Dear Unhosted activists,
during my never ending sessions of reading, literally browsing through the web I’m trying to find clues on how to organize distributed collectives by the means of Information and Communication Technology. I have to admit that my last posts here refer more personal notes than direct responses to active discussions within the developing core of remotestorage.
Nevertheless, because I’ve commited myself to sharing a long time ago, I will just continue leaving traces, placing hints, publicly questionning insights. Usually no discussions would emerge, but at least my thoughts would have found a settling point to rest. Within a simple textarea.
This time I want to direct you towards the concept of Organized Networks that has been developed around the Institute for Network Cultures in Amsterdam. They have recently published a subsuming article at
where they reformulate - again - the thriving need of returning control into people’s hands. Also the linked Zizek article is worth reading.
Current social media architectures have a tendency to incite passive-aggressive behaviour. Users monitor, at a safe distance, what others are doing while constantly fine-tuning their envy levels. All we’re able to do easily is to update our profile and tell the world what we’re doing. In this ‘sharing’ culture all we can do is display our virtual empathy. ‘She really ain’t all that. Why does all the great stuff happen to her and not me?’ Organized networks radically break with the updating and monitoring logic and shift the attention away from watching and following diffuse networks to getting things done, together. There is more in this world than self-improvement and empowerment. What network architectures need to move away from is the user-centered approach and move towards a task-related design undertaken in protected mode.
I have been using their methodology for the Public Space Invaders publication (that never got printed - why I love the web).
If you know other social scientists researching (online) collaboration, I’d be happy to receive a link.
Let’s wait for the Big Riot …