User:Emanuele Bonetti/annotatedbibliography

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Society in Ad-Hoc Mode - Armin Medosch, 2004 read here

TECHNO UTOPIAS > Media are credited with the ability to bring social changes on their own > Too often the role of the human factor is ignored > Social change is interpretedas a direct function of technology > TECHNO DETERMINISM

SELF-ORGANIZATION IN SOCIETY > Democracy should be a dynamic entity, able to evolve itself > The constant rebirth of democracy realized in the last centuries with revolutions is now somehow lost, since the collective movement are more focused on "particular interests" and not on society as a whole.

Ad hoc-model: The ad-hoc mode normally used by the governs in crisis period can be apply today in protest movements especially using internet as a tool to gather and organize people from different collective for a common aim

Antisocial Applications: Notes in support of antisocial notworking - Geoff Cox, March 2008 read here

The author describes the market behind most of the social network platform, starting with Facebook where all kind of personal information are voluntarily submitted. All these information are stored in the platform's server and, first of all, become impossible to take them off and secondly they become property of the hosting service which has now the opportunity to sell them for marketing research. This concept is more interesting looking, still thinking about facebook, if we think about the fact that at this point the platform hasn't found any way to earn money in order to cover the expenses that are growing constantly everyday. Starting from this point the author introduce the "Antisocial" aspect of these services pointing out how the values of sharing are actually placed into a complete centralized service, every social relation built into these services is strongly controlled by a central point, the platform it self. About that he referred briefly to the concept of biopolitic coined by Michel Focault the wikipedia page about [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopower biopower.

In the second part of the text Cox speaks about Net-working, meant as NETWORK + WORKING, opposing at this concept the idea of Not-working. He's pointing out how today the relations in between users are raw material in the new market, social relations in an internet platform, organized as I previously explained, become valuables. He ends saying that all the time that we spend on those platform can be seen as time that we spend working for them, generating values for them.

Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization (Introduction) - Alexander Galloway, 2006 read here

SOVEREIGN SOCIETIES > DISCIPLINARY SOCIETIES FOCAULT > SOCIETIES OF CONTROL DELEUZE

In the frist part of the text the author goes through the internet's history, starting from ARPAnet, in order to introduce the idea of protocol as a set of rules that makes two machine able to 'understand' each other and therefore to communicate. Describing the internet he even explained its nature of decentralized network, less free then what we can imagine, explaining how the information are managed and introduce at this point the concept of protocol as instrument of control.

In the second part he traces a parallel in between the previous model of society, called disciplinary by Focault, and the present one, the 'society of control' as called by Deleuze. He describes how the power is exert in these two models treating the first one as a centralized network and the second one as a decentralized network. The same as internet if the decentralized network can seem as first sight more free and democratic it actually isn't. Particularly interesting is the point where he treat the Focault's idea of biopower as a protocological force 12-13.

At the end he suggests some possible alternatives to this new decentralized system, that doesn't seem at the end so different from a centralized one, talking about distributed network. Even if they can be seen as a more democratic model because there's no needs to pass by a central point of communication is actually in this kind of network that the protocol exert its power of instrument of control, being the rule on which the communication is based on who have the power to set the protocol have the power to decide who can be part of the communication or not.

Hail the Moltitudes - Michael Hardt, January 2007 read here

How the new economic production model is changing the new political movements.

"Moltitude is the name that my colleague Toni Negri and I give this emerging form of social organization, It is composed of different people who act in common and collaborate, without denying their differences, freedom or autonomy"

In the article Hardt describes the new form of political movements, describing them as movement of movements. As appear obvious from the quote at the top it describes this movement as a whole of lot of different movements able to keep their own characteristics, ideas, ideals and way to act independent even if they work for a common aim. The most famous example of this kind of movement can be seen in the protest of Seattle in 1999. Going on in the article the author give an explanation of why this kind of movement is going to be the dominant one in the future. Referring to the past we can see that the model applied in the political organization are usually an application of model inherited by other systems*, mainly the economic one. The most sucessful model in the past, the centralized one, was an application of the organization of labor in the economic production. If we assume that the most common model today is the horizontal network we can say that this new political movement could became in future the main alternative to the tradition centralized organization in politic and movement.

"...This hypothesis is based on the notion that primarly form of political organization draws on the relationship already existing in society... "

Ten Theses on Non-Democratic Electronics: Organized Networks Updated - Lovink Geert and Rossiter Ned, May 2007. read here

In the text the authors list 10 different issues about the organized networks in order to keep them "updated", they list some common problem and evidence some possible direction that can be taken to find solution. Among the others the point out:

. the contradiction in between the wish of a destructed model and an organized one
. how to manage temporary coalitions in between different groups, taking care of the differences in between the groups
. how to concentrate the energies of the small movement in something bigger
. change the model of the "activist media" to Indymedia in order to reflect the changes in communication and society
.investigate the idea of democracy before apply it in a network, thinking about the fact that the horizontal orientation in communication is still something not completely natural
. how to increase the value of the "borders" in a network, since the borders are the point where the network can get in contact with other networks and since are the durable "areas" in a network.
. start to consider the user of a network as a citizen with his own rights