility informs fears about the artificial intelligence of neural networks. The question remains, however, to what extent the recording frenzy that underlies the construction of this giga-databank can ever be exhausted. The ideal of a comprehensive archive dates back to the eighteenth century at least. The twentieth century needed a world war to keep up with the pace of worldly dynamics in an open archive. War was the ideal condition for the brutal introduction of revolutionary recording techniques. But we do not have to follow this military storage strategy in order to maintain the status quo. The old media archives may continue to exist (or perish) freely, unabsorbed by cyberspace. A more subtle option is to have the media do as they please, forming multirational links as they see fit in a "personal network" of old and new media, not necessarily interlacing but possibly compatible. The user as a disturbance variable occasionally interferes with the sublime operations of the autonomous matrix. Only technocrats dream of perfectly integrated media systems, of ISDN as the generator of absolute transparence. Deficient conversion techniques guarantee that the mystery of technology will remain, even for the most brilliant of cybernauts. Malfunction is their only food for thought. It's when the control panel flares red that the console prankster comes to life. Total Media "To hear more and to see more is to shorten one's life." - Luis de Gongora As long as the extramedial exists, the media cannot be total. Even if we take the technological trends of multimedia, telepresence and interactivity to their logical conclusions and beyond, there will always remain doubt that not all ground has been covered. There have always been items that didn't make the news, consumers who accidentally switched off, unused takes, near-data, one-way recording devices trained on the wrong side at the critical moment, leaky ideological grids. The Gulf War not only taught us that media can control an event on all fronts, it also brought us Hussein's Law: One can always remain invisible. Even if satellites confine one's freedom of movement to a twelve-inch margin, it is still possible to find adequate media camouflage. The nice thing about operations like Desert Storm is that the concentration of extensions on a single focus creates a proportionate medial cast shadow. Thus, antiwar actions are allotted their own Temporary Autonomous Zones (Hakim Bey) where they are free to discover their own trajectories, unhampered by the obligation to be unequivocal and without the make-up of images. Saddam Hussein's gift to the West was the joyful experience of a few weeks in the background, out of sight of the media. The mobilized medials fought their New World War still influenced by the global philosophy of the eighties, namely, that the whole world must be fed the same images. They ignored local developments, as they were ruthlessly made to understand during the subsequent massacres in Yugoslavia where the media didn't stand a chance. As the planet disintegrates and local populations become obsessed with their defrosting forebears and the genius of their locale, the media get the uncomfortable sensation that they're just going over the same old show. Ever since man first set foot on the moon, all their resources have gone to lending credibility to the slogan, "The sun is always rising somewhere." But consumer confidence in the 24-hour marketplace is now dwindling. The nonsense attitude of the nineties calls for a different appreciation of media, in which a local omnipresence is to guarantee that the brilliant transience of instances gets celebrated only in front of one, two, many cameras. The irresistible inertia of being shatters the one eye of God. The severity of classical universal themes such as the ozone layer, greenhouse effect, AIDS, refugees, drugs, recession, the Mafia, and the communist legacy is intended to suck up the user into the media. The viewers' attention fuels the media engine. Still, it is in permanent conflict with the twentieth-century yen for touristic experience. Whereas media demand absolute participation, the tourist's desire is to break out completely for a while. This oppositional constellation not only feeds the medial discomfort about John or Jane Doe, it also induces media resentment of their incredulous masses. Material media are no more than technological switches. Short-lived extramedial islands will always arise within the networks. God's great asset was his immateriality, his power always to be everywhere and to interfere even with the most local of events, down to the congregational conscience. The question of attitude is to be appreciated as a contemporary sacralization; it shares with the historical religions their aspect of immanence. If the media are to keep their sources of public devotion from becoming exhausted, they will have to move hearts and souls. Total media rule by physical absence; they owe their existence to the collective sensation that everybody is always in the picture. Theme parks represent the educational project that promotes this mentality. Here, touristic desire is eroded from within. The project carried out by total media is to recreate the outside world according to its immaculate image, such as only the media can present it (after the necessary information adjustments). No matter how sublime the upgrading of European inner cities, some human excrement always remains on screen. The profound disappointment with the image pollution that is inseparable from classical reality demands a mecha-approach of superhuman proportions. The theme park not only summarizes a given culture, it demands that the surrounding nonpark follow its example. Once outside the gates, the visitor is expected to read the old surroundings as a precursor to true civilization as solidified behind the counter. Second-rate reality is redefined as the input supplier of total media. "Do you want a total world peace?" There's no need for Americans to explore the States or their illustrious history anymore; they've been exhaustively covered in the Disney-Galaxy. Europeans don't have to cross the ocean to study the imaginary aspect of the New World. In Paris, Eurodisney offers Baudrillard all the excitement of "indomitable vigor" and "orgiastic elasticity" he can handle. Instead of the original, the Japanese prefer to stay in a 1:1 copy of the Dutch "Huis ten Bosch" or in the Deutsche Märchenstadt, Hokkaido. In this age of frenzied stagnation, there is no longer a need for corporeal confrontations with the uncomfortable world. No more notorious pickpockets, grumpy waiters, sagging hotel beds, 24-hour strikes, jet lag, or dingy restaurants. The enterprising home entrepreneur is delivered from all ecological and antropological guilt. The disturbing and oppressive sensation of being an outsider is replaced by the comfortable feeling of having truly understood a foreign civilization. Aboriginals elsewhere seem unable to value their own cultures nowadays, what with their noisy mopeds, garish souvenirs, ghetto blasters, public drunkenness, and unrestricted demolition schemes that amount to crimes against humanity. The tourist industry crisis generated by this new trend will be parried by the managers of State and Capital with relentless representational frenzy. The exclusive mechanism of this plot against the unreasonable nations is obvious. All nations will demand a park of their own, to be located on the rich nations' territory on the principle that you "get it where the money is." With development aid withdrawn, national debts frozen, and the abandoned territories having lost their exotic charm forever owing to desertification, overpopulation, civil war and epidemics, the wretched of the earth now turn to us. While the depraved dress up as refugees and try their hardest to hide their origins with false identity papers, the elites opt for safe cash flows and open so-called "reality parks" to further exploit their indigenous cultures over here. Visit Euro Machu Picchu Park near Cologne for the ultimate Peruvian experience. After forming a vigilante committee using handmade wooden rifles and meeting with liberation theologists and professional revolutionaries, you will camp outside in the freezing cold, but not until after you've seen Los Incas perform at Lambada Discotheque, of course. Witness an authentic skirmish between drunken Sendero guerrillas and the cocaine mafia over conflicting participation interests. Get struck by cholera after eating potatoes in the street; you may even get cured by an elderly Aztec herbalist. In our simulation area, witness the lack of oxygen at 13,200 feet or a case of severe air pollution; after, make a human sacrifice on top of an old Inca pyramid. Of course you won't leave without attending our make-your-own-panpipes course in Von Däniken Parlor, or a bribery workshop. To top off our three-day, all-inclusive stay, you get to participate in a real coup d'état. This park is the dream of nations! Disneyland is mere fantasy; there is so much more to enjoy. Take "Tiranacitta," Tuscany's Albanian Park, built with Italian assistance, or the Zairean park constructed south of Brussels at a cost of 600 million Belgian francs. For a change, visit theme park Katastrophia, a 1:1 replica of the twentieth century. With parks popping up everywhere, the demand for global information is swiftly dwindling. Why take in information, when the real experience is readily at hand? That is the question the twenty-first century will have to face. "More speed means less time for boredom." It remains to be seen whether the extramedial will succeed in motivating coming generations of troubleshooters to spoil the positive ambience that reigns within the ramparts of total media. Intelligent Media "ITV will let you massage the medium AND the message." - Mike Saenz & Michael Synergy The medium of the media has been universally installed and has successfully completed its stage of acceptation. The final reaches of satellite orbits are being colonized, and intramedial growth occurs exclusively within the channel package. But on reaching their adult phase, the media already face a mid-life crisis. From the beginning, the couch potato's passive indifference has been acknowledged and radically reversed through the acceleration of images and the generation of participation, the sense of oneness with the medium. The media fear that this indifference will spread like an epidemic and lead to inscrutable situations in tomorrow's boundless world. In accordance with the old-fashioned notion of marketing, the answer consists of maximum product differentiation to keep every niche in the market involved: the Stalinist channel for elderly communists, Toddler TV, pet television for free-range pigs, etc., and all of them twenty-four hours a day, of course. But this offers no solution to the far greater threat of a massive defection to reality. The increasing urge to make a little history of your own on a hobbyist/touristic level other than work represents a conscious effort to place the media in the shadow of the event. For an instant, people have no time for the media. The generators of experience skillfully refer the media to the worn-out historical symbols that belong to the visual repertory of the mediatists and tend to suggest that something is about to happen. Through these media traps, the busy daytrippers clear their own field to instigate the right thing somewhere else. In the museological cities of the West, this has produced a company of handiworkers: the antimedial movement, which puts an end to all connections inspired by the slogan, "Smash up a medium for breakfast." Through actions of disappearance it creates local and temporary media-free spaces, to the point of terrorism with its own harmless anti-satellite laserguns. It represents the ultimate secret movement, because it is carefully kept out of the news and only makes itself heard as interference and sabotage. It claims every event that does not make the media as a victory and leaks them to the whole extramedial circuit it identifies with. Stirred up by this violence, along with the alarming increase of public indifference and fragmentation of the ratings, the attitude police will have no option but to initiate a broad public debate on the future of the media. Meanwhile the media lobby, impatient of the final outcome, has already begun R&D of the inevitable answer: The intelligent media. Whereas interactive media take the point of view of the subject and render reality obsolete, intelligent media (IM) take the point of view of the object and would like to determine what happens in front of the screen. The fragmentation of viewing behavior during the previous, rigid media age was a result of remote control. Television producers either ignored the practice of zapping altogether, or tried to prevent it by compiling even catchier programs or simultaneously broadcasting different versions of the same story on various channels. Moreover, the media spread out the diversified package during the day, a relic from the juvenile phase when the nation still used to watch a single channel all through the evening. Now that the ratings lose their commercial value due to endless switching, attention shifts to the registration of channel time - the number of minutes the user spends on a given channel. This is accomplished by introducing an extra chip into the remote control. Digital IM go one step further. They receive permanent viewing behavior feedback and establish certain threshold values above which the product reaches the screen unaltered. If average channel time threatens to drop below such levels, the IM conduct subliminal testing to find out what programmatic elements need to be introduced or altered (news, sex, personalities, setting, dialogue, music, colour). Producers merely deliver potential programs; the chances of integrated screenings of old blockbusters are minimal. Competing channels are constantly scanned for more attractive bits. The classic sequential edit of sound and image has been replaced by the central computer's synchronized mix. Contributions are judged according to the discreetness of the applied manipulations. If, in spite of it all, attention drops to a minimum, we imperceptibly slip to a completely different program segment. Fragmentation will remain, if only because public taste is an erratic affair, and there are early adopters and followers. But from being a threat, it has become a first condition of existence. Still, IM cannot remove the disaffection for the media. Intelligent media lead to a universal relativity of information. Uninteresting news items gradually take on a different content. The fellowship of true democrats freaks out and demands an alternative to save information from its destruction, strengthened by the outcome of its broad media debate. Since the TV image of the last of the politicians is increasingly dependent on the media, they are out for revenge. Because with their state-monopoly broadcasting systems they are in no position to compete with the dynamic media, they come up with reasonable proposals. They suggest showing a logo as a warranty of reality in the upper left corner of the screen. IM, who will never agree to this, compensate by releasing specified zones where the community can set up its own media-passive reality districts. At the same time, these are meant to split the antimedial movement into a radical wing and a faction willing to negotiate. The democrats proceed by saying that healthy social conduct depends on a media diet. Some patients will have to decrease their intake, others increase it. IM are required to build in an ecological principle: if the number of viewers drops below an absolute minimum, the channel must switch off; if it rises too high, the information level must be increased to establish the proper infotainment balance. At first, channels may be cancelled for a day or a week, but for the IM tycoons it is far more attractive to shut them down for good, because this makes viewing far more exciting and thus increases the channel time of the worst stations. Besides, media politics demands that the excess of redundant information be controlled so that the essential may be brought back to the historical surface. Again, IM can make no promises because, after all, information is just noise. The proposal to sidetrack politics to a channel of its own is rejected because it wouldn't last for a week. Democrats will always remain an intolerant minority in an utterly democratized media order. But these ecological restrictions will in turn be used by IM to legitimize their permanent control of media use, and consequently of every movement that takes place within range of the sensors. The common denominator remains that there has to be media participation at all costs. The intelligent response to IM is given by the IM themselves: PTV. Personal television does not depend exclusively on material offered by IM for its visual intake, but uses sovereign images to produce its own samples and remixes. PTV lifts the video game from its infant stage and offers a central visual pool to the interactivist. Besides file footage and latest reports, one gains unlimited access to scenes from security cameras, satellites, camcorder clubs and survival treks. Naturally, participants immediately relay their personal versions of events to the pool for further processing by others. Thus, these do-it-yourself media are to save the ideology of creativity. The only viable media survival strategy is to stay more interesting than reality at all times. PTV is an attempt to replace the individual bid for history with a final techno fix. With PTV, the media enter their third life stage. But reality cannot be locked away in a park as a tourist attraction forever: it will always lurk around, ready to jump any media maker sooner or later. The extramedial circuit is already among us, but stays out of reach of touristic experience because it refuses to give the game away. It quietly awaits the death of the media.