fortunate currents in the general research on ECD. CAE still believes that ECD is an underground activity that should be
kept out of the public/popular sphere (as is the hacker tradition) and the eye of the media, and that simulationist tactics
as they are currently being used by resistant forces are only modestly effective if not counterproductive.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Those familiar with CAE’s modeling of ECD* know that it was an inversion of the model of civil disobedience (CD). Rather
than attempting to create a mass movement of public objectors, CAE suggested a decentralized flow of particularized
micro-organizations (cells) that would produce multiple currents and trajectories to slow the velocity of capitalist political
economy. This suggestion never sat well with more traditional activists, and recently even Mark Dery (in both Mute_ and
_World Art_) criticized the model because there would be conflicting goals and activities among the cells. To the contrary,
CAE still holds that conflicts arising from the diversity of the cells would function as a strength rather than a weakness;
this diversity would produce a dialogue between a variety of becomings that would resist bureaucratic structure as well as
provide a space for happy accidents and breakthrough invention. If resistant culture has learned anything over the past
150 years, it~s that ~the people united~ is a falsehood that only constructs new exclusionist platforms by creating bu-
reaucratic monoliths and semiotic regimes that cannot represent or act on behalf of the diverse desires and needs of indi-
viduals within complex and hybridizing social segments.

The second key inversion of the model of CD was to aim directly for policy shift, rather than trying to accomplish this task
indirectly through media manipulation. CAE~s position is still that the direct approach is the most effective. The indirect
approach of media manipulation using a spectacle of disobedience designed to muster public sympathy and support is a
losing proposition. The 1960s are over, and there is no corporate or government agency that is not fully prepared to do
battle in the media. This is simply a practical matter of capital expenditure. Since mass media allegiance is skewed to-
ward the status quo, since the airwaves and press are owned by corporate entities, and since capitalist structures have
huge budgets allotted for public relations, there is no way that activist groups can outdo them. A soundbite here and there
simply cannot subvert any policy making process or sway public opinion when all the rest of the mass media is sending
the opposite message. Any subversive opinion is lost in the media barrage, if not turned to its opposition~s advantage
through spin.

There was a time when CD and media manipulation combined were successful in disrupting and shifting authoritarian
semiotic regimes. The civil rights movement is an excellent example. The movement~s participants understood that the
Civil War was still being fought on an ideological level, and hence one sociaV/political/geographic region could be turned
against another. The northern and western regions of the U.S. had advanced not only in terms of industry, but also in their
methods of public (and particularly minority) control. The Civil War had eliminated the retrograde political economy of the
south, but had failed to shift its ideological structure (a far more difficult element to change), and hence had not altered
its symbolic mechanisms of control. All the civil rights movement needed to do was to call attention to this failure, and the
fully modern northern regions would force the south to comply with an ideological position that would be more compatible
with the socioeconomic needs of advanced capital. The images produced through acts of civil disobedience suceeded in
provoking outrage at the retro-ideology of the south and rekindled the state of war between the regions. Student volun-
teers, community organizers, and eventually federal police agencies and the military (mobilized by the executive office)
became allies and fought for the movement.

At the same time, the civil rights leaders were not naive about this matter. They knew that the only racist policies that
would change were those not held by the north and that racism was not going to disappear; it would only be transformed
into a more subtle form of endocolonization, as opposed to its then current status as an explicit set of segregationist
norms. Indeed, the general understanding of African Americans--that there was a hard boundary beyond which policy
would shift no further--was key in the rapid decline of the civil rights movement and in the high octane fueling of the black
power movement. Unfortunately, the latter fared no better with its media campaign, because it lacked the infrastructure to
‘support its own material needs.