Last month the Institute of Network Cultures organized a two day conference entitled Society of the Query. Below you can find a wrap-up of the notes I took during the conference. More elaborate blog entries focusing on each of the lectures separately can be found here and you can also take a look at the video recordings here.

Subtitled Stop searching start questioning, the Society of the Query conference was soon nick-named the anti-Google conference, though its focus was a little bit different. The underlying idea was to take a critical look at Google and its dominance in the digital domain, as a way to start thinking about ways to conceptualize the idea of search, and to think about its theoretical background. In order to achieve this goal, the Institute of Network Cultures brought together people from all kinds of disciplines and backgrounds, academics, tech people, artists, media critics, to discuss the politics and culture and the philosophy and aesthetics of the search and search engines. As Geert Lovink, the main organizer states in his opening talk, the (sub)title of the conference was dedicated to the American Computer Scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, who wrote about the rise of the search paradigm and asked the question what the long-term implications would be of this search dominance. Hence the motto of the conference ‘stop searching, start questioning.’ What are the wider consequences of the rise of search in everyday life, of surfing as the dominant activity on the Web? As Lovink states, the Internet is still widely under theorized: we need some new ideas and theories to reflect upon this issue. Lovink’s aim is to develop a cultural theory of search. To achieve this we should (also) focus on alternative (search) models, for through the alternatives we can also come to a better understanding of the present situation and how to deal with Google.

From the perspective of critique (anti-trust, legal issues) we can consider from which point of view to take on this giant. What exactly defines our problem with Google, is it (justified) fear, is it envy? What disturbs us so much about Google itself? Whatever the problem, as Lovink says, we should not let Google become an obsession. We should not underestimate our influence when it comes to the power we have to develop political, aesthetic and cultural concepts that can undermine this giant. In this respect Lovink feels theory and criticism have a much larger role to play. Research, alternatives interfaces, and artistic interpretations all contribute to a cultural flow that could push things into another direction.

The first speaker, Yann Moulier Boutang, from France, recently wrote a book entitled Cognitive Capitalism. The main question he asks during his talk is whether it is possible to escape the monopoly of Google. For the dominant position of Google is growing each year. Exactly why is Google so popular, he asks. According to Boutang this mainly has to do with the increasing number of services Google offers. The problem is that these services are increasingly being perceived as being new ‘commons’ or services that should be public state services. Hence we are not only afraid of Google’s monopoly but even more afraid of Google becoming (being?) a rent seeker of our own collective intelligence, exploiting us as producers of knowledge. In a way Google’s platform can thus be seen as a form of cognitive capitalism, as a factory for the commoditization of knowledge.

Boutang describes what in his view can be seen as the economic model of Google. Google creates a neo- or meta-market on top of a society of personal data, of singularities (pollen). The counterintuitive part of this model is that it needs some ‘free’ or ‘gratis’ space in order to be able to aggregate some added value in another field. You need some non-market driven services to aggregate money. ‘Free’ is thus an inescapable part of the model. Who is working for Google? We are. By our contribution (clicking, surfing) we pollinate. Google offers us a platform, a hub. What Google sells is thus not only a space for publicity but also the network itself in real time. And this is the strength of Google: it offers you a platform of free services and lets you through these services again contribute to the platform: it functions as an economy of contribution which you add to by pollination. What Google sells to firms is not knowledge as a good but the possibility to enter into the market. In the realm of cognitive capitalism a shift has thus occurred from the sphere of marketable input and output to the sphere of human pollination. As Boutang states, this naturally creates a problem. Where knowledge is perceived as a public good, Google gathers its income from the exchange of information and knowledge, creating additional value in this process. Google, as a true capitalist, is able to capture this value created in the net by building platforms that function like agricultures or hives. In this way, Boutang says, Google is emblematic of the “communism of capitalism”. We need to understand that the basics of our economy have changed. And this raises some important questions: Is it possible to free the click workers? Can a search engine increase our autonomy? Should we think about a nationalization of Google? (where Google imitated the public model of knowledge?) And what about the privacy issue? And should we protect the peer to peer networks?

The next speaker, Matteo Pasquinelli, an Italian media critic, starts his talk by stating that knowledge is easy to replicate, since it is non-competitative or non-rival. Where we have embraced the network as a new kind of space for social interaction and self organization, the digital sphere at the same time also amplifies competition. The digital matrix multiplied everything, cooperation as well as monopoly. Pasquinelli wonders whether knowledge is (still) really non-competitive, with the monopolistic colonization of the digital sphere by Google. Referring to Nicolas Carr, he states that the hearth of Google is the page rank algorithm. With this algorithm, Google mines the intelligence that is in the number of links. The greater amount of links to a site, the greater its knowledge. And clicking on the links makes the system smarter, Pasquinelli states, referring again to the diagram of cognitive capitalism. In this sense the digital sphere can no longer be satisfyingly analyzed in the context of ‘the good people and the evil empire’ in the  Foucaltian, biopolitical idea of control and the big brother paradigm. Where Google produces value in a new way, Pasquinelli states we cannot use these old conceptual tools to describe this process. We should not focus on control but on value and on how this value is produced, accumulated and re-appropriated by us. Pasquinelli asks whether it is possible to do critical network thinking? And what notion of value do we need with that? How can we describe the value of the node, of the way Google organizes the fluid, liquid flow of data through its algorithm? It is an economic flow of values that circulates on the Internet and offline. What is the value of the network? How do we valorize the level of pollination and valorization, now that the value of circulation is much higher than the value of production?

Google’s income comes from advertising. But as Pasquinelli states, Google is exploiting cultural capital with this. What about the copyright question when free culture and free cooperation feeds Google? Social production and the idea of free knowledge propagated by thinkers like Lawrence Lessig are quite naïve, Pasquinelli states, because they do not grasp the whole value system around knowledge and the way our free contributions add value to the system. We need to think about new business models that look into this exploitation which also entails a dematerialization of traditional commodities. With this crisis of the traditional commodity and product (everything free) comes the rise of a new monopoly, a monopoly of space instead of a monopoly of the product: Google monopolizes the metadata space. We are faced with a liquid matrix which makes it very difficult to challenge Google. Pasquinelli asks whether we could not create an open-source page-rank algorithm. Whatever we create, it has to relate to the way Google extracts value. Pasquinelli ends his talk by proposing that maybe the model of CrossRef might be an alternative, or creating a page rank based on trust.

Teresa Numerico, from the university of Rome, gave a very interesting talk on cybernetics, search engines and resistance. With the metaphor of cybernetics, mechanical devices can be described in terms of biological organisms. They are able to self-organize themselves as if they could interact and exchange messages with the environment. In this way we can interpret machines as vehicles of messages (input or output) without questioning what happens with them. Numerico goes deeper into the system of cybernetics as developed by Norbert Wiener. According to Wiener, messages between man and machine, between machines and man and between machines and machines are destined to play an ever-increasing role. Communication can thus be seen as interactive, as the collective possibility of interacting. According to Wiener, information cannot be stored. If we store it, we will depreciate its value, where information is more a matter of process than of storage. Numerico also discusses Joseph Licklider and his ideas concerning the library of the future, consisting of a new form of collecting, of controlling and monitoring the processing of information. After discussing Plato’s Meno dilemma, Numerico describes the elements of a search engine and what makes them similar to the cybernetics metaphor. For the ranking algorithm hypnotizes the self-organization within the network. Google gives us a cognitive pattern or framework that is very strong, which is also shown by research into the information behavior of the researcher of the future (Jan 2008), which shows that horizontal information seeking is all around. Numerico combines this cybernetic search engine perspective with Foucault’s idea of the archeology of knowledge and the definition of the archive. It is obvious that the archive of a society is part of the culture of that civilization. At the same time we now have no control over the meaning of the archive as it is being created. The question is however what we value more, control or communication? Numerico ends by suggesting some actions for resistance against cognitive control (in a Deleuzian fashion):

-Be creative not communicative

-Choose ‘pourparles’ instead of communication

-Close the devices (every now and then)

-Live without leaving (too many) digital traces

-Do not interpret people and the world only according to their digital representations

-Forget or delete digital memories

-Express the living culture; in Fahrenheit 451 people learnt books by hearth

 Other things we might do according to Numerico:

-Stimulate cross generation information literacy and education

-Encourage variation. Variation is the key-factor for the transmission of knowledge and culture: variation vs. standardization: support all different searching technologies. For we need to have different perspectives on technology

-Asses trust and authority by checking a multiple sources through a cross-mediation effort.

Numerico stresses that we should stimulate difference and variation in the creation of the archive by a double-strategy consisting of both logging off on the one side and creating alternatives on the other. She ends by stating that conversation also needs time and relaxation, something we should probably be focusing on more.

The Society of the Query conference was held in Amsterdam between the 13th and 14th of November 2009. It was organized by the Institute of Network Cultures lead by Geert Lovink. The conference aimed to generate reflection on the role of the search engine in our society, and particularly in our culture. What happens to our knowledge and culture when stored on online platforms and accessed through search engines? The dominant role of one particular search engine, Google, was one of the main themes of the conference, along with potential alternatives to web search and interface design, as well as Internet and search engine art.

One may be skeptical of the potential of such Humanities approaches to influence the course of technological developments. However, theory, critical thinking and art play a significant role in that they generate a cultural flow which could alter the course of technology developments  and potentially lead to a different direction.

The posts in this section are articles which I contributed to The Society of the Query blog.

Eso le dijo su madre a un adolescente resacoso, un domingo cualquiera cuando enfundado en su manta gorda se iba corriendo a tirarse al sofá preparado para el ritual de rigor, dejar las horas del día pasar. Que momentos aquellos…los recuerdan,  no?

Ya dijimos una vez que ni lunes al sol existen cuando los bloggers y sus egos están aquí para entretenernos la existencia. Una que recibe interesantones mails de los más listos de la red, el otro día rebuscando en ellos encontré una conferencia muy buena realizada en los encuentros del medialab prado. En ella se hablaba de esa ya comunidad de opiniones personales que es el mundo blogger y sus delirantes habitantes.  Las palabras mas interesantes que salen al calor del concepto blog parecen ser la idea de no representación e independencia, resultado de la multiplicidad de interpretaciones bloggers que abarrotan los cables de la red. Estarán pensando en eso de la  Inteligencia collectiva, calma! que  ya se les avisó una vez que inteligencia colectiva, My ass! . Aún así confesémoslo, los blogs es ya el sitio que tengo allí.

Pero vayamos al principio de todo esto, y no nos quedemos con la idea de que estas dos palabras aparecieron con el mundo blog, oh my good! Y tenemos un posible inicio histórico, un lugar estupendo, el final de los 80 con un Geert Lovink en Amsterdam y su Chaos Computer Club.

Y allí estaban todos, hackers eso sí, pero con las ideas claras de construir una red de información via internet donde la independencia y la participación activa de sus usuarios fuera un fin en si mismo. Algo parecido a lo que ocurrio con las radios pirata de los 60 y 70, no?? Luego en los 90 las estrategias fueron cambiando, claro, es la era de la información por dios! Lean, lean que en el texto se explica estupendamente, sólo una frase les copio/pego:

“Con una sólo excepción: los políticos no llegaron a tiempo al nuevo medio”

Así que les dejo con Geert Lovink, sus disquisiciones sobre el origen del sitio que tengo allí y como no con mi ego…

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Nell’inaugurare questo nuovo blog credo sia doveroso spiegare, innanzi tutto, il senso di un sottotitolo che contraddice il gesto stesso di aprirne uno.
La frase è una citazione tratta da “Zero Comments” di  Geert  Lovink, libro che svolge un’analisi molto interessante sulla blogosfera e sulla “moda adolescenziale e senza senso” del Web 2.0. Chiunque abbia l’abitudine di frequentare blog, non avrà difficoltà a trovarsi d’accordo con Lovink quando dice che i blog sono dei “diari pubblici” in cui vengono annotati fatti e pensieri relativi alla propria condizione esistenziale, o a cose del mondo che hanno una rilevanza particolare per chi scrive e da questo vengono interpretate e rese pubbliche. Ma gli interrogativi, specie per chi come me ha appena aperto il suo secondo blog, sono molti e aumenta anche proporzionalmente il senso di colpa per il fatto di contribuire all’aumento di quel “rumore di fondo del cyberspazio” che non ha nulla nè di originale nè di utile. La dicitura “0 commenti” in riferimento ad un post è in questo senso emblematica… significa che non interessa a nessuno! E allora perchè continuare a redigere un diario pubblico se non per quell’esigenza di visibilità che sembra diventata vitale per la nostra società?

Il motivo per cui mi trovo a concordare con molte delle tesi di questo autore, nonostante la mia colpevole vanità senza giustificazione, è che il fenomeno dei blog ha raggiunto veramente dimensioni planetarie ed è pertanto innegabile che al suo interno si trovino esperienze tutt’altro che edificanti. Internt è stato fin da subito considerato come una forza rivoluzionaria con un inarrestabile potere innovatore e democratico, ma non sempre si è rivelato all’altezza delle aspettative. I blog che sono un esempio di questa voglia di democrazia e di libertà di espressione senza controllo e senza censure, si rivelano oggi come un’arma a doppio taglio, dal momento che i più sono di stampo conservatore e in molti casi svolgono un ruolo decisivo nella crescita dell’intolleranza e della xenofobia (soprattutto antislamica). Chiunque può esprimere le proprie idee, anche chi, probabilmente, scrive quello che gli passa per la testa senza pensare, senza riflettere nè sull’origine dei suoi pregiudizi nè sugli effetti che ha il soffiare sul fuoco dell’intolleranza, delle conclusioni facili e del qualunquismo.

La rivoluzione (culturale, economica, sociale) è ancora lontana e forse i blog non sono nemmeno lo strumento più adatto al suo compimento. Magari l’errore più grande sta proprio nel volerli considerare il motore del cambiamento. Con tutta l’utopia che caratterizza ogni speranza, credo che siano le persone il vero motore di ogni cambiamento e le persone devono essere consapevoli, di loro stesse, del loro ruolo, del mondo che le circonda. Credo che la formazione di donne e uomini consapevoli non possa avvenire tra blog e social network, spesso usati con grande leggerezza e superficialità, senza interrogarsi sulle loro dinamiche economiche e sui loro effetti sociali e in alcuni casi personali. Con tutta la solidarietà per le buone intenzioni di molti blog che si occupano di informazione, credo che la continua e incessante pubblicazione di notizie ci abitui a valutare la realtà in modo troppo sbrigativo e mai approfondito. Non possiamo essere interessati a tutto, bisogna saper scegliere. Scegliere e interpretare attraverso il nostro senso critico senza delegare ad altri il commento della nostra realtà.

Ed è qui che il blog può mantenere il suo umile spazio di utilità. Senza l’arroganza di chi è convinto che la propria autobiografia abbia tutte le carte in regola per diventare il prossimo best seller, confrontare le proprie opinioni e il proprio punto di vista con quello degli altri, avviare discussioni che non siano autoreferenziali ma che possano sviluppare davvero un dibattito costruttivo, magari anche come punto di partenza per progetti più ampi, liberi dagli interessi a breve termine delle corporations e delle volontà di regolamentazione dei governi. Per concludere ancora con le parole di Lovink ” è ora di investire nell’educzione, ricostruire la fiducia e svincolarsi dalla retorica securitaria post 11 settembre“.

Giada

In August 2008 the Dutch media theorist and activist Geert Lovink interviewed Chris Kelty about his book Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Duke University Press, 2008. These are some of the bits I would highlight: 

• Culture is a problematic notion, esp. for anthropologists. It would’ve been easy to fall into the trap of researching and essentialising ‘geek culture’; Two Bits is not about geeks or their ’culture’ but about the history of the five basic Free Software practices and their recent spread to other domains of practice.
• Anthropology today not so much about cultures as about how new ‘objects’ emerge through cultural practices, incl. new practices distributed around the globe
• Anthropologists study ‘vibrant actors in a field of practices, technologies and politics’ whether these be Australian Aborigenes or software programmers.
• There is a new generation of software scholars coming up, challenging existing theories across disciplines, eg about public goods or technology and culture; hopefully will invest time studying the longue duree of historical processes and be ‘critical of the claims of each new generation of toys’.
• On ‘pure forms’ of Free Software that exist today such as Ubuntu or Debian:

The concept of a recursive public was my way of articulating the significance of these pure forms, not just the conditions of their existence. And that significance is 1) that they treat technical infrastructure and decisions about its design as political through and through, as far down the “recursive” stack of technical layers as possible and 2) they do so in order to maintain the possibility not only of an authentic public sphere that they inhabit, but the possibility of the emergence of publics oppositional to themselves, and to those that emerge, and so on.

• What’s interesting about FS is not the shouting and heated debates but that they take place “in the service of” the other four key practices that make up FS; debates rarely about the practices themselves but about the meaning of FS.
• Problems with ‘modulations’ of FS templates in other fields: (a) CC modulated copyleft license notion but got into conceptual muddles, (b) Connexions project modulated ’source code’ to encompass textbooks but found that textbooks are very different from code.

the bigger question, I suggest, is whether in modulating these components, the people and practices involved maintain any hope of expanding or strengthening a public sphere that provides an autonomous space for material and discursive experimentation, even if such practices are not on their surface explicitly Political (with a capital P).

By Anne Helmond (cc) non-commercial name attribution

Paradiso was enlightened last Sunday by the presence of a true Digital Media apostle: Lev Manovich, the renowned professor of Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego, came to give a lecture on Cultural Analytics. His lecture was part of a one day conference, Archive 2020, organized by the Dutch expertise centre for e-culture, Virtueel Platform.

Manovich used the intriguing title Activating the archive or data dandy meets data mining, in which he referenced Dutch media theorist Geert Lovink who previously described the fetish of data collection by individuals and institutions. Manovich’s talk centered on the massive digitization efforts of existing cultural assets by institutions all over the world, from ARTstor to Google Books and BBC motion gallery (and even China’s CCTV). As Manovich argues, no human being will ever be able to keep track of all this data. However increasingly measures are taken in which the digital preservation of cultural assets is turning into an obligatory act (hence the fetish reference). Moreover this institutionalized digitization is accompanied since, let’s say 2005, by the rise of huge amounts of user generated content. As Manovich mentions, the number of images uploaded every week to Flickr is likely to be larger than all objects contained in all art museums of the world. This development sees a parallel expansion of the professional cultural universe. This rapid growth of a professional universe can mainly be seen in newly globalized countries foremost due to the growth of software tools which made for the instant availability of cultural news. Everyone now has access to the same ideas, information and tools: there are no more centers and provinces. Manovich even argues that the students, cultural professionals and governments in newly globalized countries are often more ready to embrace the latest ideas than their equivalents in the “old centers” of the world.

By Anne Helmond (cc) non-commercial name attribution

All in all this has lead to an explosive growth of cultural production. This has again lead to some intriguing questions and problems: “What does it mean to be a (video) artist today and what does it mean to do cultural criticism in such a world of superabundance? Before cultural theorists and historians generated theories and concepts about relative small data sets. But how can you track “global digital cultures” with billions of cultural objects? As Manovich argues, we need some new methods to track these developments in our cultural imagination. We need a new methodology for the study of cultural processes and artifacts – including cultural production, sharing and consumption. As Manovich explains, to analyze large cultural data sets of cultural information we can apply tools already employed in the sciences to analyze big data. We can create interactive visualizations and dynamic maps of large cultural data sets to find new patterns – and to generate new theoretical questions. Traditional boundaries disappear as visualization can be seen as esthetic statements about the world, so as forms of art (see for instance Stefanie Posavec’s literary organism). Forms of cultural data mining are already starting to rise up as we are slowly shifting from a world of new media into a world of “more media”. In this respect Manovich states ‘culture has become data’. This data (including media content and people’s creative and social activity around this content, i.e. social media) can be and will be mined and visualized.

Manovich explains his new methodology of ‘cultural analytics’ as the use of data mining and interactive visualizations of large sets of cultural data in the humanities context. Manovich introduced the idea of cultural analytics first in 2005 and you can find more information about this method at softwarestudies.com.

Manovich argues that if you have an interesting idea today, you can be sure someone has the same idea somewhere else. Thus it makes no more sense to experience and study these single events. We need to start studying trends and patterns in culture instead of individual projects of ideas and concepts. We need to look at these projects in a larger context of global cultural production.

But how do you put this in practice? We need to represent and work with individual cultural objects and then work to larger and larger datasets. The key differences between existing work in culture visualization and Manovich’s approach, lies in the fact that most research projects now are driven by the existing data. Manovich wants to create techniques which can be used for much larger data sets. In contrast his methodology uses the computational analysis to generate new metadata. In this way one now creates the metadata around the objects, not the patterns inside. Manovich proposes to appropriate software from hard sciences and use them to look at work of arts and cultural works.

He gives examples of a few research projects he has worked on focusing on modern art. You can for example use software to analyze large datatsets of paintings. In this way a computer can ‘see’ whether a painting is realist or modernist (by measuring grayscale, particles, forms etc). Along these lines you can analyze the development of visual culture over time. By means of image processing you can describe the paintings qualitatively in terms of numbers. We can now make new distinctions on the basis of these outcomes; a trend line. In this way one generates new questions. As Manovich states, this method is not about answering old questions. Instead it offers new visions concerning the development of modernism from realism to modernism.

Manovich did a similar project which analyzed 165 paintings by Mark Rothko using a visual super computer to extract computational data. These are all examples of easier and sometimes more productive ways to look at culture. We can get a lot of data from these methods, Manovich says. Also, born digital media is highly interactive, and it is easy to record user interaction and user statistics. We can now use these techniques to ask different questions. This could be very interesting for, for instance, reception theory; we can now analyze the actual patterns of interaction with culture.

Manovich also expanded his analysis to movies, analyzing the variance in shot lengths in movies showing a “development over time”. The average shot length of feature films between 1900-2008 gives some interesting insides into the differences in cultural history in different countries, comparing France, the Soviet Union, the US etc. (in which the Russians proved most extreme or avant-garde prone with Vertov at the one extreme and Tarkovksi at the other…).

These kind of tools would also be able to ‘go around’ the canon. Where in normal science the focus is mostly on the canon, now we can do art history about larger contexts. But unfortunately it is mostly the canon that has been digitized. We should thus expand the canon in our digitization efforts, argues Manovich. But we can not archive everything…Therefore Manovich states we should archive equal amounts of ‘important’ canonical art and ‘random art’ to balance, in his words, ‘the important stuff wit the non important stuff’.

The critique of the audience focused mainly on the problem of how one can quantify qualitative issues? For Manovich seems to propose a shift from qualitative to quantitative analysis. As Manovich replied, quite pragmatically: it is going to happen anyway, it is what social scientists are doing. With these techniques we can do more than with a simple manually descriptive qualitative analysis. For computers can analyze things we cannot: they can find similarities and differences in similar and likely objects. And in a way the question stays ‘how do we see?’ The brain is also a kind of computer, Manovich says. Do we analyze that different from a computer?

But, on the other hand, won’t we loose a sense of meaning if we analyze culture like a thing? Manovich argues that this is of course a complementary method, we should not throw away our other ways of establishing meaning. It is a way of expanding them. And it is also an important expansion, for how is one going to ask about the meaning of large datasets? We need to combine the traditionally humanities approach of interpretation with digital techniques to find out more. And again, meaning is not the only thing to look at. It is also about creating an experience. Patterns are the new real of our society.

You can find an interview with Lev Manovich held by Virtueel Platform here and an article explaining cultural analytics here.

Zero Comments – Teoria critica di Internet ha da subito attirato la mia attenzione. Il nuovo libro di Geer Lovink è diviso in due macrotematiche: da una parte analizza il cosiddetto Web 2.0 con particolare focus sui blog, e dall’altra affronta l’argomento New Media Art, lo strano connubio tra arte e tecnologia digitale. La parte che mi ha maggiormente interessato è stata la prima. Non me ne vogliano gli esponenti delle ultime esplorazioni di computer e ambienti virtuali, ma i primi capitoli, ricchi di aneddoti e considerazioni circa la blogosfera, sono risultati più affini ai miei interessi (lavorativi e non). Dato per assodato l’assioma di Ian Davis per cui il web 2.0 è “un’attitudine, non una tecnologia“, il testo indaga sull’idelogia del free e sul modo con il quale gli strumenti della Rete stiano modificando l’accesso all’informazione (molto interessante per esempio il fenomeno dei “shocklog” olandesi). Argomenti decisamente complessi ma, almeno per il sottoscritto, di sicuro appeal. Il saggio, tramite una sorta tavola rotonda su carta, affronta la teoria generale del blog, un’analisi che cerca di interpretare la blogosfera e gli utenti che confrontandosi tra loro contribuiscono ad accrescerla di minuto in minuto. Qual è l’impulso che sottende i blog? Nichilismo? Cinismo? Vanità? Contro-cultura o conservatorismo? In che modo i blog determinano il sociale che li circonda? A queste e altre domande il libro tenta di dare un risposta, restando su una sfera prettamente teorica e, forse, alla fine un po’ confusionaria in quanto strutturata come un vasto puzzle di tanti contributi diversi tra i quali è facile perdere il filo (anche perchè le conclusioni vengono spesso lasciate ai lettori). Un libro molto “filosofico” insomma – corredato di Glossario – per adetti ai lavori, interessante ma a tratti di non semplicissima lettura.

Een nederlandstalige versie konden we niet direct vinden, maar deze “zeven resoluties voor 2009″ zijn te mooi om ze u niet mee te geven. Ze werden geschreven naar aanleiding van een debat op de empyre list en zijn nu te vinden op het net critique blog van media-theoreticus en net-activist Geert Lovink.

Geert Lovink
Seven Resolutions for 2009

1. Radical makeover of Indymedia into an irresistible network of networks, aimed to link local initiatives, worldwide, that aim to bring down corporate capitalism. In order to do this Indymedia needs to go beyond the (alternative) news paradigm. This is the time to do it. If not now, when? The debate should be about the possible adaptation, or perhaps transcendence (think negative dialectics) of the social networking approach. Is it enough if we all start to twitter? Perhaps not. A lot of the online conversations at the moment circle around these topics. There is a real momentum building up here, and that’s exciting.

2. Renaissance of theory, radical texts that appeal to young people and help them to dream again, aimed to develop critical concepts, cool memes and audio-visual whispers that can feed the collective imagination with new, powerful ideas that are capable to move people into action. Theory, in this context, means speculative philosophies, not academic writing or hermetic bible texts, aimed to exclude outsiders and those with the wrong belief system. Overcoming political correctness in the way that beats populism would be the way to go.

3. Dismantling the academic exclusion machine. With this I mean the hilarious peer review dramas that we see around us everywhere, aimed to reproduce the old boys networks, excluding different voices, discourses and networked research practices. We need to have the civil courage to say no to these suppressive and utterly wrong bureaucratic procedures that, in the end, result in the elimination of quality, creativity and criticism (and, ironically, of innovation, too). In the same way we need to unleash a social movement of those who dare to say no to all these silly copyright contracts that we’re forced to sign. We should stop signing away our ‘intellectual property’ and begin to radicalize and help democratize and popularize the creative commons and floss movements.

4. Overcoming media genres and expertise prisons in order to productively connect our knowledge and experience. With this I do not mean diplomatic gestures to open up token channels for interdisciplinary dialogue. Any formal attempt to bring together people from different backgrounds is bound to fail. What might be a solution is to go for hybrid-pervert situations in order to investigate the absurd edges of the knowledge universe. Again, any model that somehow wants to move towards a synthesis (or convergence) is doomed to be irrelevant and will only be instrumentalized in institutional restructurings in which the creative-subversive elements are the ones that will be excluded.

5. Squatting the overlooked ruins of the 2009 crisis. There is an enormous economic infrastructure that is being abandoned at the moment, ripe to be socialized. The problem, however, is that we do not really ’see’ it, in the same way as in the 1970s and 80s many did not see the subversive potential of squatting warehouses, factories and old housing stock. Luckily this is merely a matter of start wearing the right pair of glasses. Put them on and you discover an abundance of abandoned resources, ready to be re-used.

6. Global crackdown of the corporate consultancy class. We have to get a better understanding of the dubious role that the Ernst & Young/PricewaterhouseCooper etc. consultants are playing, from downsizing firms, coaching NGOs and global civil society professionals, privatizing public infrastructure, to running entire education sectors. Not only are they experts in cooking the books (see the dotcom crash). Their role as (invisible) advisers, speech writers and PR managers needs some serious investigative journalism a la Naomi Klein.

7. Opening channels for collective imagination. It’s not enough to say that another world is possible (we know that). Radical reform plans are available-and are being implemented as we speak-by the bankrupt neo-liberal elites, in a desperate attempt to somehow make it to 2010 or 2011, when the recession will be over and old policies can be continued again. It’s not enough to be satisfied with the promise of a green GM car, made in the USA. We can think, and build, so much more. For this to happen, the corporate elites need to be dispossessed of their power. Calling for ‘change’ comes with consequences: dethronement. Sorry, you fu*ked up badly. It’s time to step down and move on. Exit.

Geert has just edited a new book. Pretty involved, and not up everyone’s street but I bet you its good. Check it out.

O melhor comentario sobre ele ta na lista do descentro.org postado pelo Tiago Novaes: {Pois eh, um liberal. Um evolucionista de “short-term solution”, fraco “content provider”… só mesmo usando os termos dele para descrever sua posição claramente pró gênio, regado a “mérito”, calcado em pioneirismo dentro da perspectiva capitalista de avanço inevitável das indústrias culturais. Pouco importa a pessoa do geert, mas esse pensamento, que ele não assume decadente, está sim diante de uma força política impensável desde a formulação das sociedades disciplinares: estamos falando de bens imateriais abundantes em uma sociedade fundada sobre valores de bens escassos, e só isso basta pra pensar que os resultados dessa contradição não estão ao alcance nem dos mecanismos novos vigilância nem do controle das sociedades industrializadas. Concordo que é difícil dizer sobre o futuro desse embate, mas entre os fronts apresentados, acho que está claro onde se situa geert e nosostros.}

Entrevista da Revista Epoca – 14/05/2008 – 17:54 | Edição nº 521

“Faço campanha contra o Google”

Por que o ativista da era digital combate uma das empresas mais inovadoras da era da internet

Peter Moon

A internet é uma debutante. Faz 15 anos que seu acesso foi liberado ao público mundial. Mas ela está longe da maturidade. Para o estudioso holandês Geert Lovink, de 48 anos, um dos principais ativistas europeus da cultura digital, a web está mudando rápido. À medida que seu acesso se democratiza, ela se liberta dos valores de seus criadores no Vale do Silício para refletir as diversas realidades da humanidade. Professor da Universidade de Amsterdã, Lovink dá boas-vindas às novas webs nacionais. A primeira é a chinesa, marcada pela censura. Mas Lovink aposta numa versão brasileira, outra indiana e uma africana. O único risco é o monopólio do Google, bem diante de nossos olhos.

ÉPOCA – Qual é o mal da internet?
Geert Lovink – Estou preocupado com o surgimento do monopólio do Google. Está acontecendo diante de nossos olhos e não estamos fazendo nada contra isso. Estamos trocando o monopólio da Microsoft pelo do Google. Minha prioridade aqui na Holanda é fazer campanha contra o Google, convencer as pessoas a usar sites de busca alternativos e manter seus provedores de correio eletrônico, e não usar o Gmail.

ÉPOCA – O domínio da Microsoft se dá pelos PCs. Mas o do Google é virtual.
Lovink – Sim. Por isso monopólio não é a melhor palavra. A expressão correta é hegemonia, uma hegemonia tecnológica em que a infra-estrutura que usamos pertence ao Google. Isso é evidente entre os brasileiros, os maiores usuários do Orkut, a rede social da empresa. Quando se usa o Gmail ou o Orkut, todos os seus dados se tornam mercadoria de uma única empresa.

ÉPOCA – Quais são as grandes mudanças da cultura digital nos últimos anos?
Lovink – A web 2.0 com suas redes sociais e um afastamento dos países ocidentais. Não vejo as duas coisas como separadas. Para mim, são uma só. A maioria dos profissionais ainda está antenada no que acontece no Vale do Silício. É preciso ampliar os horizontes. Na próxima fase da internet, não será mais possível pegar as idéias da Califórnia e adotá-las em todo o mundo. No caso dos Brics (Brasil, Rússia, Índia e China), não se trata de adaptar, mas de criar culturas digitais distintas.

ÉPOCA – Quando veio ao Brasil em 2005, percebeu algum traço característico dos usuários de computadores daqui?
Lovink – Sim, é bastante óbvio que na cultura brasileira a ênfase sai da produção tradicional de software para um uso abrangente da multimídia. No Brasil, as pessoas não se iniciam na cultura digital aprendendo Linux, mas copiando músicas e produzindo conteúdo. É uma abordagem totalmente diferente.

ÉPOCA – Os 22,7 milhões de usuários residenciais de internet no Brasil permaneceram em média 23 horas e 51 minutos on-line em março, um recorde mundial, à frente dos franceses (21 horas e 30 minutos) e americanos (20 horas e 24 minutos). O que significa isso?
Lovink – Não entendo isso como algo bom. Muito provavelmente se deve às circunstâncias sociais, quando não se tem condições de sair de casa. Gastar muito tempo on-line em redes de relacionamento também não é um sinal de socialização. Está provado que a internet não aumenta a inclusão social.

ÉPOCA – Em Zero Comments (Zero Comentários), o senhor critica a idéia de que a web veio mudar o mundo. Por quê? Lovink – Um dos problemas da educação no século XX foi a separação entre as ciências exatas e as humanas. Isso se reflete hoje no meio digital, onde os tecnólogos, quem estuda e pensa a internet, não conversam com os engenheiros que a criaram, e vice-versa. É ridículo imaginar que uma tecnologia como a web possa resolver os problemas da sociedade. Não existem soluções técnicas para eles. A internet não vai compensar a queda no nível educacional em todo o mundo. Veja bem, não sou contra a internet. Muito ao contrário, eu adoro a rede. Não estou pregando o fim do mundo. A internet não vai trazer a queda da civilização ocidental. Mas ela é incapaz de lidar com a crise no sistema educacional. Não será um laptop cheio de programas educativos que vai mudar isso. É ingênuo acreditar no contrário.

ÉPOCA – O que acha das redes sociais?
Lovink – É disso que eu estava falando! Os engenheiros que criaram a web nos anos 90 jamais imaginaram as redes sociais. Só pensavam em comércio eletrônico. Era uma visão muito estreita. Todas as tecnologias que desembocaram nas redes sociais foram criadas por gente diferente daqueles programadores. Para mim, o importante não é saber como será a internet do futuro, mas manter os canais abertos, sobretudo contra a influência das grandes corporações, para que ela possa se desenvolver da forma mais criativa possível. Não existe ninguém no planeta que saiba aonde tudo isso vai parar. É um enorme convite para que os jovens de todo o mundo possam contribuir.

ÉPOCA – E os blogs?
Lovink – Só na China existem 73 milhões de blogs. É um volume surpreendente. Será que alguém os lê? Não tenho a menor idéia. É o contrário do público da TV, sobre quem se sabe muito. O mundo da web é desconhecido. A internet e a cultura digital se desenvolvem muito mais rápido que a sociedade e suas instituições podem compreender. Quem vai aconselhar os políticos que formulam leis sobre o mundo digital? Quem ensina os jornalistas que escrevem sobre ela? Não tenho respostas para isso. As coisas estão acontecendo mais rápido do que qualquer um é capaz de compreender.

ÉPOCA – Nenhum humano sabe tudo o que acontece na rede, mas as máquinas sabem. Elas censuram 220 milhões de usuários chineses. Esse é nosso futuro?
Lovink – Dizem que apenas o setor de censura emprega 50 mil pessoas. Não devemos subestimar a China. Devemos prestar atenção nela como um modelo. Tenho certeza de que muitos governos secretamente pensam assim. Agora considere as empresas que ajudaram a China a construir seu sistema de censura. Foram a Cisco, a Microsoft, a Nokia, todas as maiores empresas de tecnologia. Se nós devemos culpar alguém, seriam elas. A China é a faceta mais visível de uma nova tendência, o surgimento das webs nacionais.

ÉPOCA – A globalização da web é um sinônimo do declínio da cultura ocidental?
Lovink – Não vejo as coisas assim. O fenômeno que vivemos se parece mais com a criação de muitas interfaces comuns, em que diferentes culturas se chocam, interagem e compartilham. Até o momento, a globalização só tem sido compreendida como um projeto americano. Mas não acho que seja o modo correto de olhar para ela. A globalização também está acontecendo entre o Brasil e a Índia, entre a China e a África. Existem muitas correntes de troca de idéias, de mercadorias. O que espero ver, por exemplo, é um acordo entre o Brasil e a África para a criação de um tipo novo de internet, um acordo de onde surja a rede do futuro.

ÉPOCA – Por que o senhor critica os defensores da liberdade de cópia na rede?
Lovink – Acho que devemos fornecer meios para que a próxima geração da web ganhe dinheiro com ela, possa viver de seu trabalho e de sua criação. O problema é que o pessoal do software livre só pensa em trocar livremente seus programas. Nunca imaginaram como profissionais criativos poderão sobreviver quando nos movermos para uma economia baseada na internet.

Foto: Robert A. Vanwaarden/ÉPOCA

Grazie a Maresa Lippolis che su Digimag di marzo cura da Amsterdam un’intervista live con Geert Lovink in occasione del Video Vortex, di cui sta per uscire in Italia una striminzita versione, ahinoi, di Zero Comments. (Ecco l’intervista anche nell’originale inglese). Rispetto a possibili legalizzazioni dei network P2P, Geert spiega: «la legalizzazione degli scambi di materiale protetto da copyright non e’ il giusto percorso da intraprendere. Quello che secondo me serve e’ invece costruire una economia parallela, in cui artisti e produttori creativi possano essere ricompensati anche economicamente, senza intermediari, ad esempio attraverso micro pagamenti.» Aggiungendo, sulle ideologie e le pratiche del free a tutti i costi: «Se l’amatore [traduzione oscena: è il dilettante], che guadagna grazie ad una seconda professione, pensa di voler contribuire e condividere le sue produzioni gratuitamente, allora va bene. Ma in questo momento mi sembra piu’ che altro che la schiera di dilettanti sta bloccando le carriere di intere generazioni di giovani professionisti. In questo modo la ricchezza dei saperi dei professionisti e’ messa a dura prova e rischia di scomparire (per esempio nel caso di chi si occupa di giornalismo di inchiesta). … Nuove forme di produzione, come tu le chiami, costano. Abbiamo bisogno di far circolare del denaro in modo che possa fluire in quei circuiti che hanno assunto l’obiettivo di costruire gli strumenti del futuro.» Esatto, altro che free for all e favole da long tail: fare informazione e produrre cose serie con/su i new media richiede parecchio lavoro, e costa. Anche solo mantenere un blog decente, come ben sappiamo. Occorre perciò, fra le altre cose, aprire di fatto agli utenti la partecipazione all’economia che producono (con i micropagamenti?), e non appropriarsene come fanno variamente i grandi social network con la scusa dell’UGC – elemento giustamente centrale nelle diffuse critiche allo scenario del Web 2.0.

Internet mon amour, Première séance, le Dimanche 17 février 2008
Centre Pompidou, 18:00-20:00 dans le cadre du cycle Troisième oeil, petite salle, entrée libre.

Qu’est-ce qu’on risque sur Internet?

de gauche à droite :
Valentin Lacambre, Nathalie Magnan, Albertine Meunier, Geert Lovink, le traducteur, David Guez, Annick Rivoire

Pour inaugurer ce rendez-vous, les rencontres avaient invité un témoin privilégié de l’évolution des nouveaux médias, Geert Lovink , activiste, critique d’art et co-fondateur de la liste de diffusion Nettime [http://www.nettime.org] en 1995.
Le directeur de l’ Institut des Cultures en réseau d’Amsterdam organise de nombreuses manifestations internationales (dernière en date, Vidéo Vortex, en janvier). Il est l’auteur de nombreux ouvrages, dont aucun traduit en français… Dernier publié : « Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture » (Paperback, 2007, lire l’interview parue dans «Libération»)

Geert Lovink est un des acteurs majeurs de la net-culture, en tant qu’organisateur des Next Five Minutes de 1993 à 2003 et de nombreuses autres conférences dont la dernière en date est Vidéo Vortex, en janvier 2008 à Amsterdam; Il n’avait jamais été officiellement invité en France.

Dialogueront avec lui Géraldine Gomez, curatrice au Centre Pompidou, David Guez, artiste hacktiviste qui présentera une performance liée à un projet sur les réseaux sociaux (http://rg2012.hypermoi.net), Valentin Lacambre, figure historique de l’Internet indépendant français, fondateur d’Altern et de Gandi, Nathalie Magnan, tacticienne des médias et cyberféministe, Albertine Meunier, net-artiste, Annick Rivoire, créatrice du site poptronics.fr, Anne Roquigny, curatrice nouveaux médias…

Ecouter les sons de la séance.

Geert Lovink est l’invité de la première séance InternetMonAmour : Qu’est-ce qu’on risque sur Internet?, le Dimanche 17 février 2008 au Centre Pompidou, 18:00-20:00 dans le cadre du cycle Troisième oeil, petite salle, entrée libre.

Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”

Venerdi, 30/05/2008 :: h 16.00 – 18.30
Palazzo Corigliano :: Aula Mura Greche
Piazza S. Domenico Maggiore – Napoli

GEERT LOVINK
Direttore del “Institute of Network Cultures” (Amsterdam)

“Once the Internet changed the world, now the world is changing the Internet”

Lovink, già ospite di MAO nell’ottobre del 2006, è tra i più importanti critici della Rete, figura assolutamente sui generis, entra ed esce dalle grandi università ma parallelamente è un osannato pensatore della controcultura europea ed internazionale.
L’intervento di Lovink farà luce sul fenomeno dell’emergere su Internet di lingue locali e regionali che mettono in discussione il predominio dell’Inglese quale lingua ponte del mondo globalizzato.

Partecipano alla discussione finale:
Prof. Jocelyne Vincent – “L’Orientale “ (Napoli)
Prof. Tiziana Terranova – “L’Orientale “ (Napoli)

Organizzazione a cura di:
Dipartimento di Studi Americani Culturali e Linguistici dell’Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”

Media Partner:
MAO – Media & Arts Office ONLUS