-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] The NetArtizens Project
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2015 20:14:54 +0000
From: Edward Picot <[email protected]>
To: Randall Packer <[email protected]>
Randall -
I'm afraid I don't really buy the idea that poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of the world. The phrase is from Shelley, at the end of his
/Apology for Poetry/, published in 1821. In his peroration he said that
he was writing in an age of great revolutionary changes, and the world
was being reshaped by great revolutionary thinkers, and poets were at
the forefront of the process. In many ways he was right, yet what
actually happened throughout the nineteenth century was not the social
revolution he envisaged, but the industrial revolution with all its
social consequences: not the triumph of the imagination for which he
hoped, but the triumph of capitalism which is still with us.
Tim Berners-Lee envisaged the Web (as distinct from the Net) as a means
of sharing ideas and information, and also a means of connecting people,
in an anti-hierarchical way:
'CERN is a wonderful organisation. It involves several thousand people,
many of them very creative, all working toward common goals. Although
they are nominally organised into a hierarchical management structure,
this does not constrain the way people will communicate, and share
information, equipment and software across groups. The actual observed
working structure of the organisation is a multiply connected "web"
whose interconnections evolve with time...'
When I first started learning HTML and mucking around on the Web, in
about 2000, it was much easier to see it in these terms than it is now.
Amazon, Google, YouTube, Facebook and I-Tunes were all absent from the
scene. Websites were much more primitive, and as a result it was more
difficult to distinguish between the ones with big budgets behind them
and those that had been produced by individuals or small groups. It
seemed to be a space in which the voice of the individual could be heard
almost as clearly as the voice of the big corporation.
I came to the Web because I was interested in self-publishing, and it
seemed to me that the Web represented a real alternative to the
mainstream: a chance for alternative voices to be heard, and for
interested readers/viewers/browsers to find their way to material that
didn't have a big promotional budget behind it. And the theory of the
Long Tail, which was then current, seemed to bear out this idea: the Web
was going to liberate us from the tyranny of the best-seller and the
blockbuster; it was going to rechannel interest and money towards the
small and quirky, the truly original; and in doing so it was going to
create an alternative to the mass-marketing version of capitalism which
had been taking a stronger and stronger grip on our economies and social
structures ever since the war. Instead of Hollywood we would have small
independent film producers. Instead of Random House we would have small
independent book publishers. Instead of MacDonalds and Coca-Cola and the
supermarkets we would have small independent farms and food producers,
maybe organised into cooperatives.
Some of this has actually happened. On a personal level I've certainly
found all sorts of interesting people and all sorts of interesting stuff
because of the Web, things that I never would have known to exist
without it. I've been able to buy stuff from outside the mainstream,
really exciting stuff, and I've been able to sell some of my own work
too - not much, but more than I would have done without the Web. But I
can't help feeling that the bigger picture is one of the whole Web
enterprise turning inside-out in a rather nightmarish fashion. The big
corporations have simply changed their game. Instead of making us accept
what they want to feed us and starving us of alternatives, they've sold
us back our own dreams in mass-produced packages that they own. Instead
of telling us that we can only read what they want us to read, write
what they want us to write, watch what they want us to watch, and listen
to what they want us to hear, they now tell us that we can read, write,
watch and listen to whatever we like, as long as they own the devices
and the spaces on which and in which we do it.
So what are your responsibilities as a citizen of the Net? I would say
to use and promote non-corporation, commonly-owned devices and spaces as
much as possible. And whenever you find something outside the mainstream
that you like, something really original and interesting, to tell other
people about it so they can enjoy it too. In other words, to do whatever
you can to nurture a genuinely liberated and alternative culture.
But don't hope for too much. They guys with the money hold all the good
cards.
- Edward
On 04/03/15 15:52, Randall Packer wrote:
>>>> “I'm not sure I feel like a citizen of the net. …. it (citizen)
[also}] means 'A person who is legally recognized as a member
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/member> of a state
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/state>, with associated rights and
obligations’… and I'm not sure I feel any of those things about the Net."
All true @Edward, all true… but, I leave with you with the following
Tweet I sent out yesterday (with some embellishment) :
#*netartizens* <https://twitter.com/hashtag/netartizens?src=hash>: the
#*Internet* <https://twitter.com/hashtag/Internet?src=hash> as our own
self-proclaimed #*nation*
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/nation?src=hash> not requiring
hierarchical authority from above to be [granted the rights of]
citizenship [of our own domain].
Once again, it gets back to the idea of the artist as modeler,
breaking the status quo, the artist as illustrator of new ways of
seeing the world.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not sure I feel like a citizen of the net. The word 'citizen' has
the same root as 'city' and partly means 'living in a city or town';
it also means 'someone who lives in a state which is not a monarchy' -
hence the French revolutionaries addressing each other as 'citizen' -
but it also means 'A person who is legally recognized as a member
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/member> of a state
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/state>, with associated rights and
obligations' (Wiktionary), and I'm not sure I feel any of those things
about the Net. I do, on the other hand, feel a sense of community - a
word which is connected both to 'communication' and 'common' - a sense
of sharing and fellowship - but not with everyone else on the Net, or
with all other parts of the Net, just with certain circles or
associations in which I have become involved, like Furtherfield and
NetBehaviour.
I'd like to put forward the word 'NetArtisans' as an alternative to
'NetArtizens', because I don't feel like a citizen of the net, but I
do feel like someone who takes material off the net and tries to
hand-make new artefacts out of it (if you can call mucking around with
bits of software hand-making).
- Edward
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