Page 202 - Cyberculture and New Media

Maria Bäcke 193
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connection to illegal hacking. Testify therefore closes the door on the sixteen-
year-old, while the CEO of the computer company puts his private police on
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the case. Tin Lizzy does not feel comfortable abandoning a boy and she
decides to help Keyz, a decision that puts her in great jeopardy. In order to do
that, Tin Lizzy uses her imagination and innovative thinking – and her
programming skills. In the eyes of the society/corporation she is the “other”;
she is unpredictable and deviates from their norm – and therefore they
attempt to stop her. Paradoxically Tin Lizzy stands up for a human viewpoint
against both Testify and the computer company by using her computer skills.
An interesting contrast to the experiences of the narrator in Close to the
Machine is that Tin Lizzy’s choices in the The Jazz are not primarily directed
against her own hacker culture, most likely because it is not a striated culture
to begin with. Instead her fight highlights the tension between hackers and
entrepreneurs, between freedom and money, and problems that arise in a
society controlled by large corporations. With her actions she attempts to
decolonize the space colonized by the computer company.
The virtual communitarians, the third layer of culture Castells
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defines, has shaped the “social forms, processes, and uses” on the Internet.
Virtual communities, exemplified by MUDs, are described as places where
mostly teenagers and college students can experiment with role-playing and
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fake identities. But not all users are teenagers and role-playing might not be
the only reason for joining various forms of online communities. As Castells
puts it: “The social world of the Internet is as diverse, and contradictory, as
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society is”. Two features stand out, though: ‘free communication’ and
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‘shared interests’. Pat Cadigan’s two novels, Avatar and Dervish is Digital,
both deal with the communal aspect of Cyberspace, and both are set in
societies where the (predominantly male) decision-makers are reluctant to use
innovations, whereas the female characters are portrayed as less afraid to
embrace new technology.
Avatar is a children’s book and focuses on Max and his friend Sarah
Jane, who are brought up in a low-tech society where most people have never
driven a car and where the Internet is viewed with suspicion. Max has been
paralyzed in a diving accident, which physically ties him to his hospital bed,
and he sees few choices for the future. Despite their distrust, the Council of
Elders grants Max the use of high-tech prosthetics, involving the use of the
Internet. Sarah Jane becomes Max’s body in the sense that she, by bringing a
camera and a rig that is connected to him in his bed at the hospital, enables
him to go to school with her and to take part in her life. Their virtual
connection in the real world continues in Cyberspace after a while, where
none of them can be said to have a body. The main issue is identity and how
it is perceived and authenticated in a virtual environment. According to
Max’s prejudices anything that happens in a virtual environment is not real,
but when Sarah Jane’s body is hi-jacked by an alien-something she is not