1999-2009

With regards to the comparison between ‘68 and ‘99, one can first state that both are examples of years that roughly demarcate a cultural shift.
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1999 was the epic year during which many – but not all – of the key events of the dot.com boom happened. As already mentioned, this was the year when concepts such as open source and the hacker ethic reached the mainstream: For instance, books like The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Open Voices, and The Cluetrain Manifesto were published. Matrix was released. The operating system Linux was recognised as a work of art at technology and art festival Ars Electronica. It was also a time when the mainstream culture had picked up on the Internet boom. Young people’s interest in becoming Internet entrepreneurs was soaring. Moreover, the business side of the bubble was going at full throttle. Stock markets peaked (before the six-year upward trend buckled in the new year 2000). Venture Capital activity also peaked. Daytrading was at its most popular (unfortunately causing highly publicised personal tragedies). Interestingly, this was also the year that some of the key ideas underpinning web 2.0 – such as RSS – were launched.
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This is where the spreading of computer-like conceptual models open up new routes forward: ‘99ers can circumvent the forced choice between countercultural posturing and a withdrawal back to pro-hiearchy planning. In this way, ‘99 is a break with ‘68. As we have seen in part one of this text, this implies that the children of the ‘99 revolution shun the ‘throw gravel into the machinery’/’swallow the red pill’/deconstruction methodologies that their parents invented. Instead, they employ a hacker attitude towards reality, exploring new forms of activism and critique. A key point here is that the ‘99ers are as interested in reconstruction (of self-organised structures) as in deconstruction (of hierarchies). Drawing from organisational principles from the world of computers, they are interested in engaging in hands-on building of tangible structures, hoping to patch something up that will be more open than the military-hierarchical structures of the twentieth century.