OVO

The Anarchist’s Guide to the BBS
Keith Wade
Port Townsend: Loompanics 1990
8vo paperback 90p

There were two main reference points I used to evaluate this book. First, as an anarchist [1982-1994], did this teach me anything about BBS? And second, as someone with a little knowledge of computers, did this teach me about anarchy? The results were mixed but worth the read to find out.

The Anarchist’s Guide to the BBS is written for the novice to computers, containing several chapters of introduction to terms and procedures that are well written and build on each other nicely. The book centers on computers as telecommunication devices but I learned more about computers in general than I’d known before. In this respect the book is exactly what it claims to be, a guide to the BBS, and does its job well.

But as an anarchist’s guide to the BBS I found it lacking. Like The Anarchist’s Cookbook (which Loompanics dropped from its catalog many years ago as dangerous and misleading), The Anarchist’s Guide to the BBS confuses anarchism with criminality. The reasoning something like this: anarchists oppose government, governments write laws, therefore to break a law is an anarchist act. This reduces anarchism to the loyal opposition of the state, dependent on authority to tell it what not to do rather than a movement that could create an alternative to the state. There is little or nothing in the Guide about breaking into government or corporate computer networks for fact-finding or sabotage purposes, the decentralized nature of BBS communication and its relevance to anarchist theory, or the debate on the role of technology in the anarchist struggle in the future. Not only are these ideas not explored in a book about anarchy and computers but there is no exploration or analysis of anarchism at all. There is plenty of information on use of credit card numbers that aren’t yours and running a prostitution service over your BBS but not even these ideas, which have been debate in the anarchist press for years, have any theory behind them. It is enough to scam the state; no need to use that power to achieve anything other than increased wealth and power for yourself. If I read this book as a computer user with no background in anarchism there would be nothing to contradict the state (amass wealth at the expense of others) nor the state perspective on anarchists (those who amass wealth at the expense of others without going through the proper channels). A change of title to “The Criminal’s Guide to the BBS” would bring the book more in line with its content and improve the ability of the book to be what it claims to be.

(from OVO 9 July 1991)