Selling Virtual Reality Estate (or www.nothingleft.com)   As an ambitious young scribe I still remember the slight pangs of jealousy I felt when a friend read his short story aloud to our year 11 creative writing class. He finished to triumphant applause from teacher and students alike, because, like all good short stories, it had a compellingly simple plot. It was a near-future cautionary tale (this was in 1987) concerning copyright laws, beginning with the potentially disastrous precedent of corporations having the power to patent particular words for the purposes of advertising, such as Winfield (Anyhow*) and Coke (Enjoy*). In his story, the English language, formerly a public asset which we were all, rich or poor, allowed to use and abuse as our own, becomes privatized and sold off piece by piece. The record of each patent was kept in a giant tome which had some significant name which escapes me, however the climax occurs when a group of freedom-fighters burst into its vacuum sealed chamber and douse it with a good burst from a flame thrower. Ethics one. Capitalists zero. I remember feeling uncomfortable with this ending, not least because it smacked of deus ex machina; the millennia old dramatic strategy of solving problems through a miracle, usually divine intervention. Yet I was as idealistic as the author and couldn’t offer any alternative ending. Ten years ago the information revolution was lurking in the shadows. Few of my peers had computers and no one had heard of the Internet. William Gibson’s futuristic template was still blowing the minds of those who would go out and try to construct this mythical territory called cyberspace. Now, a hop, skip and jump away from the twenty first century it is easier to see the problem with my friend’s vision. There is no "book" to destroy; indeed the notion of such records being kept on paper seems impossibly quaint. Now the anarchists would have to release a database-eating virus which could seek out every entry in the centrifugal web. More 90s perhaps, but still not very convincing. My year 11 creative writing class must have really rubbed off on me, since I’m still writing and indeed still ambitious. I’m part of a group trying to start an electronic ‘Zine to promote new writing and other "avant-pop" pursuits, and in order to do so I must first register a domain name. A domain is essentially a little piece of cyberspace, a virtual address, which you buy for around $140 a year to secure. First you buy the name (www.rippedoff.com, for example) which gives you little else than the sense of ownership, since no one can access it until you buy some cyber-space on a server so that you have somewhere to put it. So far I have achieved step one but not step two. I feel like the proud father of a new baby, but I can’t share the joy with anyone because I can’t afford a camera. Yet this joy (ok, I’m overstating a little, but you get the gist) is what tugs my memory back to my friend’s prophetic story. Essentially - and very legally - I just bought a word. I just annexed a little piece of the English language, and if anyone else wants to use it they have to buy it from me first. (I won’t tell you the word for fear of being of accused of fashioning an elaborate political polemic in order to advertise my new Website). Of course, this only applies to the Internet, but if communications technologies continue to grow at this exponential rate, the Internet will become another domain (like the "public sphere") whose centre is nowhere and whose circumference is everywhere. Indeed many would argue that this has already happened, so owning a cyberword is like owning a chunk of life, of communication. I have become one of the baddies, frightened of those viral anarchists who would melt my digital quarter-acre block. No surprise then that some entrepreneurial wacko in . . . (betcha can’t guess) . . . America, has started selling parts of the moon’s surface to those who, like me, want to brandish a piece of something that is exclusively theirs. Apparently Mick Jagger has bought somewhere with a great view of the blue planet if he ever decides to build. For the moment however, clients have to content themselves with the certificate of title, issued under highly dubious authority. (Indeed the question of authority as it relates to the moon, the net, indeed Hong Kong, is a pressing one). In the late nineteenth century the European "scramble for Africa" saw one of the last great carve-ups of tactile-geography, and my scramble for a domain name was a mini-version of the panic which can be inspired by missing out. The first 30 names I tried came back telling me that this word had been taken and I better hurry up and think of another one because they are selling out at a rate of 80 000 a month! Lucky some weren’t being auctioned or I would have maxed out my credit card. Proto-cyber philosopher Marshall McLuhan argued that the world was shrinking due to technology and soon there won’t be any "space" (as we know it) left. The logic of e-mail and over-copulation leads to a giant fracture in where and how we live; we may soon have to specify where we will meet our hot date, in the world A. (real) or the world B. (virtual), or vice versa. What happens when all the domain names have been taken, leaving many people digitally homeless? They’ll have to pay exorbitant rents, or squat at www.applemac.com until somebody notices they’re there (from a candle-glow near the browser window, no doubt). Of course, such questions have done little to help matters in the "real" world and we must heed Pynchon’s warning that if they can get you asking the wrong questions then they don’t have to worry about the answers. And who are "they"? The capitalists of course. The very same who were patenting "anyhow" and "enjoy," who carry a word around in their pocket so no one else can use it, who…wait a minute…that’s me, isn’t it…hmmm, if I can ever look my friend in the eye again I better do something. Now where’s my Zippo? Back to features