Leaving Reality Behind

. book
The process of putting net.art in a historical context has already begun, and its most famous and important chapters are beginning to be the subject of new books. The 1999-2000 Toywar, fought by the etoy collective against the toy distribution colossus eToys, to defend their net identity, was one of the most significant chapters in the mutation that the social relationships and the economy underwent in those strategic years. Now that those years of the new economy gold rush seem so far away, remembering that event is both useful and entertaining for the symbolic nature represented by that war fought and won using only information, solidarity and smart public relations as weapons. Very few other events can measure up to the verbal and imaginative power expressed by etoy, and it’s too bad that that group is now fragmented and therefore not as powerful as it was when it was united. The two journalists who authored this text have tried to write a ‘war diary’, sometimes with the pace of a thriller, often romanticizing and neglecting, on the other hand, the semiotic importance of that operation. Nonetheless, this recollection is an important document, useful to read again and again and enlightening to apply.