Podium: |
Indymedia |
Rubrik | Übertragung | Veranstaltungsdaten: | 22. Mai / 14:00 / 3 Std. / Track B / Raum 3D / englisch |
ReferentIn(nen): |
Marion Hamm J. Martin Pedersen |
Abstract: |
Marion Hamm: Indymedia - materiality of web-based communication networksTaking indymedia as a practical case-study, I would like to discuss some thoughts on the materiality of a web-based project and the potential of a Free Software mode of production to have an impact outside the web. I'm hoping for an informed debate/workshop and would like to feed back critique and encouragement to the indymedia channels. The Free Software Model has become a bit of a metaphor, an utopian promise, an answer to the question: "what is to be done" [1]. On the other hand, critiques are asking for evidence for the transmittability of the Free Software Project from the web into "real space", for products beyond software. Indymedia is amongst those projects which allow to trace the contamination of "meatspace" by webspace - and vice versa, to the extend that it becomes difficult to distinguish between both.[2] Indymedia certainly owes a lot to the free software community - the way to produce new code or fix bugs, the actual product -> software, and indirectly the way to self-facilitate email lists and and deal with public archives as well as the entire hotly debated open publishing idea. Beyond this, web-based communication/collaboration tools like irc, twiki and email lists, web-radio and video are beginning to shape a way to collaboratively produce content, projects and networks that could be interpreted as a qualitative rather than merely a quantitative leap. I'm experimenting with an understanding of Indymedia as one of these productive machines, a plattform that produces much more than words on the internet. Looking closely at the ways indymedia is using web-based tools and modes of production that emerged from the web, and comparing them with other collaborative, open projects, I am adressing these questions:
[1] Matteo Pasquinelli: Radical machines against the techno-empire. From utopia to network. Internet: www.rekombinant.org/article.php?sid=2264
J. Martin Pedersen: Free Software Movement and Indymedia. A Tool for Culture BuildingThe presentation begins with an old story about the emergence of Space Between Words and the origins of silent reading. There used to be no such as thing as space between words, capital letters and grammar and reading was mainly an oral performance. By giving an account of an ICT revolution that took place over several hundred years and over a thousand years ago new light might be shed upon the significance of Free Software in particular and the relation between social and technological development in human societies generally. The story leads to a comparison between the Free Software movement and the Indymedia network in terms of the challenges that they share. There is no conclusion: the struggle continues.... |
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