Back in 2001, as the dot.com bubble was bursting in hyper-motion, I had started writing a piece for Armin Medosch, the London editor of Telepolis, investigating the cult of Funky business. The piece was to be divided and published in three sections, containing a mix of personal recollections, a critique of the Funky Business book itself, and some musings: like the fact that Funk used to mean being depressed, or how the minister of the economy in nazi germany was a certain Herr Funk!
The article only made it to the first instalment - I was too busy raving to my own funky eBusiness tracks - and never got published. Having come across it on an old data CD I thought I'd post it here, both for its "near-historical" feel and for some aspects still pertinent in 2003. Enjoy (warning long):
The Unbearable Hi-Finess of Funky Business (Episode 1)
Back in the dying days of the Twentieth Century, I found myself in India. Not in any mystical or metaphysical sense mind you. There were no visits to ashrams or experiences of satori involved. I was no Dharma bum, I was not lost. The reality was more mundane. I was in India for work, researching an article for some report that was going to be published by a global brand. It was one of those classic and cloned examples of corporate double-talk; something about the environment. Behind the stated PR mission however, one thing was for certain: it was going to be funky.
Funky was the key word. As much was repeatedly stated at the editorial meeting a few days earlier. The meeting had been the one chance for the different, geographically-dispersed players on the project to meet in real life, away from the website, the forums and emails that made up the daily work environment. It was staged somewhere in Western Europe, in one of those countries that make up the G7.
The building we met in was light and breezy. As sparkling as the chrome found on the products the corporation's name was tied to (cars and other forms of transportation). Warhol prints on the white walls added a splash of pop to the environment. Young graphic designers sipped on fizzy drinks and illustrated how cool the page layout was going to be. As the integrated colours of typeface and design flashed in front of us, as the mock-ups and the templates were digitally projected onto a cinema-size screen, as carefully studied hues of green and pink and diverse fonts fought for visual domination, the director of communications evangelised on how corporate reports could no longer afford to remain bland affairs of black type on white pages. This one in particular, with the environment as its subject, could not remain relegated to a few company desks, unread. The good news and the good will were messages that needed to be spread. The young and the environmentally-prone needed to be captured. And what better way, than by applying some jazzy design. "We need to achieve school penetration", he said, eyes glistening. As the day progressed, the corporate suits - dressed in faux-beatnik black jumpers desperately seeking some kind of karmic connection to Ginsberg and Kerouac - continued to walk around as if in meditation, quietly chanting that one word mantra: funky.
A few time zones removed from the pop art and a week later, I found myself heading south down the congested streets of Bombay city in the back of a black cab. Long and thin and gripping to the west coast of the Indian sub-continent, the city was absurdly reminiscent of Los Angeles - maybe only because the driver kept pointing out where the Bollywood stars lived and enormous film billboards were everywhere; or maybe for a darker reason, for that feeling of the edge.
Evening was approaching. As we drove into view of Bombay's downtown and its scrawny assortment of skyscrapers, my host proudly exclaimed: "Ah look! Very, very hi-fi", as he said each time we saw a mainframe, an internet café or anything that reeked of technological advancement. Very hi-fi. The phrase made me smile and made me think of the seventies, of music systems embedded in wood. Then I thought of the use I made of the word "cyber" and it made me cringe. All these words we use to subscribe to modernity, despite any post-modern rant. How obsolete and how apt. After all, isn't one of the main features of technology its inbuilt obsolescence? Very hi-fi indeed.
Night fell over Bombay. Its vitality, its confusion, its armies of mendicants, its legions of films stars, its merchants, its computer networks were all paused. The bright lights weaved webs of seduction, setting personalised intranets of desire in motion. An advertising-riddled stream-of-consciousness took me back to that history lesson at school, when all the teachers assumed airs of superiority in telling how those first Europeans to the Americas managed to swap beads for gold. It was only coloured glass, the teachers would laugh. And yet those beads must have appeared so funky, so full of promise. Five hundred years on, had anything changed? What about the love affairs between geeks and their gadgets? What about the fashion junkies looking for their label fix? What about all those middle-aged, middle-class men across western suburbia religiously washing and shining up their cars on the prescribed day of rest, while swelling the ranks of corporate conquistadors the rest of the week?
The factory I had visited earlier in the week, had immaculate lawns. Armed private guards imitating soldiers kept it oblivious to the chaos that cavorted outside its perimeter fence. A germ-free engineering plant in which the cult of efficiency and an alleged social conscience paraded across mission statements. It was totally de-territorialized and existing in an unreality of its own making. I kept expecting the workers to break into a Hindi remix of "We are the world". The whole place had that nowhere feel that can be found everywhere these days - in all the shopping malls and hotel chains and satellite TV channels. I even got to plant a tree, but there was no camera crew around to make the event real. Was this what the funky logic was all about? Substituting murky depth and fuzzy substance for glossy veneers? What was all this saying, hiding and shouting at the same time?
The taxi pulled up. Across the road, someone was bedding down for the night. Soon, the city would resemble an immense open-air dormitory. Street after neighbourhood of bodies, packs of children and entire families laying in rows like equations. The body mathematic. Snatches of statistics heard earlier in the day in dusty, time-lagged government offices drifted back with the heat outside. Cold numbers about population, pollution, poverty chased after me. Two street kids ran across the street, with smiles as sharp as their hunger, nearly naked and totally unbranded. I saw the director of communications - sweating in his charcoal grey suit - chasing after them. And then the vision was gone.