Radical Software (United States)

Radical Software, which was the first magazine devoted to the emerging alternative video subculture in the late 1960s and early 1970s, published 11 issues from 1970 to 1974. It was founded as a project of the Raindance Corporation, an alternative media think-tank started in 1969 by artist and radical media activist Frank Gillette, filmmaker Ira Schneider and Time magazine reporter Michael Shamberg. The Raindance Corporation, which was then a collective focused on cybernetics, media, and ecology, produced Michael Shamberg's Guerrilla Television (1971) and Video Art: An Anthology (1976), which was one of the first compilations on the subject. Radical Software was devoted to examining the media power structure and the role of communication and media in society.

The journal often featured computer-generated graphics and comics on topics such as guerrilla television, techno-realism, and Marshall McLuhan. The journal advocated pushing the limits of traditional video to liberate it from corporate control and conventional aesthetics. Radical Software served as the voice for an emerging movement influenced by early 1960s rough-cut cinéma vérité. The journal also served as a forum for opposing groups and viewpoints within the underground video movement.

The 1968 public introduction of the first portable video camera, the Sony Portapak, which opened up to the public the power of video production, was an epochal event for the editors. They concluded there was a distinct shift in the media power structure, with the conglomerates no longer monopolizing the means of communication.

According to the first editorial page of the first issue of Radical Software in 1970, “Power is no longer measured in land, labour or capital, but by access to information and the means to disseminate it” (http://www.radicalsoftware.org/volume1nr1/pdf/V0LUME1NR1_0002.pdf). For the magazine's creators, the freedom of information was a sought-after ideal. Their optimism and assertions were far too sweeping, but the Portapak did give the average citizen power to create video and then disseminate it on public access television.

The magazine itself did not display a typical copyright symbol, but instead a circle with an “x” inside, which was meant to signify their wishes for the information to be copied freely. Although similar to the idea of “copyleft,” which uses a backward “c” inside a circle as its symbol, Radical Software's use of their symbol predated copyleft by several years.

The publication fell victim to many of the same pitfalls as other zines. The group did not have a cheap method of distribution; instead, they would drive across country with the first run and often giving out copies for free. As a result, profits were elusive.