I hope you are right about the net becoming more open source and heterogeneous Alan. But my experience leads me to think otherwise. I can't speak of what is happening in the States but here in the UK (and the EU) government is going to great lengths to work with industry to find ways to monetise the net. This is about big business, who have the resources government needs to make its policies happen, and small companies (from one person micro-startups to SME's with maybe 100 employees) working closely with government policy makers and various research agencies to reformulate how people access and use the net. A recent and substantial shift is the advent of mobile smart media. These handheld devices are undeniably powerful and allow all sorts of things to be done that are difficult with conventional computers (like GPS, AR, etc) but a key difference in these devices is that they are not computers in the sense that Turing proposed the computer. They are not programmable systems but client devices. You need to programme them with a computer and load the software onto the client. Policy makers, both in government and commerce, love this. I've been at meetings where "suits" debate the importance of the development of such devices in ensuring control of access to and use of the net. To a small degree they are thinking about how these consumer technologies make it more difficult for "alternate" or "perverse" uses of the net to be sustained but mainly they are thinking about IP and money. They want to make sure that centralised authorship (the means of production), which has been under threat since the advent of the PC and the internet, can be re-constructed and traditional producer/consumer relations re-established. These are people from News International, the BBC, Pearson, Apple, Google, Microsoft and various corporations of diverse character. But they all share this focus on regaining control of IP. A good place to begin in comprehending what government is seeking to do, in complicity with such corporations, is to read the Hargreaves report (link below). Here you will find that things like co-creation are identified as emerging trends but you will note that by this they do not mean an enabled populace liberating themselves through creative activity on the net but a supplicant audience hooked on a centrally produced media product through their sublimated engagement in it. Here you can keep the image of Julie Christie in Fahrenheit 451, engaging in false interactive dialogue with TV characters who are actually not aware of her existence, to the fore. It is beautifully tragic moment which sums up so much of our contemporary media - along with the drug overdose that follows and her complete forgetting of events. I'm afraid that this will be definitive version and people like you and me will end up in the forest, living amongst the detritus of a lost society - but as I said, I hope you are right and I'm wrong.
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipreview-finalreport.pdf best Simon On 10 Sep 2011, at 01:51, Alan Sondheim wrote: > > > I'm not sure how that was decided, i.e. her importance. Universities here > tended to know her by which I mean media people. > > Of course the net's different but not all that different - I think of > Wikileaks for example. It's just that a lot of the edgier stuff has gone > underground which is natural; the demographics favors of course average > users for whom Fb or + are gods of sorts. > > You're right about students not knowing the early net, but that's also the > job of universities, to critically deepen the understanding of tools and > conditions we're working with/under. Usenet's an obvious example. > Fidonet's an example of a different form of organization for social media > - and one that might become increasingly necessary in the future. > > I do use Fb a lot, as well as the lounge.espdisk.com blog, Eyebeam's blog, > who knows what else, + I guess. But it's my understanding, say, of the > phenomenology and promise of lists that makes me able to deal critically > with them. > > I do wonder what the stats are for email lists and how they're gathered - > do you know? A list like Poetics is going full blast, although I have > problems with what 'going' means in that context. I'm also curious about > IRC stats and newsgroups, since some of the last are functioning on a > highly technical level. > > Finally, I find it problematic that you find the net 'dominated by big > business, etc., that is going to be more like that' (pardon the bad > quoting). I don't feel any of us know how things are going to develop; we > all have our contacts, habitus, invisible colleges, networkings, etc., and > radically different experiences and predictions as a result. I see a far > more open source and open net coming, but then I'm dealing with AR and at > Eyebeam, hactivism people. I think the net in fact is getting too large to > characterize uniformly, just as "America" tends to resist (at least from > inside) generality, beyond the problematic of formal governance. > > - Alan > > On Fri, 9 Sep 2011, Simon Biggs wrote: > >> Who was voting? There was a period, back when NN was active, when the >> Net was smaller and less commercialised. In that context a certain >> sample of users would have known NN and voted for her. Nowadays the net >> is a different universe, dominated by big business and government >> policy. It is only going to be more like that. It is the infrastructure >> of the knowledge economy - and government and business have a particular >> understanding of what the term economy means: making money and creating >> jobs/consumers. As I often work at the juncture of academic research >> (into the internet), government policy and commercial development it is >> clear to me that the net's future is nothing like its past - and the >> future is now. >> >> My students have little or no knowledge of the early net. They know it >> through Facebook, Twitter, blogs, BBC, apps and other commercial and/or >> custom portals. They haven't the faintest what The Well is, much less >> Nettime, Thing or 7-11. In the case of 7-11 you cannot teach them about >> it as the archives and other traces have been so effectively removed. >> Only individual artist's documentation exists - but that isn't the same. >> 7-11 was a creative community/happening and it would be great to present >> it as it was then, in its entirety. I only have my own archive (probably >> 25% of the material) to show them. >> >> Many of our researchers also have little knowledge of these early >> examples of net culture. Some do (the artists, media nuts, >> anthropologists, etc) but those working between academe and industry >> (which is most) simply aren't interested. They see the net as the >> saviour of TV and publishing. They recognise it is fundamentally >> different - but their response is not to consider cultural alternatives >> but to work out new business models (eg: social media means social >> gaming linked to a network TV series). I'm sorry it is like that, but >> it's how it is. At this point we probably need an under-net, and it is >> possible that list serves (like usenet, almost a subject for media >> archeology) are that. >> >> Ana is right that list serves are dying. The number of people on the net >> has exploded but the numbers using list serves have shrunk. Many >> artistic communities that once communicated via list serves have moved >> to blog, nings or Facebook groups. Google+ Circles, despite the failure >> of Google Wave, are the next development. Alan, you make good use of >> that... >> >> best >> >> Simon >> >> >> On 9 Sep 2011, at 17:48, Alan Sondheim wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> She was actually voted one of the 25 most important women on the Net. I >>> had some dealing with her. And everyone I knew, knew her - she might have >>> been better known in the US; NATO55 was in a lot of places. >>> >>> On Fri, 9 Sep 2011, Simon Biggs wrote: >>> >>>> Seems to overstate both the worth of turn of the Century network culture >>>> (we are talking about a few hundred people here on a list serve or two) >>>> and NN. More like a sub-cultural splinter group... Of all the people on >>>> the internet I doubt more than 0.01% have ever heard of NN. Hardly >>>> infamous. >>>> >>>> (but as NN is eternally prescient I am sure I will now be burned to a >>>> crisp ;) >>>> >>>> best >>>> >>>> Simon >>>> >>>> >>>> On 9 Sep 2011, at 14:25, marc garrett wrote: >>>> >>>>> Netochka Nezvanova. >>>>> >>>>> One of the most famous and infamous EccentricCharacters in >>>>> turn?of?the?21st Century Western artistic NetworkCulture, Netochka >>>>> Nezvanova (aka N.N., antiorp, integer, Irena Sabine Czubera) remains an >>>>> enigma to many. Widely believed to be an IdentityCollective?, Netochka >>>>> Nezvanova is a PenName named after the title character in [an early >>>>> unfinished Fyodor Dostoevsky novel] whose name means "nameless nobody" >>>>> in Russian. The identity always presents itself as female, though it may >>>>> not be in reality. Despite the meaning of her moniker, N.N. has coveted >>>>> attention and recognition like few others on the Internet. >>>>> >>>>> http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/NetochkaNezvanova >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list >>>>> [email protected] >>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Simon Biggs | [email protected] | www.littlepig.org.uk >>>> >>>> [email protected] | Edinburgh College of Art | University of Edinburgh >>>> www.eca.ac.uk/circle | www.elmcip.net | www.movingtargets.co.uk >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> NetBehaviour mailing list >>>> [email protected] >>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >>>> >>>> >>> >>> == >>> eyebeam: http://eyebeam.org/blogs/alansondheim/ >>> email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ >>> web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552 >>> music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/ >>> current text http://www.alansondheim.org/re.txt >>> == >>> _______________________________________________ >>> NetBehaviour mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >>> >> >> >> Simon Biggs | [email protected] | www.littlepig.org.uk >> >> [email protected] | Edinburgh College of Art | University of Edinburgh >> www.eca.ac.uk/circle | www.elmcip.net | www.movingtargets.co.uk >> >> _______________________________________________ >> NetBehaviour mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >> >> > > == > eyebeam: http://eyebeam.org/blogs/alansondheim/ > email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ > web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552 > music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/ > current text http://www.alansondheim.org/re.txt > == > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > Simon Biggs | [email protected] | www.littlepig.org.uk [email protected] | Edinburgh College of Art | University of Edinburgh www.eca.ac.uk/circle | www.elmcip.net | www.movingtargets.co.uk _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
