DELEUZE&GUATTARI &TECHNO-NOMADS

By Ashley Benigno
"Names can name no lasting name" 1
These days the names of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari are often found intersecting across the
World Wide Web, or else popping up in academic journals, or even on the lips of bright, young
digital things living in a wired world. Tributes to these two French philosophers are scattered
throughout academia. Sherry Turkle of the MIT, in her book on identity in the age of the Net,
writes:
"Thus, more than twenty years after meeting the ideas of Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari, I
am meeting them again in my new life on the screen. But this time, the Gallic abstractions are more
concrete. In my computer-mediated worlds, the self is multiple, fluid, and constituted in interaction
with machine connections; it is made and transformed by language; sexual congress is an exchange
of signifiers; and understanding follows from navigation and tinkering rather than analysis" 2
While on the other side of the Atlantic, back in that stretch of land known as Europe, the
excitement, the quasi-mystical feel that transpires from Turkle's description of a New World(s), is
escalated further still by academics such as Franco Berardi "Bifo", and abstracted into a densely
poetical and referential language. His book "Mutation and cyberpunk" opens thus:
"Navigating by association through a vast desert/ocean thick in signs that are mobile and evasive:
wandering and nostalgia, rastafari and baroque, Hermes Trismegistus and Guatama Siddharta, cyber
and punk. I admit to having checked a few maps. The authors of Rhizome for having furnished me
with a philosophical method. William Burroughs for focusing on the shifting processes of
neurochemical mutation. Philip Dyck (sic) for placing trust in the power of hallucinatory
discoveries. William Gibson for having suggested the contamination between neuromancing and
digital technology. Pierre Levy for having indicated the possibility of creating interfaces between
artistic creation and IT technologies" 3.
Others still, like Stefan Ray, actually bemoan "a curious lack of Deleuze and Guattari" 4 in recent
analyses of communication and cyberspace theory. One academic voice, however, has spoken out
against D&G. In his forthcoming book, The Holy Fools, Richard Barbrook of the HRC carries an
all-out attack against the current use made by "theory-jockeys" 5 of the ideas of the avant-garde, and
of Deleuze and Guattari in particular, who behind the nomadic insurgence veneer are defined as
authoritarian and supporters of the Pol Pot regime.
This paper intends to continue along the path set by Barbrook in demystifying Deleuze and
Guattari, but for totally different reasons. First of all, however, lets take a brief look at the concepts
underlying Deleuze and Guattari's work to see why they have been adopted as metaphors for the
Internet. The two main buzz-words evolve around the concepts of the "rhizome" and of the "warmachine". For rhizome, and by extension for rhizomatic thought, Deleuze and Guattari intend a
non-linear way of thinking, which is anti-hierarchical, nomadic and anarchic in nature. This they
oppose to the arbolic system, which is unbending and vertical. The nomadic essence of the rhizome
leads in turn to a grandiose apology of the "war machine", intended as the nomadic warrior acting
1 L. Tzu Tao Te Ching Hackett 1993, p. 1
2 S. Turkle Life on the screen (Identity in the Age of the Internet) Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1996, p.15
3 F. Berardi "Bifo" Mutazione e cyberpunk costa & nolan, 1994, p.5
4 S. Wray, Rhizomes, Nomads, and Resistant Internet Use, 1998, http://www.nyu.edu/projects/wray/RhizNom.html
5 R. Barbrook The Holy Fools, 1998, http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk

outside of the state apparatus, capable of gliding through smooth, deterritorialized landscapes in hit
and run operations, using rhizomes to detour obstacles. It becomes apparent even from this brief
description how the rhizome, by branching out in all directions, can be also used as a metaphor to
describe what is commonly known as the World Wide Web. Furthermore, for those involved in
developing the Internet as a tool of political and cultural resistance, capable of breaking down
national borders and allowing information to flow freely across the globe, the imagery induced by
Deleuze and Guattari through their hermetic prose can become very romantic. Talk of imagery and
prose may seem somewhat out of place in discussing the philosophical musings of two cultural
theorists, but worthy of consideration nevertheless. A strange doubt insinuates itself in our thought
processes, more of an intuition nearly, which leads us to ask: could it be that this fascination for
Deleuze and Guattari is also due to the hermetically poetical nature of their written work? A random
quote from "Treatise on Nomadology: The War Machine" (Chapter XII of "A Thousand Plateaux")
reveals what we are hinting at:
"The itinerant is first and foremost an artisan. But the artisan is not a hunter, a farmer, a breeder.
Neither is he a sifter, nor a potter, dedicated to an artisan practice only in a secondary manner. He is
the one that follows matter-flux as pure productivity: therefore under mineral and not vegetable or
animal form. He is not the man of the earth or of the ground, but the man of the underground. Metal
is the pure productivity of matter, therefore he who follows metal is the producer of objects par
excellence"6.
All very cool, but what is really being said? Could this all be about alchemy perhaps? Were Deleuze
and Guattari looking under the rhizome for the philosopher's stone? Or were they simply on the
rebound from the events that followed May 1968 in Paris? Masquerading feelings of anger and loss
behind a discourse heavily spiked with neo-mythological terminology and awash with
poetic/hermetic symbolism?
And what, we also ask ourselves, would a nineteenth century artisan have made of the above
statement? (a grainy black and white picture downloads in the brain to reveal the picture of D&G
looking baffled outside a London pub, their noses bleeding).
All mere rants and raves of course. A little fun before embarking on the more serious issue of
placing Deleuze and Guattari in the historical context in which they formulated their theoretical
models. Writing in the aftermath of May 1968, when the revolutionary moment had come and gone,
their attention turns to other forms of resistance. The introduction of the concept of guerrilla warfare
implicit in the war-machine of Deleuze and Guattari, so funky on the Net, would soon find its
translation across Europe in the emergence of terrorist groups, working in small, concealed cells.
The action, following the disastrous end to the tactical dreams and the creative resistance of the
sixties, moved underground - where Deleuze and Guattari's metal also resides - and became harsher,
increasingly violent, more desperate. In Italy in the seventies, the notion of "Lotta Armata" (Armed
Struggle) came of age, with a whole constellation of extremist groups, mostly famously the Red
Brigades, coming out into the open on the streets of Rome, Milan, Turin on the back of vespas 7 with
the passenger usually extending a P-38, and the violence extending across Italy, until those years
became known as the Years of Lead, for all the bullets that flew. The shootings, the bombs, came
from what called itself the Left and from what called itself the Right. Often, both sides were heavily
infiltrated and directed by intelligence agencies, both Italian and by the CIA. In some cases,
extreme-right groups were the brainchild of the secret services themselves 8. Across the seventies
networks of armed cells developed like rhizomes, everywhere and yet unseen, just like Deleuze and
6 G. Deleuze - F. Guattari Nomadologia (Italian translation - Castelvecchi 1995), p. 99
7 Italian moped
8 The best books I have read on the subject are: G. De Lutiis Il lato oscuro del potere Editori Riuniti 1996; F. Fracassi
Il Quarto Reich Editori Riuniti 1996

Guattari had called for. The urban guerrillas, so nomadic in their style of waging warfare, where
shooting at the state and at each other, until things got so murky and yet so rigid - not counting the
dead - that the whole experience was declared a failure by its main protagonists. In 1983, the
magazine "Frigidaire"9 publishes a dossier which carries a series of statements and articles
compiled, mainly in top-security prisons, by many of the leading figures of the armed struggle,
starting from Tony Negri. The dossier, entitled "A self-criticism of guerrilla warfare", marks the end
of an era10. In the introduction to the dossier, the editor of "Frigidaire" Vincenzo Sparagna wrote:
"It was a certain ' reading' of reality, a certain way of intending the function of the 'revolutionary
vanguards" in their clash with the social condition, which led a section, be it a minority, of the
social-political-cultural opposition to the dominant system to embrace guns and shoot. The
discourse - because it is 'ideological' - became a thing, a practical behaviour" 11.
Not that we are intending that Deleuze and Guattari are responsible for the years of terror and
counter-terror which not only Italy, but many countries world-wide, lived through in that period. Far
from it. They were even more of a minority than those Sparagna refers to above. What we are
saying is simply that things do not happen in isolation, and that the writings of Deleuze and
Guattari, in a historical sense, also provide a theoretical framework for a better understanding of
practical events that shook recent European history. What we are doing is simply pointing out that
the War Machine and the Armed Struggle are close cousins. And that the latter made many, many
mistakes.
Nor was everything bleak during those years. Keeping our focus on Italy we find that community
radio also flourished during this period, thus anticipating many of the issues and concerns that
would later resurface on the Net in the building of a virtual community. The Free Radio movement
was financed by the voluntary subscriptions of its listeners and spread to all the main cities in Italy.
Of these, the most (in)famous was Radio Alice in Bologna. Interestingly, Gilles Deleuze himself, in
an interview, said he was interested in what Radio Alice were doing because he saw "their
inspiration was at once Situationist and 'Deleuzoguattarian", if one can say that" 12. For its part,
Radio "Alice hisses, yells, contemplates, interrupts herself, pulls" 13, with a clear knowledge of its
parentage, that pays tribute to the situationists, but also to surrealism and dada and an entire
tradition of anti-work ethics, re-launching old perspectives with new strength, as when the
collective behind the radio station say:
"The body, sexuality, the desire to sleep in the morning, the liberation from work, the chance to be
overwhelmed, to make oneself unproductive and open to tactile, de-codified communication: all this
has been hidden, submerged, denied for centuriesThe blackmail of poverty, the discipline of
work, hierarchical order, sacrifice, fatherland, family, general interests, socialist blackmail,
participation: all stifling the voice of the body. All our time, forever and ever, devoted to work.
Eight hours of work, two hours of travel, and, afterwards, rest, television, and dinner with the
family"14.
But more of that later. For the time being, we return to the end of the armed struggle in Italy, and the
comments of a group of political prisoners in the women's prison of Rebibbia, in Rome,
commenting on their experience as soldiers of the war machine, back in November 1982:
"The armed struggle was not able to grasp the complexity of the forms of antagonistic expression
9
10
11
12
13
14

One of Italy's main counter-culture magazine in the 80s

Currently found on-line at: http://dll04.univ.trieste.it/tredici/frigidaire/indice.htm
Ibid.
Felix Guattari Why Italy? at: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/33/4/guattari.html
Collettivo A/traverso Radio Alice Free Radio at: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/33/4/alice.html
Ibid.

due to its monolithic and necessarily selective character. It was not able to construct social projects
capable of moving into the present the quality of the transformations in living conditions and
relations. It did not deflate power, it strengthened it. In this sense it concluded in politics, acting no
differently in the end from institutional parties: small societies calling themselves states, which are
now suffering from the political crisis. This is the point, the crux, the question that needs to be
overcome. But, to the critical conscience of the past we need to add the knowledge that the social
dramas of a decade ago have worsened. Today, the gap between having and not having, between
social exclusion and personalities, between the controllers and the controlled is becoming radically
wider"15.
To overcome the armed struggle, they suggested a cultural revolution and the following guidelines:
"Respect differences, acknowledge multiplicity, highlight the expression of each experience,
experiment, meet, especially meet, seeking reciprocity: this is an ethic of transformation" 16.
Nearly twenty years on, these reflections form very much the backbone of the antagonistic
experience in Italy, with its CSOAs, autonomous social centres in reclaimed buildings and industrial
installations17, and its activities against the increasing rise of racism in the country and in support of
immigrant rights. And it is here that most of Italy's political theory comes from, in the form of
tactical media web sites 18 and from the political hip-hop crews. Groups such as Assalti Frontali 19
and 99Posse20 express their dissent by mixing samples from 70s TV and cartoon songs with
hardcore beats and lyrics of cultural resistance. The personal mixing with the political, the local
with the indigenous or the global, counterculture heritage with cyberpunk visions. In "Devo avere
una casa per andare in giro per il mondo" (I need a home to go off around the world), Assalti
Frontali sing of nomadic times:
"I see the border far away I run My legs that weigh heavy like in A dream But if I slow down I feel
breathing down my neck I don't give up All around the world Is hidden the sense Of ways of life
apparently Without (meaning) It's the conflict for survival This is the explanation The cage is the
nation First they throw us the leftovers Then they watch us tear each other apart This is my home
The heart explodes I kick the door There is no solidarity without revolt" 21.
If the heritage of Deleuze and Guattari is to be found, this is mainly within the academic/avantgarde circuit, where, in addition to the aforementioned "Bifo", we also find Luther Blisset who,
similarly to Karen Eliot, is a composite figure, a namesake to be used by whomever so desires for
acts of cultural sabotage. This physically generated Italian Idoru 22 has also transported into the
realm of the Net, like all D&G devotees, a love for the hyperbole when talking about the "new
world":
"Net.generation is the name adopted by the generation that has decided to change the face of the
earth, establishing itself as an information technology communitya virtual people that exists
thanks to new technologies, modems and integrated systemsthe net.generation confronts for the
first time in the history of humanity a radical transformation, deeply changing everything the globe
has been up until now and our understanding of reality. Those that have experience of the Net know
that our generation is on the threshold of the most revolutionary moment of modernity: behind us
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22

See note 10.

Ibid.
For a complete listing of CSOAs check out: http://www.ecn.org
Check out: http://www.tmcrew.org/index.htm
From Rome.
From Naples - check out their audio samples at http://www.novenove.it
From the album Conflitto
A virtual pop star taken from a William Gibson novel by the same name.

the Old World, before our eyes the New World"23.

Which brings us on to the question of techno-nomads, and who and what they really are. Luther
Blisset certainly sounds like one, but first of all, before seeking to find out what the technological
variable actually entails, we should look at what a nomad is and what he does.
Bruce Chatwin, in a small essay entitled "Nomadic invasions", defines a nomad in the following
fashion:
"The word nomad derives from the Greek nomos - a pasture. A nomad proper is a mobile
pastoralist, the owner and breeder of domesticated animals. To call a wandering hunter 'nomadic' is
to misunderstand the meaning of the word Nomadism is born of wild expanses, ground too
barren for the farmer to cultivate economically - savannah, steppe, desert and tundra, all of which
support an animal population providing that it moves. For the nomad movement is morality.
Without movement, his animals would die Nomads never roam aimlessly from place to place
A nomad's territory is the path linking his seasonal pasturesIranian nomads call the path Il-Rah,
The Way Herdsmen claim to own their 'ways' as their inalienable property; but in practice all they
ask is the right of passage through a given stretch of territory at a fixed time of the year. The land
holds no interest for them once they have moved on. Thus for a nomad, political frontiers are a form
of insanity, based as they are on the aggregation of farmlands" 24.
According to the above then, breeding animals and moving from fixed pasture to pasture each year
is the underlying principle of nomadism, which seems to be light years away from the subject of
nomadology, as expressed by Deleuze and Guattari. To be fair, the war machine, as described by the
two Frenchmen, was also a prominent feature of the nomadic lifestyle. In Chatwin's words "Warfare
- or, at least, violent competition - is endemic to nomadism" 25. And while "the instability in their
nomad society lacks the cohesion needed for conquest on a mass scale" 26, it also meant that the:
"nomadic insurgent has tactical mobility and is an expert in guerrilla warfare, the art of 'attack and
withdrawal' which, according to Ibn Khaldun, was the practice of the Bedouin nations. 'Raids are
our agriculture', goes a Bedouin proverb"27.
The point here is what do traditional nomads share with neo-nomads at the close of the twentieth
century? If we look at the current state of affairs for the last remaining nomadic tribes the picture is
far removed from the glory and the terror of the Mongols and grim indeed.
"Today's nomads, whether they be Quashgais in Iran or Masai in Kenya, are facing their ultimate
crisis at the hands of settled administrations. Their way of life is considered an anachronism in a
modern state. Nomads are resentful of, and resistant to change. The 'problem of the tribes' is as
much an issue to many a modern government as it was to the rulers of an ancient near-eastern citystate. For life in the black tents has not significantly changed since Abraham, the Bedouin sheikh,
moved his flock on his 'journeys from the south even unto Bethel, where his tent had been at the
beginning' [Genesis 13:3]"28.
It becomes apparent from these descriptions that "old" and "new" nomads in reality share little in
common, aside from intending movement as life and considering political borders as an
infringement of the right to roam. For other aspects they are worlds apart. When Chatwin says that
23
24
25
26
27
28

L. Blisset net.generation (manifesto delle nuove libert) Mondadori 1996, p.17

B. Chatwin What am I doing here Penguin 1989, p.219
Ibid. p. 225
Ibid. p. 227
Ibid. p. 228
Ibid. p. 220

nomads are "resentful of, and resistant to change", what should we think of Luther Blisset and the
rest of the techno-nomads with their advocacy of extreme change?
Should we consider techno-nomads simply as geeks with a virtual itch for travel? Or should we take
them as being that small elite of digerati with their frequent-flyer points, laptop computers and
satellite phones working their way round the nodal points of the global village?
Maybe, as in the case of cyber-sex, we should look at these expression on the Net as being simple
reflections of wider movements and yearnings that have run through this century. The Net is
nothing but a tool that creates an additional environment in which it is possible to communicate and
experiment. Sally Tisdale, in a book subtitled "an intimate philosophy of sex", writes:
"And still I don't know what a woman is, or a man. Gender is genitals, hormones, or chromosomes;
attraction and desire isn't based simply on the shape of things. I find myself thinking again and
again that I can't even know what sex is, let alone what it means to me, until I know what I am,
what a woman is, what that means. But I can't know, and I think that's just one of the little lies I tell
myself about sex. In a vital way gender has nothing to do with sex and sex has nothing to do with
gender. Sex is far, far more than the fitting of genitals and hormones together, and gender is what it
is without sex at all. Identity isn't a fixed thing. If we can call into question all the forms and signs
of gender, then perhaps there is no such thing as gender. Gender is all illusion. We create this gestalt
that makes gender possible; we make each other men and women" 29.
This question of identity, for example, is a common theme of our times, and the Net, through its
chat rooms and MOOs, can provide an excellent training ground in which to play around with our
doubts, fears and desires. On-line gender and identity can be played with, tricked. The same applies
to nomadism: the Net can allow us to travel to distant lands and speak with far-away people. But
through the mediation of a screen, and this is its limit. Nomadism, for its part, stretches much
further. Its nature dictates that it cannot be enclosed. Bruce Chatwin himself is a perfect example of
this: a self-declared neo-nomad with a fascination for the wonderful and the strange. Or else Nick
Danziger, a sort of geographical hacker who managed to cross all the closed borders between Iran
and China back in the Eighties 30.
The notion of nomadism, wandering, getting lost is also a common theme among the European
avant-garde. Deleuze and Guattari, in fact, simply paid their contribution to a philosophy that was
also expressed, albeit in different manners, by the situationists, the surrealists and by dada. The
situationists, whom we consider to be far superior in impact to Deleuze and Guattari, promoted
among their main concepts the theory of the drive:
"Among the various situationist methods is the drive (literally: 'drifting'), a technique of transient
passage through varied ambiances. The drive entails playful-constructive behaviour and awareness
of psychogeographical effects; which completely distinguishes it from the classic notions of the
journey or the stroll. In a drive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual
motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let
themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. The
element of chance is less determinant than one might think: from the drive point of view cities
have a psychogeographical relief, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes which strongly
discourage entry or exit from certain zones" 31.
The surrealists also had their own techniques:
29 S. Tisdale Talk dirty to me (An Intimate Philosophy of Sex) Pan ?, p.45
30 See N. Danziger Danziger's travels Flamingo 1993
31 (Ed.) K. Knabb Situationist International Anthology Bureau of Public Secrets 1981, p.50

""Places such as the Tour St Jacques, the Porte Saint-Denis, the erotic serenity of Place Dauphine,
and the bustling markets of Les Halles were revered and often visited as sites peculiarly receptive
to the surrealists explorer. In the streets of Paris, breathtaking possibilities and marvels, sings of
another reality, and glimpses of the strange and disconcerting were perceived through chinks in the
normality of everyday reality. Aragon's Paris Peasant and Breton's Nadja are scattered with detailed
descriptions of signs, cafs, arcades, and little corners of the city, and the surrealists strolled the
streets with the same freedom they exercised in the automatic text; that gained by the absence of
conscious control. Drifting according to whim and desire, they explored the city and watched it
reveal the marvels of objective chance and surreality. This playful spirit combined with a delight in
chance to produce an intense interest in games and playing" 32.
If we cross the Atlantic, we find a similar, if not stronger and more culturally entrenched, tribute to
the nomadic wanderer in US literature and arts. Starting from Walt Whitman and Jack London, in
America we find hobo culture during the Great Depression, the birth of the Hell's Angels after the
Korean War, the Beat Generation, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, Henry Miller. Or think of
all the road-movies ever made. Or the whole hippie scene.
And what about the new age travellers fighting for their rights to a nomadic lifestyle here in the UK
right now.
At the end of the day, the use of a "nomadic" discourse, be it technologically orientated or
otherwise, is always underlined by other concerns of a social and political nature. The quest of the
modern nomad has always been to break borders and boundaries, to escape the narrow confines of
the fixed identities imposed by nations, religions, economic status and sex. The nomad seeks a freer
world in which to invent him or herself, a richer, fuller, more playful existence:
"Someone posed the question, 'What is private life deprived of?' Quite simply of life itself, which is
cruelly absent. People are as deprived as possible of communication and of self-realisation.
Deprived of the opportunity to personally make their own history. Hypotheses responding positively
to this question on the nature of the privation can thus only be expressed in the form of projects of
enrichment; the project of a different style of life; or in fact simply the project of a style of life
Or, if we regard everyday life as the frontier between the dominated and the undominated sectors of
life, and thus as the terrain of risk and uncertainty, it would be necessary to replace the present
ghetto with a constantly moving frontier; to work ceaselessly toward the organisation of new
chances"33.
The nomad becomes just another word used to denote certain inclinations, other words could easily
replace it without harm on many occasions. The nomad has been and is also the revolutionary, the
dreamer, the wanderer, the rebel, the outcast, the poet.
Nomads are those that choose to explore, to go beyond the known, the established. Be it in a digital
or a physical manner, the outcome is the same. Nomadism is for those that choose to look behind
the nirvana pushed by our hyper-spectacular society for other flavours, other truths. In a recent
book, the French anarchist philosopher Michel Onfray argues that two kinds of freedom are
currently possible in our society. One he defines as "Liberal Freedom", meaning the freedom to
have, to consume; the other as "Libertarian Freedom", meaning the freedom to be:
"To want liberal freedom means having to join the herd movement and having the power to
dispense from reflecting, from analysing, from understanding, from thinking; to economise on one's
32 S. Plant The most radical gesture (the Situationist International in a Postmodern Age) Routledge 1992, p.50
33 (ed.) K. Knabb Situationist International Anthology Bureau of Public Secrets 1981, p.72

critical thought, as obedience will suffice. In this way desire, made inactive if not impossible, leads
to voluntary slavery. In the same way, it will give many the satisfaction of feeling the animal heat
generated by the pack far from the ancient memory of a cold wind that comes from the peaks where
one walks aloneVoluntary slavery seems worthy of celebration to those souls rich of the salary of
giving up their individuality and of the gains of domesticity: in this way they are sure they are like
everybody else, in the race toward the abyss, but in the middle of the herd. Beyond the marked-out
paths and the mental motorways, libertarian freedom gives cause for worry. It means struggles, fear,
uncertainty, difficulties, an immense solitude Choice creates panic, freedom offered in its
multiplicity gives rise to existential confusion. Having to set off on a road that needs inventing
reawakens ancient terrors, fantasies of impotence and fears fuelled by the risk of failure" 34.
Again, in different terms, we find those that point towards different perspectives, just like Deleuze
and Guattari, who we now realise are simply a moment in a wider history of a movement that seeks
to go beyond the nation-state, the world of production and consumption, towards a world of selfrealisation and creation. So much human potential remains buried under the economic slavery of
work, the straightjackets of sexual and ethnic identity, the imposition of borders that cannot be
crossed by the majority of the world's population, while goods and capitals can travel freely.
Against the greyness certain individuals have always spoken out in favour of play and against the
tyranny of work. From the surrealists to the collective behind Radio Alice. Nothing new at the end
of the day. Last century Nietzsche commented thus on the nature of work:
"In the glorification of 'work', in the unwearied talk of the 'blessing of work', I see the same covert
ideas as in the praise of useful impersonal actions; that of the fear of everything individual.
Fundamentally, one now feels at the sight of work - one always means by work that hard
industriousness from early till late - that such work is the best policeman, that it keeps everyone in
bounds and can mightily hinder the development of reason, covetousness, desire for independence.
For it uses up an extraordinary amount of nervous energy, which is thus denied to reflection,
brooding, dreaming, worrying, loving, hating; it sets a small goal always in sight and guarantees
easy and regular satisfactions. Thus a society in which there is continual hard work will have more
security: and security is now worshipped as the supreme divinity. - And now! Horror! Precisely the
'worker' has become dangerous! The place is swarming with 'dangerous individuals'! And behind
them the danger of dangers - the individual" 35.
The sun is setting at the horizon, some are sitting down in front of their computer screens, others are
about to catch a coach, a train, a plane. Some are about to do both. Movement is life, the nomads
are off.
N.B. all texts in Italian were translated by the author.
Bibliography
F. Berardi "Bifo" Mutazione e cyberpunk costa & nolan, 1994
L. Blisset net.generation (manifesto delle nuove libert) Mondadori 1996
B. Chatwin What am I doing here Penguin 1989
N. Danziger Danziger's travels Flamingo 1993

34 M. Onfray Politique du rebelle - Trait de rsistance et d'insoumission (Italian translation - Ponte alle Grazie 1998),
p.159-60
35 (Ed.) R. J. Hollingdale A Nietzsche Reader Penguin 1977, p.233

G. Deleuze - F. Guattari Nomadologia (Italian translation - Castelvecchi 1995)

G. De Lutiis Il lato oscuro del potere Editori Riuniti 1996
F. Fracassi Il Quarto Reich Editori Riuniti 1996
W. Gibson Idoru Penguin 1997
(ed.) R. J. Hollingdale A Nietzsche Reader Penguin 1977
(ed.) K. Knabb Situationist International Anthology Bureau of Public Secrets 1981
M. Onfray Politique du rebelle - Trait de rsistance et d'insoumission (Italian translation - Ponte
alle Grazie 1998)
S. Plant The most radical gesture (the Situationist International in a Postmodern Age) Routledge
1992
S. Tisdale Talk dirty to me (An Intimate Philosophy of Sex) Pan ?
S. Turkle Life on the screen (Identity in the Age of the Internet) Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1996
L. Tzu Tao Te Ching Hackett 1993
Texto extraido de: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~marash/ashley%27s%20essays/d-g-technonomads.htm#35