A <pedant> writes </pedant>
<pedant>
In one of the cubicles of the gent's toilets
in Terminal 2 of London's Heathrow airport,
there is an astonishingly revealing piece of graffiti.
Someone has written "www.irational.org/x" on the
toilet roll dispenser - possibly Heath Bunting
himself, possibly a friend of his.
Someone else has replied. "SCUM," they wrote,
with arrows pointing clearly to the irational URL.
Can it be that people in the UK feel so strongly
about experimental web art? Perhaps the true
explanation is rather less pleasant.
Maybe, just maybe, the criticism of the URL
was nothing to do with aesthetics, and had
rather more to do with British politics.
Is it so far fetched to suggest that the
increasingly well-documented British underclass
is so far beyond the reach of the internet
that they see it as nothing other than a powerful
symbol of our brave new two-tier society?
Public access to the internet is fairly
irrelevant when one child in three is growing
up in conditions of poverty.
There's plenty of UK underground stuff on the net
at the moment, much of which is very good indeed.
From Urban75 to Schnews and back, via Chumbawamba
and even Class War itself, there is no shortage of
people using the medium to connect, communicate and
generally spread information about all the issues and
events that are vital to those of us who have deep
concerns about the growing built in structural
inequalities of British society, and who wish to do
something about it.
Except it's just middle-class kids on guilt trips
all the way.
By definition.
There's an old Jimmy Tarbuck gag from the sixties.
'I used to think I was working class, until I
visited Glasgow once. Now I know I'm middle class.'
(At the time, Glasgow's slums were among the worst in
the western world.) The point should be clear.
Class is a highly relative abstract intellectual concept.
Poverty and deprivation isn't.
After half a century of increasing social mobility,
the ins and outs of who is what class are no longer
particularly useful. The terms 'working' and 'middle'
class have lost their meaning.
We can argue over the fine points of how to define
individuals until we are blue in the face, but the fact
remains, there is only one class in Britain that is
clearly defined - the underclass.
They're not on-line, and never will be.
You don't buy a computer when you can't buy bread.
You don't set up a website when your children are
suffering from malnutrition.
You don't spend time thinking about the astonishing
consequences of the information revolution when there's
a riot on your estate every weekend that no-one bothers
reporting because it's 'not news'.
Large numbers of people have been completely disowned by
the state and by our mainstream politicians from right to
what remains of the left.
When those people start creating the widespread social havoc
that everyone who comes into contact with them says
they are likely to do at some point soon, it isn't
going to matter how right-on your website is.
You, like me, whether we like it or not, will be the enemy.
Empowerment only happens after you've eaten.
We've got a long way to go.
I'm thinking about Australia.
</pedant>
(This seems ok - Bad Editor)
waz@easynet.co.uk
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~waz/pedant3.htm