The Sirens of Cyber

by Kerry Joyce

Boy, and we thought we were cutting edge (desktop revolutionaries fending off the landlord and NYNEX with little more than a Macintosh, and a laser printer with which we bring forth carefully portioned measures of utter sincerity and total bullshit, often within the span of one sentence). But the missionaries of the Internet make us feel like we’re still lighting our Camels by rubbing two sticks together. To them, desktop publishing is about as cutting edge as sneezing coke all over some girl’s Izod, in a ladies’ room stall at the Hard Rock Cafe.

Music is one of the hottest topics on the Internet. One reason for this is the mysterious co-factor between playing a musical instrument and a comfortable familiarity with computers. Sort of like male homosexuality and a knack for interior decorating. Scott Matalon of Stump World thinks he knows why; “It’s because after you’ve spent hundreds of hours mastering an instrument, you don’t take any shit from it. You get it to do what you want. It’s the same way with computer programs once you become familiar with them.”

For decades, musicians have better adapted new technology to their craft than either writers or visual artists, who usually harbor vague suspicions about technology until they get a job with an ad agency when it’s too late. That’s the reason why the most successful musicians get their money for nothing, chicks for free. Writers are reduced to “reviewers” writing about musicians and artists to “graphic designers” spitting out CD covers for them.

All the world’s a stage, even in cyberspace. And the Internet has its share of performers, and a growing smattering of technologically sophisticated consumers. The regular consumer, however – the people who did take shit from their piano, guitar, or accordion – await the day when navigating through cyberspace is as easy as turning the dial on their stereo receiver.

We tried to get a few people to come down off their cyber-cloud long enough to tell our readers just what in the hell is going on up there, out there, whatever.

Their reply: “Sure man, what’s your e-mail address?”

“E-mail address? Uh, let’s see, I know I wrote it down on a match book cover… Shit, we don’t even have modem.”

Still, I was once paid good money to cover an annual convention of fly fisherman, which I feel qualifies me to report on just about anything. So, I went out to Stump World, in Allston, and Music World 3 in the Fenway with my wireless notebook and a spare pen. Both companies specialize in providing music labels, unsigned bands, ‘zines, and other enterprises a venue for their work on the world wide web.

Here’s what I found out. All guaranteed quaintly irrelevant conjecture by the year 2000. Unlike Tolkien or Tobias or whoever that guy was who wrote Future Shock, at least I know my crystal ball is poorly calibrated.

Flash back to the late ’70s when Abba held sway like an Old Testament Jehovah. The comedian Steve Martin then explained on the old Carson Show how it was important to have goals. Martin’s goal? Why, to be the “All-Being” master of time, space and dimension. I know what you’re thinking. Martin is an out-of-date Newtonian. And you’re right. Whole universes can practically be rendered onto a computer chip. Who needs space and dimension? As Karlo Takki of Stump World explains, “you can click on the Exxon Web page and read their corporate blather or you can click on ours.” Hmm. So now instead of everyone clamoring for a spot in a gleaming Mid-Manhattan office tower or along the neon lights of Broadway, the Internet permits anyone with a modest amount of cash, an equal opportunity to shine or flop on their own merits.

For millennia, the golden rule of arts and sciences has been, He who has the gold, makes the rules. Money allowed the rich not only to market their ideas, but greater access to the best ideas and information of others. Karlo Takki compares his getting on to the Internet with having a $50 bill earmarked for Harvard Square’s Out Of Town News. Can On-Line University be far behind? (Sally Struthers, call your agent.)

The Internet allows performance artists not only a place to showcase themselves and their work, but also an opportunity to learn what’s going on in their chosen field.

But, if every self-appointed demi-god is to become an “All Being,” there is still the issue of time. Sure you can click, check out a Helsinki thrash band and click, order it from a mail order firm in Long Island with a credit card, all without making a long distance telephone call. Sure, it was fun listening to Jen Trynin sing like an outraged nightingale out of Mark Hassner’s PC at the Music World 3 offices, but it still takes a six hundred dollar accessory package for your computer, and 20 or 50 times as much time to download a song as to actually listen to it. Not so a poem, a painting or a Playboy centerfold. Take that musicians!

Hassner believes there will soon come a time when label-types will routinely ask bands for their e-mail addresses so they can download a few cuts, instead of relying on CDs sent through the mail. Not yet, according to Anna Adams of Epic Records. “Our A&R people listen to new bands in their car or with a walkman. I don’t think they want to be chained to their desk listening to new bands.”

Still, I can’t help thinking there are more than a couple of hungry A&R guys who are wiling to risk a case of lard butt or carpal tunnel syndrome to get that competitive edge.

But what’s the fun of becoming an “All Being” if there are thousands, or perhaps millions, of them. Will the Internet spell the death of hype, and the loyal consumers of mass media disintegrate into distinct micro-units of cyber-individualism? Probably not. For the most part, the Internet will just create new clumps of mass identity around various interests, passions, and peccadillos.

Music as a subject area still lags a distant second behind sex as a topic of communication on the Net. The information superhighway is paved with male ejaculate. Various political paranoids have found a happy home there as well. It’s hard to stay on the high road of knowledge when there are a million exit ramps marked SEX, HATE, and VICE of every imaginable sort. We’ll just have to do the best we can until the government steps in to save us from ourselves.