In October 97 the Media Research Foundation published BULLDOZER, a 220
page anthology of contemporary media theory in Hungarian. (ISSN:
1417-6033). Although the material in the book is also available
(readable + downloadable) for free, in the spirit of anti-copyright, on
two sites on the net (http://www.mrf.hu and in the Hungarian Electronic
Library), BULLDOZER became an immediate hit, and was the 3rd among the
bestsellers in October in one of the most prestigious bookstores in
Budapest. The following is an excerpt from the Preface from Bulldozer.

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Preface for Bulldozer [excerpt]
by Geert Lovink

The question of the 'economy' seems to be back on the agenda. In the
late eighties, the analysis of ownership and power over the media seemed
to have ended up in a dead-end street. Not that the media titans such as
Murdoch, Turner, Bertelsmann or Kirsch did not exist. Neither had they
disappeared. Quite the opposite, these were the hay days of satellite
television, commercial channels and the breakthrough of the consumer
video recorder. A media revolution was on its way, which we can now
label with '1989' and 'Gulf War'. Both the academic, 'speculative' media
theory and the critical discourse of journalism had had enough of the
'culture of complaint' about the ongoing concentration of power. People
no longer believed in the conspiracy theory of the media as the
propaganda tool of capitalism. The exception here might be Noam Chomsky
and his fellow critics like Herman, Barsamian and Schiller. The cause of
the inability to speak about the rise of the media monopolies, has to be
located in the 'crisis of Marxism' at the time, causing a blindness for
the economic altogether.

The attention had shifted to another level of power. Intellectuals and
artists began focusing on the 'structural' level and switched to the
side of the subject: the reader, watcher, surfer. At first analyzing the
ideological (hidden) messages such as sexism and racism, the attention
soon drifted onto the higher level of simulation as such. Influenced by
semiotics (Eco), linguistics (de Saussure) and French postmodernism
(Baudrillard), the secret of the media power was to be found in the
reception. It no longer mattered exactly who owned this or that cable
system or copyright, the 'means of production', as the 68-generation of
neo-Marxists used to call it. The anglo-saxon academic wave of 'cultural
studies' can be seen as a clear example of this shift. The big, ugly
power of capitalism outside of us was no longer the main cause of the
daily alienation. From then on, the (micro) power was located in the
lonely hearts of the individualized, 'silent' masses. The receiver at
home, in front of the screen, became the actual 'black box'. In order to
crack the power of the mass media, the consumer had to be empowered with
'subversive' strategies like irony, reversing the signs and other forms
of assimilation of corporate mass culture.

In times of rapid changes, when new media spaces are opening up, the
question of economic power, ideological manipulation and exclusion is
not the first priority. Initially, people are fascinated (and
frightened) by the new possibilities that VR, PCs, CD-ROMs or the
Internet seem to offer. Standards are changing overnight and the market
seems to be on the move. There is even space for cute start-ups like
Apple or Netscape (so favorite amongst artists), challenging the power
of IBM and Microsoft (itself once a garage firm). Pioneers, tinkers, and
visionaries are showing us the way to a sheer, endless space of
possibilities. The open, decentralized, democratic potentialities of the
media are emphasized, both by activists and entrepreneurs. It is Dream
Time: a short period of collective dreaming, passionate debates,
gatherings and quick money to be made. After a while, big firms move in,
like MATAV, in the case of Hungary. Small firms disappear, merge or are
eaten up by the big ones. The gap between commerce and the alternative,
political and cultural media initiatives, again, widens. It becomes
necessary to understand the strategies of the big economic players, and
the government, in order to survive. In this phase, after the orgy (as
Baudrillard would call it) the way of theorizing the media also changes.
A return to (or of?) the classic discipline of the political economy
seems unavoidable. Now Marx is only one amongst many the 19th century
political economists… The God given dominance of Marxism over critical
analysis of the economy seems to be over. The issues that once caused
the 'crisis of Marxism', the death of economic determinism and the
inability of Gramscian and Althusserian concepts of ideology to explain
the rest, have died out twenty years later. It no longer makes sense to
accuse someone of being a reductionist communist, libertarian anarchist
or corporate socialist just because of their analysis. What counts are
the policies and the data and concepts that are related to the
contemporary situation.

The equation of economics and Marxism now belongs to the past. What
remains is the question of the status of the economic realm. The focus
on perception of the previous period merely located the 'digital
revolution' in the inside (the body, the brain, the senses), unwilling
to face the harsh economic reality outside, where neo-liberalism ruled.
The media industry, which itself is producing more and more immaterial
commodities, can easily be overseen as an economic factor. This is
complicating efforts to get a deeper understanding of the economics of
the media. Its imaginary power has superseded its actual size many
times. Compared to the financial markets, branches like tourism, car
manufacturing or the military industrial complex, media are in fact a
relatively small business sector. This specially counts for the Internet
and multi-media, as compared to television, which still gets most of the
advertisement money. This makes it all to easy to overemphasize the
symbolic function. The political economy of the Net, still 'under
construction', is both a critical and a speculative undertaking, without
much solid ground. Figures are not at hand and the actual size of the
industry is hard to measure. How many members, worldwide, would Kroker
and Weinsteins' 'virtual class' have? Can we estimate the influence of
Wired magazine? What will be the place of the expanding information
technologies within the 'jobless economy'? One new tele-workspace
against four fresh unemployed? Are we overestimating the impact of the
global economy and what is its essence? And who will pay for the
unavoidable big crash of Wall Street? All these are questions which
remain open and need a new, solid, though fluid and virtual basis of
theoretical concepts. Let's make a start and let us not be overwhelmed
by economic specialists.