Today is a very strange day for the internet. Outside the web of digital soul mesh that normally consumes our waking lives (ie off in meatspace) a federal circuit appeals court unanimously upheld a lower court's ruling affirming the decision that the Internet Archives policy of scanning and loaning out books in a manner similar to libraries is not only not permissible but also violates copyright law- in otherwords, this thing that the Internet Archive was doing to make copies of difficult to acquire and obscure books available online to the public... its illegal. Bummer (full decision can be found here). In reading the coverage of this case, milkypossum's "I Can Haz Torrentz?" has been rolling around my brain like an errant pinball, slinging itself against pop bumpers and spinners and wracking up a high score within my personal accounting of existential angst, leaving me with the impression that the way to use to really internet as it was intended... is still the old-fashioned way... Yo Ho Ho (Link unrelated). Putting aside this major setback to web freedom and access to information, I'm going to pierce the horizon of this ominous event by talking more in depth about milkypossum's LP from this year, Digital Utopia. The release is a thematic exploration of digital isolation and the potential that the internet provides to reshape relaity... as well as to wall ourselves off from the rest of humanity; loading ourselves down with innumerable novelties and authenticated (or otherwise), substitutional fantasies; transforming each of us into the Junk Lady from Labyrinth, loaded down with all the pretty things that vice-lock out dopamine receptors and slowly cripple us physically and spiritually- the human ego envisioned as a cracking gem, pulverized by the gravity of a universe of its own design... a tiny creature, held voluntarily captive in a colossal puppet, whose dreams connect with this shell's moving parts, rousing the infernal apparatus into a life-like verve, little cloud kissed feet, working the machine... It's interesting to note that while Digital Utopia was released this year, and its themes are certainly applicable to any era of the internet, referentially, the album more so cleaves its touchstones and totems from a much older, pre-smartphone epoch. When I listen to Digital Utopia I'm drawn back into the days when fresh and exciting demonstrations of artistic and creative skill were released daily in the form of flash animations on Newgrounds, or a time when you had to have a little html knowhow to pimp your NeoPet's site, or the window of history when the most reliable way to hear the hottest new releases on a limited budget, or see the latest blockbuster movie in the comfort of your own home was to torrent them... This was an era where the internet was a lot less frictionless, and you'd actually have to put in the effort and learn some new skills in order to get what you wanted out of it. That act of will, the requisite outlaying of ambition and agency required to get lost on the internet in previous generations, also left room for a certain level of reflection and self-understanding of which Digital Utopia is a mirror study. There was once a time when you had to build your own gilded cage and could customize it how you liked... now that prison is shaped for you, algorithmically- a panoptic highway that stretches on to the outer limits of the stars, where every streetlamp contains a cold voyeuristic eye, every billboard a set of ears, and there are no off ramps. There are artifacts of this pre-historic, cyber servaliance state and ad-served assembly line compressed like veins of silver through out Digital Utopia, not just in terms of cultural touchbacks and subject matter, but stylistically as well, as the album sonically represents a marriage between Myspace era hip-hop (now commonly besmirched as hyperpop) and raw, bright, and sharp cascades of modern breakbeat beatprocessing and soundscalpting (as well as representing some production choices that are way more common in Japan than the States at present). This cutting through and collapsing of past and present tense internet ephemera does more than simply bridge different cultural moments; it shows how trends tend and cultural values tend to slip into each other and rub off of one another to become something new. And this brings us back to what I was saying about the recent court decision, as the digital road we're traveling on begins to narrow, the lights above dim and the cavern walls begin to close in, it's worth recalling that its outlaws and delinquents who once governed this world and were it's masters, and that they still have the power to make it a site of freedom and a place worth getting lost... if only they'll take up their former crowns. To paraphrase a hymn of a departed era: So come aboard and bring along, All your hopes and dreams, Together we will find everything, That we're looking for... Peace out!
