LANGUID, TROPICAL, MONSOONAL TIME: NET-ACTIVISM AND HYPE IN THE CONTEXT OF SOUTH EAST ASIAN POLITICS es ae a5 z= g -e zs We have to agree that the relentless extension of electronic media across the webs of our lives is there to be used, en- joyed, captured, redeployed. But sometimes the speed-hype that is in fact a sales pitch blurs possibilities. Sometimes new media work may require different speeds - slower reading, longer planning, temporal depth... Some of us might argue that the most visible moments of media and net activism in South East Asia have been transparent power plays in geopolitics. The well-publicised ‘secret’ of Indonesian net-organising in the protest movement against Suharto, and the almost fable like stories of democracy activists in Hong Kong sending faxes into China during the Tiananmen crisis. Consider how that story of streaming faxes arriving on unnamed ‘Chinese’ fax machines correlated all too well with the widely transmitted scene of the CNN being forced to close transmission in those first days of June. The white noise stain on our screens which was CNN's interpretation of a transmission blockage replaced analysis and told the story just as the West wanted to see it. What was ‘actually’ going on was less ‘the news' than the technological interruption. An overdetermined image of net-activism, faxivism, and the like, has all too often been singled out for attention by the mass media in ways that furthered a conspicuous liberal cause. What was the underlying agenda? Of a continuity with the Californian Ideology, it seems no accident that faxivism so neatly fits the ongoing communications transition - the exten- sion of a new mode of production to the entire social fabric. Everyone - even those who make it their business to resist - now needs to buy a computer, sign up for provider account, set up a website, and dedicate themselves to net time (time on the net, not just the list). We wanted to recognise these all too obvious complaints and list some of the ways activism came up against organiza- tional constraints. Speculative observations which come out of compromised participation in the very net activism we'd want to interrogate. Some of the criticisms are simple, some intractable - all of them, at least to some degree, may need to be remembered before pressing the forward button on the web browser . The most commonly recognised dilemma for activist groups who use new media in South East Asia has to do with cost. Given the ‘third world’ status of so many in the region (this applies far less to Japan, South Korea, Singapore of course) it is obvious that access to facilities remains the preserve of the elite classes. in activist circles cost determines decisions about priority and focus. In this context, celebrations for the internet as a ‘public discussion’ forum are somewhat hollow in the face of economic constraints. The question of ‘access’ is not simple, and never without convolutions. In many cases even the most media active NGOs are unable to participate in this discussion without considerable investment which si- multaneously acts to limit activity. The investment is not only in terms of hardware, but also the software of person-hours required to read, and reply to, digest and regurgitate net correspondence (or editing time making documentary news for global media). It must be considered that it is also a ‘cost’ that time spent engaged with new media is also time discon- nected from other activities of organising that may be of greater priority for the organisation (a fact far too often over- looked by the organs of well-meaning solidarity who request 'news from the front’ reports from under-financed groupings). There needs to always be a dedicated person in an organisation who will feed information to the rest. Is this practical? What mechanisms might facilitate this work? Resource requirements for participation in net activism are sometimes be- yond the capacity of a small ‘third world’ organisation. In addition there is the fluctuation cost of net access at levels ac-