San Francisco is still a strong home to the counterculture. A town where the cyber meets the punk as a matter of course, where the street really does find its own uses for things. At Artist's Television Access in Valencia Street macintoshes and Amigas are available to anyone walking in off the street wanting to use them. The simple photocopied brochure reads:
The goal of our curriculum is to create an affordable opportunity for artists to master the techniques of digital media, enabling full participation of the arts community in the technological cutting edge of contemporary culture
There are workshops in digital imaging, digital audio/video interactive multimedia authoring, desktop graphics and use of the internet. Enrollees can have access to Photoshop, Premiere, Director, Soundedit, QuarkXpress, Infi-D and others. The four day courses cost only $165 each. A spinoff of Artist Television Access, a community video centre, Artist Digital Access would probably do more to educate people in digital media in its modest small space and on its tiny grant - based budget than all the film schools in Australia combined.
Bay Area Internet Literacy, or BAIL is a group aimed at enabling those who want to learn how to use the internet to do so. The group holds its workshops at book shops like Modern Times in Valencia Street, highlighting the renaissance in writing the internet has spawned the world over. Flyers advertising such courses and workshops are everywhere, even on public buses. Australian venues like Open Channel in Fitzroy, and Metro Television in Paddington are ripe for such programs and should, I believe, act swiftly to implement them. Here in the busy Mission district, lively cafes such as the Boheme, Muddys and Cafe Beano are filled with guitarists, chess players and earnest writers pecking away at laptops plugged into any power points they can find (myself included).
Some cafes are linked by an amazing system called SF NET. Patrons sit down at what look like converted video game machines fitted with built in personal computers, and a keyboard covered with clear plastic (in case of coffee spills). Modems link these machines across the city and by inserting a quarter in a slot and logging on people without laptops and modems can stay in touch. SF NET is particularly popular with bike messengers - itself a subculture built around the cult of mobility and independence. Bike messengers often express themselves through elaborate bike outfits, skin piercing, tattoos and of course, communication technology.
At Tower Records in Castro Street, computers are used to allow customers to check the inventory. The shop's vast collections of CDs, videotapes and good old vinyl (enjoying a comeback) - a veritable maze of media - is thus made easier to navigate through. A printout of your selection can then be used to locate the title. Community arts centres, cafes and even shops have thus somehow become libraries and little university faculties dedicated to popular culture, educating a population about itself and its rich legacy of free expression.
Only 2 years ago I was here when these streets raged to the Rodney King rebellion, itself triggered by a small portion of media - a videotape made by a citizen recording the bashing by five police of a defenceless black man. The meaning of the tape, and the 'not guilty' verdict which followed the trial in which it was used as evidence were enough to trigger violent uprisings all across America.The event illustrated very clearly the potential for change which access to media technology by the general population can have on a society. The central issue of who is in control of the media is a matter of day to day practical political concern to those who live here.
A free street journal aimed at computer users is the remarkably well written Microtimes, which this week featured many articles condemning the passing by Congress of the controversial Digital Telephony Bill. Amounting to a sanction to wiretap any phone or modem communication in the country by the FBI, the bill has outraged many within the computer culture across America who see it a a breach of the U.S. constitutional right to freedom of speech.
Californians with a conscience feel a strong need to be proactive with regard to technology and communications because to them, everywhere there is evidence of the willingness by those in power to restrict and monitor free expression. The 1960s free speech movement has certainly not faded. It is coming back with a vengeance.
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