MARKETS AND TECHNO<sub>L</sub>OGY LEGITIMIZATION
The rhetorical affinity of neoliberalism as a market ideology with contemporary discourse on technology has been well documented before (see, for example, Frank 2000; Barbrook and Cameron 1996; Best and Kellner 2000; Gere 2002; Borsook 2000; Turner 2006; Aune 2001; Mosco 2004; Wajcman 2004; Harvey 2005; Dean 2002). In One Nation Under God, Thomas Frank (2000) identifies the discourse on information technology as one of the key factors in popularizing market ideology. Books such as Walter Wriston’s The Twilight of Sovereignty and George Gilder’s Microcosm made the argument that information technology made the restrained form of capitalism (social democracy) obsolete and a return to nineteenth century-style laissezfaire inevitable (Frank 2000, 54–55). Information technology came to be “the most powerful symbolic weapon in the arsenal of market populism” (57). Frank concludes, “Since the moment the Internet was noticed by the mainstream media in 1995, it has filled a single and exclusive position in political economy: a sort of cosmic affirmation of the principles of market populism” (79). As another author puts it, the discourse on information technology played a decisive role in Selling the Free Market (see Aune 2001, chap. 7) during the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, Frank points out the transposition of market enthusiasm into a technological language. No longer was this enthusiasm bluntly ideological but it became technical: “Now the ideology seemed to emerge as a natural consequence of the technology being discussed rather than from the random floating anger of betrayed patriots” (Frank 2000, 79–80).
In the same vein, Barbrook and Cameron (1996) christen the conflation between information technology and market ideology the “Californian Ideology.” In this techno-political vision, they say, the convergence of information and communication technologies is seen as leading to “the apotheosis ofthe market—an electronic exchange within which everybody can become a free trader” (Barbrook and Cameron 1996). According to this vision, network technology embodies an ideal of the free market (Robins and Webster 1999, 67). The Californian Ideology presents not only a new vision for society but also a new vision of what society is. Rather than seeing society in terms of structures and institutions, it sees information society as a network of free-floating individuals, who meet in the market place in order to trade and exchange ideas. According to the Californian Ideology, information technologies inherently “empower the individual, enhance personal freedom and radically reduce the power of the nationstate” (Barbrook and Cameron 1996). The fact that these outcomes are inherent to the technology makes any intervention of regulatory bodies (most notability, governments) an anachronism that is doomed to fail.
Network Market
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