If 90s culture reflected, as Adam Curtis highlights, a ‘dark foreboding’
and uncertainty for the future, much of postmodern mainstream culture today
paints an even darker picture; evidenced by the popularity and romanticisation of the
post-apocalypse; pre-occupation with dystopian fiction and historical fantasy. Nostalgic appeal
is the currency of today’s popular culture, from film to music; the traditional cultural gatekeepers
(producers, record labels etc…) all seek to capitalise on the comforts of nostalgia in an increasingly
disillusioned world. Much of what is popular at the cinema in the 2010s has it’s roots in the
cultural memory of the last 30-40 years. From superhero movies to revivals of dormant genre
franchises such as Star Wars; much of contemporary popular culture is inarguably preoccupied
with a particular generational nostalgia, taking what audiences grew up watching/reading/listening
to and giving them more of the same; symptomatic perhaps of a cultural ideology modelled around
the same Bayesian Networks on which social media operates.
Facebook, Youtube, Netflix; an increasingly small pool of web-based media conglomerates
serve as the gatekeepers for media and culture in the modern day, operating under many of
the same fundamental principles as traditional mass communication media, as outlined in
Chomsky and Herman’s (1989) ‘Manufacturing Consent’, in order to propagate what Richard Barbrook
and Andy Cameron (1995) define as ‘The Californian Ideology’.
serve as the gatekeepers for media and culture in the modern day, operating under many of
the same fundamental principles as traditional mass communication media, as outlined in
Chomsky and Herman’s (1989) ‘Manufacturing Consent’, in order to propagate what Richard Barbrook
and Andy Cameron (1995) define as ‘The Californian Ideology’.
"This new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco
with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley...the Californian Ideology promiscuously combines
the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies."
with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley...the Californian Ideology promiscuously combines
the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies."
-Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, The Californian Ideology
The Californian Ideology emerged in the 1990s as a synthesis of ideas from the New Left and Right;
a reactionary modernism which embraced the individualism and libertarianism of the Reagan-Thatcher
era while also embracing and acknowledging the cultural and social victories brought about by
movements on the radical left since the 1960s. As their influence in the culture extends, so too does
the ideology they propagate.
a reactionary modernism which embraced the individualism and libertarianism of the Reagan-Thatcher
era while also embracing and acknowledging the cultural and social victories brought about by
movements on the radical left since the 1960s. As their influence in the culture extends, so too does
the ideology they propagate.
American neo-liberalism seems to have successfully achieved the contradictory aims
of reactionary modernism: economic progress and social immobility. Because the long-term goal of
liberating everyone will never be reached, the short-term rule of the digerati can last forever."
of reactionary modernism: economic progress and social immobility. Because the long-term goal of
liberating everyone will never be reached, the short-term rule of the digerati can last forever."
https://vimeo.com/139094998
Filmmaker Adam Curtis has studied the impact of the technological utopians which make up Silicon Valley in his documentary films ‘All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (2011)’ and ‘HyperNormalisation (2016)’. Curtis asserts that the dominant ideology of Silicon
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