User:Birgit Bachler/anno
SOCIETY IN AD-HOC MODE. DECENTRALISED, SELF-ORGANISING, MOBILE
Armin Medosch, 2006
The text delivers an interesting perspective on the future of society from a bottom-up view. The text works with examples that mainly deal with the anti-globalization movement and the idea of open source networks. The idea of every user serving as a node simultaneously, so that commercial providers of networks are not necessary anymore, is an interesting attempt to describe an open society. Whether democracy does not work together with an ad-hoc society is a point that made me think a lot. Fascinating is the fact that the text has been written before most of the mentioned mobile technologies, such as 3G hat their impact in Europe. The ideal of technological development for the benefits of humanity and society instead of capitalistic aims is a romantic idea.
ANTISOCIAL APPLICATIONS: NOTES IN SUPPORT OF ANTISOCIAL NOTWORKING
Geoff Cox, 2008
The notes of Geoff Cox rather seem to be an accumulation of portentous terms, and the text is therefore really hard to read. He tries to describe the fact, how social networks affect society, capitalism, consumerism, work and politics. Websites like facebook are based on connections between users, which therefore create a new immaterial product called 'subjectivity'. That leads to the fact that the consumer is finally being sold to a product, based on their network connections. He uses the term 'antagonistic' very often and in a for me not comprehensible way. Why does he have to mention that social relations are produced as friendly rather than antagonistic? Calling a computer network a social factory is an interesting approach, but in my opinion not pointed out well enough. Also the 'Notworking' is not discussed very well. Why has in his opinion labour time become more difficult to measure? How has the observation being made that work and action have become indistinct? He also focuses on Peer-to-Peer relations being the more advanced way of social networking, compared to Server-Client relations. He sees that as a chance to rethink politics from within network cultures. His final conclusion/suggestion left me alone rather helpless, that is why I put it here, because I will never read this paper ever again. The suggestion of this notes - in support of antisocial notworking - is that without the identification of antagonisms that underpin sociality, politics simply cannot be engaged.
PROTOCOL: HOW CONTROL EXISTS AFTER DECENTRALIZATION
Alexander Galloway, 2006
The book starts describing a new apparatus of control that consists out of a distributed network, that uses the technology of computers and communicates via protocols. It also mentions the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze who predicts a shift from disciplinary societies to societies of control. Galloway argues, that the existence of a protocol stands for a mean of control after decentralization. He sees the DNS database as a controlling hierarchic system over the Internet, the most extensive "computerized information system" today. By quoting Marshall McLuhan's the content of every new protocol is always another protocol he describes the Internet through the nested protocols it depends on. Without a shared protocol, there is no network. Galloway also uses Michel Foucault's theory on biopolitics and calls the protocol a democratic panopticon of the control societies. He writes that distributed architectures make protocological/imperial control of a network easy, a centralized protocol is doomed to fail. He sums up Periodization from Centalization to Decentrentralization to Distribution. In his notes Galloway makes us of a lot of well-known philosophers whos quotes he uses to undermine his theories on forms of control within societly and technology, and the relation between nodes in networks.
HAIL THE MULTITUDES
Michael Hardt, 2005
Michael Hardt describes the name Multitude" as a form of social and political organization, that represents a movement in horizontal, decentralized structures and might constitute an upcoming form of power that refuses central leadership and unified programs. The central point of his text is the following hypothesis: In each era the most powerful form of political organization corresponds to the dominant organizational model of economic production. Since the structures nowadays are not as hierarchical and centralized as they were in the past centuries, he sees a future in decentralized, collaborative, horizontal organizations taking over political power.
TEN THESES ON NON-DEMOCRATIC ELECTRONICS: ORGANIZED NETWORKS UPDATED
Geert Lovink & Rossiter, 2007
1. Politics of diversion: Both organized and loosed structures are problematic. The power of unstructured networks to be able to do bottom-up changes opposites their unreliability, unsustainability and their high fluctuation. People need some structure in their life. Both models neither compete nor overlap each other.
2. Think Global, Act Local. Growing gaps, ruptures and tensions make place for changes, temporary coalitions, radically take sides with the new digital generations and go for change.
3. Networks are ready to interact on political level. Tensions lead to actions.
4. Platforms such as Indymedia and Wikipedia are not an alternative to CNN anymore. They grew into the shifting landscape of media, while there is no more space for activism anymore.
5. A participatory revolution? YouTube and MySpace are considered the apogee of participatory media, but lacking media activism.
6. There is no politics of networks, if there are no borders of networks.
7. What remains of a former pulsating, energetic network are the ruins of its borders. How to engage the border as the condition of transformation and renewal?
8. There is a difference between citizen's rights and user's rights. It's important to loose the ties between 'democracy' and 'the media'. What can be translated from offline networks to online networks? The rules do change.
9. How can the fragility of the borders of a network turned into a strength of the future of networks?
10. How can we use the potential of new media in an educative sense? Can these energies be directed into a creative collaboration of minds?