I tried to read the entire TAZ article that was available on
the site and got bogged down chewing the article (let alone
digesting it). I've read some of Bey's fiction before - the
guy must buy from Sandoz in bulk - and I was kind of surprised
at how straightforward this article was, regardless. This may
seem dorky or square, but I thought about events like the
Burning Man and raves and that event where guys go out in the
desert and blow shit up in order to visualize what Bey means by
the TAZ.
Some questions about the Hakim Bey article:
1. Bey seems fairly anarchistic in his approach to visualizing
web communities. Okay...
a. What do people think about advocating a
community where illegal and "rebellious use of the Web" is
encouraged?
b. Are there problems with this? Who is "inside" and
who is "outside" and who decides (of course, in an anarchy
everyone does...)?
c. What does this mean in regards to our conversation about
ideology that we had in class last week?
d. Since the Clinton administration dropped the f@#cking ball
re: "publicizing" the internet, is Bey's dream still
realizable? Has the "evolution" been blunted?
2. In Bey's dream of the TAZ, the "web" is the place where
culture exists. Are there currently problems (big? little?)
with this model of culture?
3. What do you think about Bey's criticism of the Web as
problematic to the TAZ's need for "body-ness"?? I'm curious
myself, I'm kinda fuzzy about what he's getting at here.
One of my problems with this article is that I got sucked in to
Bey's rather romantic vision of the future - which is what he
wants, I think, in a way... Whaddaya think? Is the TAZ
necessary? Would you want to live in onw (temporarily of
course...)
Thanks, and appy polly logies for the lateness...
Todd Pontius