Blogging in the autonomous zone

Caroline Lellis
The fast-moving development of weblogs on the Internet has started to disturb the once autonomous world of the journalist and the politician. For the launching of its new website, the European Parliament promoted a series of debates on blogging activities and its threats to traditional media.
The first debate took place on September 12th and gathered several well-known journalists to discuss “blogging and ethics”. The amount of free expression created by weblogs seems to scare the experienced professionals, as they consider those sites as rivals in their quest for information. “Journalists face libel laws, whereas some bloggers behave as if they were in the “Wild West”, says Karin Lillington, a reporter for the Irish Times.
However, they seem to ignore that the internet has already changed the access to information all over the world, and that traditional media is fated to deal with this situation sooner or later. Facing this new dynamic is not that easy for those who are used to seeing the results of their work printed in the paper. Even the journalists who have their own website running defend that these sites should be controlled somehow. During the debate, the General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists renforced this position by saying that “democratic societies set certain norms and standards which should not be thrown out of the window”.
But are blogs trying to replace the traditional media? Why are these minor virtual structures so threatening to big companies such as CNN or the BBC? This whole debate lead me to Hakim Bey’s theory about the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). Between 1985 and 1991, the author developped a concept to define these free enclaves created on the web that are not controlled or engaged by the State. According to Bey, the TAZ can be compared to an uprising or a guerilla operation that liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to reform elsewhere before the State can crush it. These TAZ are the contemporary version of the ancient pirate’s information network that spanned the world in the 18th century: “primitive and devoted primarily to grim business, the net nevertheless functioned admirably”, explains Bey.
The blogging activity has definitelly opened an enclave to new TAZ, and this could be why it scares mass media so badly. As Thomas Burg (BlogTalk.net) defended during the debate, “blogs are about sharing, learning and connecting with other people”; and free discussion is a huge problem for those who want to control the masses’ opinion. The interaction created by the weblogs allows fast movement and free traffic of information, and this dynamic is the most important principle of the autonomous zones. As Bey explains, you have to “keep moving the entire tribe, even if it’s only data on the Web”. Once a TAZ is named or officially represented, it will certainly vanish, because it needs to be out of the “Spectacle”.
Guido Baumhaumer, editor-in-chief of the online section of Deutsche Welle, concluded the debate by saying that "blogging is a transitional form on its way to something else". The space for the autonomous zones is open, but nobody knows for how long. The media and the State are acting together in order to eliminate these territories, and only the bloggers can figure out a way to keep their information network running. “The defense is invisibility, a martial art, and invulnerability – an occult art within martial arts”, as reinforced by Bey. “Only the autonomous can plan autonomy, organize for it, create it. It's a bootstrap operation. The first step is somewhat akin to satori--the realization that the TAZ begins with a simple act of realization”.