eEmpires

I really want it to be called "UntoCaesar.com."

—Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Startup.com

It is the flow of money, moving quickly and silently to those who are sufficiently wise and creative to establish themselves as players in this new arena.

—Steffano Korper and Juanita Ellis, The E-Commerce Book: Building the E-Empire

e=M-C-M

The eEmpire has definitively entered our lexicon, both as concept and as semantic construction, with "e" continuing to operate as the value-added, universal signifier of the brave new wired world. The signifier "e," as this essay will demonstrate, cannot be located under one set of stable descriptors. Rather, it must be understood as a fluid and intersecting set of forces, practices, technologies, and events. It is not a singular entity, but comprises communicative networks, electronic commerce, modes of production, and global financial markets. With numerous precursors, most notably associated with Microsoft, the Electronic Empire suggests a triumphant narrative of technology and capitalism.¹ However, it goes beyond that to suggest a speculative departure from the material conditions of production and circulation and toward informationalism. Such a speculative departure constitutes the now-dominant mode and stage of capital—a philosophical appraisal anticipated by Marx² and reanimated by Giovanni Arrighi and Fredric Jameson. The Electronic Empire has different rhetorical registers, ranging from cultural studies to ordinary advertisements. A visual analysis of a recent commercial will outline my critical treatment of the electronic empire and the thematic terrain of this essay.

Beginning in April 2001, the eBusiness software company Computer Associates repeatedly ran a thirty-second advertisement entitled "Empire" on the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox network, self-consciously combining a cyberpunk aesthetic with the elements of a sword-and-sandal picture and formally resembling both an inspirational corporate video and a promotional QuickTime movie.³ The commercial is made all the more remarkable by the visual absence of the computer as fetish object, yet the mechanism is message via its operation as interface and substrate. The verbal script illustrates what initially appears to be a morphological shift from classical Rome to the global electronic empire, which is communicated with even greater complexity by the visual iconography. Both in its audio and visual tracks, it establishes a direct, continuous, and naturalized link connecting the Roman empire, the British empire, and the contemporary eBusiness at the center of Wall Street: the shared governing idea, after all, is the controlling of new domains through new technologies. Concluding with a voice-over whose celebratory and pedagogic intonations are replicated throughout the commercial tech sector, the script runs as follows:

Roar of the crowd: "Caesar, Caesar, Caesar."

Caesar: "Hail, Romans! Today our nation is great, far greater than it has ever been." [punctuated by camera shutters and flashes]

Voice-over: "If you manage it correctly, even the largest empire will adapt and continue to thrive. Our software has helped more companies evolve their infrastructure than anyone else on earth. Hello, tomorrow. We are Computer Associates, the software that manages eBusiness."

The sense of continuity, inheritance, and an evolution from the historical empire to the contemporary American electronic empire is further facilitated by the visual trajectory of the commercial. Marked by all of the signifiers of imperial Rome, it begins with Caesar's march through a palatial stateroom and out through majestic curtains onto a balcony to address the multitudes below.

That address and the unfolding narrative are equally marked by all of the signifiers of digital culture: the address is simultaneously