Manifesto Destiny

Terms like the E-Goldrush, which has been mentioned in numerous financial trades, hearkens memory back to the era of 18th Century America and the westward expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny. Popular stories of settlers standing at the side of the Mississippi firing shots westward to determine the location of their plot of land parallel the excitement of cybersquatters hoping to get rich by finding the properly attractive (and profitable) intellectual property. The formative years of the global Internet culture signal the digital land rush for the proverbial "Forty acres and a mule". But in an environment where property is not measured in hectares but in conceptual acreage, ideologies are territories of contention. Ideologies such as libertarianism, capitalism, and almost every conceivable '-ism' litter the landscape, creating a form of "Manifesto Destiny". In an information-based society, memes are like blind shots into the wilderness by visionaries, with the hopes of taking root in the fertile soil of the digital culture. In societies of distributed networks, capitalism is frequently on level ground with culture jamming and fringe media. In fact, the power inversion that allows the rush of capital into cyberspace also allows for the production channels that subvert the flow of production and consumption of symbolic use value. Some of these event-sites of culture are unintentional, but others are open critiques of the oligarchic power structures laid in place by corporate concerns, and frequently take the form of obfuscations, appropriations, and identity wars.