net critique by Geert Lovink

Benoît Peeters’ Derrida biography, just out in English and German translations, is a must-read for everyone interested in late 20th century philosophy. Over the years I must have read 4-5 books of Jacques Derrida–not much in comparison to his phenomenal output. As the cover already announces, Peeters has written a broad, human-interest biography in a Anglo-Saxon style. That may sound unusual for Paris–and maybe it is. A sign of times? Intellectual versions of Derridadology already exist and no doubt more will appear in this genre. The inevitable coming biography by Avital Ronell will no doubt be a unique mix between the two genres. I myself knew little or nothing about the Werdegang of the good man, so it is not up to me to complain about personal details. I do not feel like pointing at the bias of the biographer or complain about the lack of larger psycho-cultural and socio-political frameworks (which is no doubt true). The fact is, in a few decades, despite all the Derrida archives, a book like this can no longer be written because the contemporaries that Peeters interviewed (100 or so) will no longer be alive.

What tires you out as a reader are the sheer endless fights between Parisian (and European) writers and thinkers from the 1960s to the recent present. This personality got into trouble with that genius etc. etc. A concept was no good. A discussion got out of hand. With the distance in time growing this is a mystery that will need a proper explanation: Why all this fractionalism? What the hell was at stake here? Money? Media coverage? Research money? None of that seems to apply in the Parisian context. Power? Truth? Reputation? Honor? Maybe. Amongst orthodox Marxists and inside social movements there are and always have been strategic debates, but in this case? Why this enormous anxiety and polarization? Was it only about power position inside institutions? Or perhaps in general the position of the intellectual in society? (a joke from today’s perspective) A play of characters comparable to the dramas on the ape rock? (celebrities gossiping about each other). Or indirect political and ideological struggles? (preferred reading but most likely an overdetermination).

Peeters’ Derrida biography can be read as one of possibly many parallel stories that can be told about French Theory going Global. The historical contribution of the most widely travelled proponent of this diverse movement seems to be one of deconstruction. I prefer the German term Abbau (Heidegger writes about Destruktion). Working in the long shadow of Second World War, Cold War, economic restructuring, decolonization and new social movements (in particular feminism), Derrida has led the project to take apart the old European metaphysical concepts–albeit in a playful, positive manner. He comes over as a careful and modest person, neither a radical nor a fan of negative dialectics. Deconstruction as a cultural practices comes over a gentle project to take apart the Western supremacy, in a time when Europe was divided and defeated. Engaged and political in his own way, his main audience remained inside academia. His aim was to blow up the traditional discipline of philosophy (while remaining inside its walls). For today’s generation this would be a difficult task (Derrida’s failed attempts to get a respectable position inside French academia reads as a real tragedy). Anyone writing in the style of Derrida today wouldn’t even get a PhD and his or her contributions to journals would be straight out rejected because of incomprehensive language, lack of quotes and absent argument. We are not supposed to fool around with literature, theory and philosophy. What was, and still is so radical about Derrida is his poetic experimental style. That’s the real scandal. Just read the comments below Terry Eagleton’s review of the book in The Guardian.

–
Benoît Peeters, Derrida, A Biography, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013 (translated by Andrew Brown, org. published by Flammarion in 2010).

On Monday I gave a talk on social media research and the Unlike Us agenda at the art education masters of the Zurich Art School. The next morning 40 or so students gave ‘like’, ‘dislike’ or ‘whatever’ answers to a few theses they formulated themselves after having read my What’s the Social in Social Media text. I thought the outcome was interesting enough to share them here. The debate was lively but a bit general, lacking the usual emotional attachment to the topic. As it turned out, most students were on Facebook (95%) but did not use it in class and were not in contact with each other through Facebook (or Twitter, for that matter). They either used it to stay in contact with friends and family (strictly private) or for professional purposes. Here is the outcome:

1. Social networks are social: yes 13, no 14, whatever 2.

2. Purpose of social networks is not to find information but to make contacts: 14 yes, 14 no, 2 whatever.

3. Excessive use of social media is dangerous: yes 22, no 8, whatever 1.

4. Social media are a representation of the real world: 18 no, 6 yes, 3 whatever.

5. Social media influence world events: 22 yes,  5 no, whatever 1.

Number 1 and 2 seemed to be controversial, but thesis 3, 4 and 5 less so.

Students also made a selection of a few ‘social media’ videos that we watched together and then discussed:

The cybermobbing video of Amanda Todd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRxfTyNa24A

Can I be your friend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDycZH0CA4I

A futuristic short Film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lK_cdkpazjI#!

Future hipster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uGi_r9xlvqE

(originele versie van de recensie verschenen in de NRC boekenbijlage van 8 maart 2013. /geert)

Van het Wit-Russisch-Amerikaanse “jonge genie” (Tagesanzeiger) Evgene Morozov verscheen deze week een tweede boek dat voortbouwt op zijn bestseller The Net Delusion uit 2011. Deze 28-jarige internetcriticus en veelschrijver is zo succesvol omdat hij het nu eens niet heeft over zakelijke kansen of de laatste technologie en kanttekeningen durft te plaatsen bij de almachtige en onbegrepen internetreligie. Als alom gewaardeerde luis in de pels van Amerikaanse liberale opiniebladen van New Republic tot Slate beschrijft hij het internet als een volwaardig politiek-maatschappelijk verschijnsel waarover men, net als bij ieder ander controversieel fenomeen, van mening kan verschillen. Terwijl The Net Delusion zich richtte tegen de naïeve aanname dat autoritaire regimes vanzelf bezwijken door inzet van internet en mobiele telefoons, behandelt To Safe Everything Click Here een breed scala aan technologische issues. De achtergrond is evident: internet dringt in steeds meer domeinen door (niet alleen informatica, media of de telecomsector) en wordt alomtegenwoordig. Internetprofeten juichen dit toe en je kunt het aan Morozov overlaten hier vraagtekens bij te plaatsen. Zijn stelling dit keer luidt: internet is niet de oplossing voor al onze problemen.

Voorbeelden dit boek gaan van een analyse op afstand van afval in een vuilnisemmer (met als doel het te reduceren), interventies in de wereld van het koken en het beoordelen van restaurants, tot software voor misdaadpreventie en 3D-printers, het populairhistorisch vertoog over Gutenberg en de uitvinding van de drukpers, maar ook verkeerde verwachtingen van een ‘open overheid’, en de ‘pseudo-democratie’ van de Europese piratenpartijen met hun interne besluitvormingssoftware. Internetrealist Morozov richt zijn pijlen alle kanten op–en dreigt daarmee in zeven sloten tegelijk te lopen.

De steeds sneller en kleiner wordende chips verbazen niet langer. Nu het vliegwiel van de IT-innovatie op snelheid is, gaat het er vooral om zo snel mogelijk toepassingen te vinden en daarmee betreden we een gevarenzone. Het gaat nu om het aanboren en te gelde maken van markten zoals de gezondheidszorg, logistiek, mode, onderwijs en mobiliteit, en ook de openbare ruimte. Maar technologie kan maatschappelijke problemen niet oplossen, dat moeten wij zelf doen. Net als een bonte verzameling voorgangers, van Ivan Illich tot Ayn Rand, hamert Morozov op de menselijke natuur. Programmeurs dienen eindelijk oog te krijgen voor de complexiteit van menselijke gebruiken en tradities.

Morozov klaagt het veel te algemene gebruik van het begrip ‘het internet’ aan, alsof dat een vaststaande en bekende entiteit zou zijn die is iets en iets doet. Dit ‘internetcentrisme’ zoals hij het noemt, grijpt om zich heen en is zich van geen schuld bewust. Zoals iemand met een hamer overal spijkers ziet, zegt de internetcentrist: Klimaatprobleem? Daar hebben we toch een app voor? Maar met meten en meer data, samengevat in mooie plaatjes, lossen we niets op. De Wil tot Verbeteren is een doel op zich geworden met de goedbedoelende ingenieur-geek als rolmodel. Morozov waarschuwt ons dat we niet blind moeten geloven in technocratie van onderop. Volgens de profeten moet de samenleving zich aanpassen aan ‘het internet’. Deze visie ziet Morozov als de grote gemene deler die loopt van Nicolas Carr (The Shallows) tot fellow traveller van Google Jeff Jarvis. We dienen waakzaam te zijn voor mensen die een pleidooi houden voor efficiëntie, stelt Morozov in navolging van Tony Judt. Het is interessant te zien hoe deze jonge essayist de laatste jaren de twintigste-eeuwse technologiekritiek herontdekt.

Evgene Morozov is een veelschrijver. Hij is een klassiek geval van wat Gilles Deleuze en Felix Guattari in hun Anti-Oedipus beschrijven als iemand die op de schizofreen-productieve pool zit, en dat in positieve zin. De creatieve machine draait op volle toeren en hij is niet te stoppen. Zijn 33.000 volgers op Twitter kunnen hierover meepraten. De boeken, artikelen en websites waar hij op moet reageren blijven maar binnenstromen en hij lijkt geobsedeerd om iets met die snelstromende inspiratiebron te doen. Recente internetliteratuur kan inderdaad gemakkelijk worden ervaren als stortvloed. De kritiekloze en megalomane IT-projecten die erom vragen onder handen te worden genomen door de Oost-Europese toorn liggen voor het oprapen. Het probleem is wel dat, mede door zijn Sovjetachtergrond, de achterdochtige Morozov denkt alleen op de wereld te zijn. Voor een criticus is het niet zo erg om alleen maar vijanden te maken. Hakken maar. Dat levert vermakelijke polemieken op met Amerikaanse pundits, hippies en IT-goeroes die slechts applaus gewend zijn. Maar hoe lang houdt Morozov dit vol? Zou een carrière-intermezzo in de wetenschap wellicht voor de nodige rust en diepgang zorgen?

Sinds 2008 is de vraag naar internetkritiek merkbaar gestegen (terwijl het genre al net zo oud is als het medium zelf). Morozov kan gezien worden als een product van deze trend, die meer te maken heeft met de dreiging van internet die boven de kranten- en uitgeefwereld hangt, dan met het onderwerp zelf. Het is voor iedere auteur met een wereldsucces als debuut moeilijk om zichzelf te overtreffen. Voor wie onbekend is met bestaande kritiek op het techno-utopisme van Silicon Valley zal dit boek een pracht aan voorbeelden en inzichten bevatten. Voor wie al wat langer meegaat ontbreekt de diepgang. De Sturm und Drang van Morozov betekent dat hij haast heeft. Snel een paper samenvatten, je punt scoren en weer verder. Belangrijke inzichten moet de lezer her en der uit het boek plukken. Het verwijt dat Morozov (als Stanford fellow) niet wetenschappelijk te werk gaat slaat de plank mis; dat streeft hij helemaal niet na. Als man met een missie is hij allereerst een begaafd retoricus, een essayist en criticus van wie we hopelijk nog veel zullen horen. Het is niet te hopen dat zijn genialiteit niet omslaat in waanzin, of passend in deze tijd: in depressiviteit. De internetkritiek kan Morozov niet missen aangezien zijn collega’s, wereldwijd, op een hand zijn te tellen en in de kinderschoenen staat. Een systematische aanpak rond centrale begrippen zou een nog vernietigender werking hebben. De kapitalistisch-libertaire consensus rondom internet (die zich keert tegen regulering) is nog niet gebroken. Nu deze technologie de fase in gaat van verregaande integratie in alle onderdelen van het persoonlijk en maatschappelijk leven, moeten ook kritiek en controverse volgen en zijn er nog vele Morozovs van divers pluimage nodig. Dat vinden de goeroes niet leuk, omdat ze geen weerwoord gewend zijn, en zoals Morozov zegt, zij zich niet bewust zijn van de historiciteit van hun eigen nieuwlichterij. Zijn conclusie dat smart de nieuwe domheid is, bekt goed en zal ingewijden niet verbazen. Het is tijd de waan van de dag even te laten voor wat het is en over te stappen van hypekritiek naar een maatschappelijke analyse waarin het internet plaats krijgt tussen gelijkwaardige problemen—en oplossingen.

Ondanks de belangstelling voor het fenomeen Morozov dienen we ons af te vragen of er wel echt plaats voor dissidenten. In de ICT-wereld is positief blijven het eerste gebod (en dat geldt net zo goed voor Nederland waar geen kritiek geduld wordt). Tussen de regels door kunnen we lezen dat Morozov het maar moeilijk kan verkroppen dat zijn kritiek snel vergeten zal worden. Wanneer wordt het hypemechanisme zelf eens onderuitgehaald? Hij heeft onlangs de Franse techniekfilosoof Bruno Latour en de Duitse mediatheoreticus Friedrich Kittler ontdekt, dat is pas wat! Door zijn opvoeding onder een totalitair regime heeft Morozov een natuurlijke weerstand meegekregen tegen ideeënproductie an sich—en dat begint hem in de weg te zitten. Ieder Idee kan en zal leiden tot een eigen Auschwitz, Goelag en Hiroshima. Daar staat tegenover dat Morozov weigert genuanceerde uitspraken te doen. Hij wil geen zouteloze enerzijds-anderzijds denker zijn. Hierdoor weet hij niet om te gaan met de creatief-productieve kant van het conceptuele denken dat deze technologische context voortstuwt. Software, bedrijfsplannen en marketing zijn nu eenmaal speculatieve constructies die staan of vallen met het Nieuwe Idee en hoe dat wordt omgezet in code, imago en geld. Morozov kent ook de gevaren van het radicale cynisme. Zo manoeuvreert hij zichzelf in een onplezierig denkverbod. Wat hier ontbreekt is conceptuele vrijheid. Zijn leermeester en suikeroom George Soros zit in een soortgelijke ongeloofwaardige positie van vlijmscherpe speculatiecriticus die om de kapitalismekritiek heen draait. Het blijft briljante kritiek zonder consequenties. Lastige ruis die slechts tijdelijk voor rumoer zorgt terwijl de karavaan verder trekt. Internetkritiek kan meer.

Evgene Morozov, To Safe Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, The Perseus Book Group, 2013, 448 blz., 29 euro.

Interview mit Geert Lovink von Alexander Wragge (iRights.info)

iRights Fassung: http://irights.info/geert-lovink-facebook-ist-eine-firma-ohne-eigenschaften/13154

Kontext: der Deutsche Fernsehmoderator Jürgen Domian beklagt sich, dass seine kritischen Kommentare auf Facebook gelöscht wurden. Siehe: https://www.facebook.com/Domian.Juergen/posts/466265690110405. Es ging um Kritik an einem katholischen Hardliner. Facebook hat sich für die Löschungen entschuldigt und spricht von einem Fehler.

iRights.info: Die Löschung kirchenkritische Kommentare auf Facebook hat in Deutschland für Wirbel gesorgt. Das Unternehmen erklärte, ein Facebook-Team müsse wöchentlich Hunderttausende Inhalten prüfen, um Menschen vor Missbrauch, Hassrede und Mobbing zu schützen, und habe dabei einen Fehler gemacht. Offenbar hatte jemand die Kommentare als Verstoß gegen die Nutzungsbedingungen bei Facebook gemeldet. Wie bewerten Sie diesen Vorgang?

Geert Lovink: Man muss nicht Siegmund Freud studiert haben, um die Bedeutung von Fehlern zu kennen. Aus psychoanalytischer Sicht lehren uns Fehler etwas über den Normalzustand. Und hier erstaunt mich sehr, dass Facebook im Hintergrund wöchentlich offenbar Hunderttausende dieser Meldungen bekommt. Davon bekommen wir ja sonst nichts mit. Facebook ist ein recht geheimnisvolles Unternehmen. Wenn sich die Zahl nur auf Deutschland beziehen sollte, wäre sie unglaublich hoch. Dieses Denunziantentum müsste man dann dringend untersuchen. Der Fall würde für eine Art Blockwart-Mentalität in Deutschland sprechen, die sich online fortsetzt, für echte Probleme mit der Meinungsfreiheit.

iRights.info: Könnte der Löschfehler dafür sprechen, dass letztlich Software die Meldungen automatisiert überprüft?

Geert Lovink: Ich weiß nicht, inwieweit Facebook hier Software, also Bots, einsetzt. Aber ich kann mir kaum vorstellen, dass Facebook genug Mitarbeiter hat, um Hunderttausende Meldungen in der Woche persönlich zu prüfen. Bots können sicherlich einzelne Wörter erkennen und sperren, aber meines Wissens noch nicht komplexe Zusammenhänge, also die Syntax, fehlerfrei einschätzen. Es müsste ihnen schwer fallen, zwischen einer Diskriminierung und einem Scherz über Diskriminierung zu unterscheiden.

iRights.info: Muss Facebook überhaupt den Zensor spielen?

Geert Lovink: Der entscheidenende Punkt ist: Diese Frage hat uns gar nichts anzugehen. Facebook darf als private Firma mit den Inhalten auf den eigenen Servern machen was es will. Der Dienst ist umsonst, und wir haben als Nutzer kein Recht darauf, dass unsere Inhalte dort bleiben. Ich bin also nicht dafür das Privatfirmen so eine zentrale Rolle spielen. Debatten die für alle zugänglich sind sollten von öffentlichen Foren veranstaltet werden (und zum Beispiel durchsuchbar sein und gemeinnützlich archiviert werden, was bei Facebook ja nicht der Fall ist).

iRights.info: Die Regeln in den Nutzungsbedingungen bieten recht viel Interpretationsspielraum. So dürfen Nutzer etwa keine „irreführenden“ oder „bösartigen“ Handlungen durchführen. Irreführend und bösartig kann je nach Perspektive alles Mögliche sein. Ist Facebooks Zensurpolitik zu intransparent?

Geert Lovink: Facebooks Ziel ist die Gewinnmaximierung. Es ist ein ganz normales Unternehmen. Das heißt für die Zensurpolitik, Facebook wird Inhalte löschen, die die Gewinne gefährden. Wenn zum Beispiel eine große Mehrheit der Nutzer dagegen ist, dass auf Facebook extremistische Inhalte sind, wird das Unternehmen sie löschen. Basta. Wenn nicht, dann nicht. Hinter dieser Zensur steckt keine Ethik, sondern nur ein marktorientiertes Kalkül. Deshalb ändert sich auch die Löschpolitik ständig, nicht nur bei Facebook, und man kann die moralischen Prinzipien dahinter nicht verstehen, weil es keine gibt. Es ist eine Firma ohne Eigenschaften und in dem Sinne auch anders als Google wo Ideen und Weltdominanz wenigstens im Zusammenhang stehen.

iRights.info: Bisher zeigt sich Facebook recht prüde und löscht Nacktbilder selbst dann, wenn es sich um Kunst von 1940 handelt. (LINK:http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/nackte-fotokunst-facebook-sperrt-museumsseite-wegen-pornografie-a-887391.html). Spricht das nicht gegen Ihre These der nicht vorhandenen Moral? Mit etwas mehr Freizügigkeit würde Facebook vielleicht noch eine größere Nutzungsintensität erreichen…

Geert Lovink: Das hat mit ihren Hintergrund als U.S. Firma zu tun. Diese Regeln haben sie bestimmt nicht selbst formuliert sondern das haben ihren Anwalten in den Vereinigten Staaten sie vorgeschrieben. Auch hier zeigen sie das wie unkreativ und langweilig diese Leute im grunde sind.

iRights.info: Manche Facebook-Nutzer in den USA konnten ihren Kommentar gar nicht erst loswerden. Es erschien die Meldung „Dieser Kommentar erscheint irrelevant oder unangemessen und kann nicht veröffentlicht werden. Um zu vermeiden, dass Ihre Kommentare blockiert werden, stellen Sie bitte sicher, dass sie in einer positiven Art und Weise etwas zum Beitrag beisteuern.” (LINK: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/05/facebooks-positive-comment-policy-irrelevant-inappropriate-censorship/) Die Formulierung klingt wie eine Satire auf die Internetzensur. Fehlt Facebook hier schon sprachlich die Sensibilität?

Geert Lovink: Nein, diese Formulierung ist ganz typisch für die großen Internetkonzerne. So denken und sprechen diese Unternehmen. Das sind New-Age-Menschen. Sie beschwören das Gute und Positive. Da ist für das Unangemessene, Negative, kein Platz. Das ist die kalifornische Ideologie. In den USA kann vielleicht eine solche Meldung erscheinen. In den Niederlanden wären diese Sätze komplett lächerlich, übrigens auch die Mitteilung der Facebook-Sprecherin in Deutschland.

iRights.info: Ein privates Unternehmen reguliert nun den Kommunikationsraum von 1 Milliarde Menschen. Da müssten doch die Regeln und Werte gesamtgesellschaftlich diskutiert werden…

Geert Lovink: Ich bin eher dafür gemeinsam dafür zu sorgen das Facebook verschwindet. Wir könnten es uncool machen, und dafür sorgen das vor allem junge Leute es langweilig finden. Der Einfluss dieser Firma ist im Moment noch viel zu groß und führt zu allen möglichen Problemen. Es ist schade, dass das Internet so weit degeneriert ist, dass wir großen Unternehmen so viel Macht geben. Es ist allerdings dumm, sich darüber zu beschweren, wenn private Unternehmen ihre Gewinninteressen verfolgen. Wenn wir ein öffentliches Internet hätten, hätten wir diese Probleme nicht. Die Infrastruktur dürfte nicht einer privaten Firma gehören.

iRights.info: Soll der Staat soziale Netzwerke und Suchmaschinen finanzieren?

Geert Lovink: Der Staat ist in diesen neoliberalen Zeiten ja leider selbst eine Firma, der eng mit Privatinteressen verbunden ist und nicht unbedingt  für das Allgemeinwohl eintritt. Der Staat kummert sich nicht mehr um die Gestaltung und Verwaltung der (virtuellen) Öffentlichkeit. Internet ist da doch der Paradebeispiel. Wir müssen uns selbst um den Aufbau der commons kümmern.

http://www.labkultur.tv/blog/geert-lovink-zur-politik-der-sozialen-medien-und-alternativen-zu-facebook

Interview mit Geert Lovink von Julian-Dominik Seysen

Frage 1: Wie würden Sie das “Soziale” in Sozialen Medien definieren? Wieso ist Facebook ihrer Meinung nach nicht sozial und was ist das Soziale in den von Ihnen vorgestellten Alternativen? Inwiefern sind diese sozial bzw. wieso sind diese ggt. sozialer?

GL: Die Art und Weise wie Facebook, LinkedIn und andere sozialen Netze dein Umfeld definieren, ist bewusst begrenzt gehalten. Es geht im gewissen Sinne nicht um Vernetzung, sondern um Abgrenzung. Der Kern des Problems geht zurück auf die Idee, dass sich existierende Gruppen von den stetig wachsenden Onlinemeuten fernhalten. Man ist eben unter Freunden und Kollegen und hält sich auf den Laufenden. Aus künstlerischer und politischer Sicht ist das natürlich eine besonders konservative, geschweige langweilige Sicht. Spaß macht die Vernetzung erst, wenn man nicht bloß informiert ist und andere über sich informiert, sondern die wunderbaren Technologien für etwas neues benutzt, etwas, das einen überrascht. Oder wie es im Businessjargon heißt, disruptiv wirkt. Facebook ist daher so konservativ, weil es das Soziale nicht sprengt sondern einfach reproduziert. Natürlich kommen immer neue Freunde dazu… die Firmen müssen ja wachsen. Aber die Idee ist strikt genommen nicht, dass wir anfangen, etwas gemeinsam zu machen.

Frage 2: Was wäre das radikalste Projekt, das “revolutionärste” (Soziale) Medium oder Tool, dass Sie sich momentan wünschen oder vorstellen könnten, um eine ernsthafte Alternative zu Facebook oder auch zu den bestehenden, bürokratischen, politischen, staatlichen “Sozialen Medien” im weiteren Sinne zu ermöglichen? Was ist Ihre Vision oder Utopie des optimalen (sozialen) Mediums – online sowie offline?

GL: Ich mag Utopien nicht und bin kein Fan totalitärer Ideen. Das gehört zu meiner “No Future” Generation. Wir waren radikal, aber nie naive Träumer. Wir sind keine Hippies, die beim Ausverkauf mitmachen. Enttäuschungen und notwendige Dekonstruktionsrituale kann man sich ja sparen. Ich liebe die unfertige Welt. Klar habe ich Wünsche. Alternativen für Facebook sind diejenigen Projekte, die die automatische Vernetzungstechnologie ignorieren. Was mir immer auffällt ist, dass wir das offene, globale Potential von Facebook überhaupt nicht nutzen. Was könnte es bedeuten, wenn wir direkt in Kontakt treten mit all den Arbeitern in China und anderswo, die unsere Produkte herstellen? Das wäre einfach zu arrangieren, wir tun es aber trotzdem nicht. Die Welt ist daher nur ansatzweise vernetzt und unter diesen Gesichtspunkt nicht viel weiter als im 19. Jahrhundert. Wir leben noch in der kleinen Welt der Nationalstaaten. In der Nachbarschaft setzen wir das Dorf fort. Der Schock der Großstadt, so wie sie Anfang des 20. Jahrhundert erlebt wurde (als Angriff auf die Sinne), und gemäß künstlerisch verarbeitet wurde, ist abgeflacht, auch weil es nach den zweiten Weltkrieg bewusst neutralisiert wurde. Jetzt erleben wir den Schock der Informationsrevolution (die genauso auf den Nerven geht). Die Utopie der totalen Vernetzung, 24/7, im Bett und im Fahrstuhl, im Zug und Flugzeug, im Klassenzimmer und am Strand, hat für mich kein revolutionäres oder subversives Potential. Das kriegt es nur, wenn wir die Möglichkeit einer sozialen Bewegung als a priori setzen. Da liegt die große Verwirrung dieses Jahrhunderts. Information als solche setzt nichts in Bewegung. Das war der große Fehler der siebziger Jahren (und der Linken insgesamt). Bewusstwerdung der gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse soll nicht als erster Schritt angesehen werden. Der Anfang liegt nicht in die Information, sondern im Ereignis (ich bin aber kein Heideggerfan…).

Frage 3: Inwieweit wird Ihrer Meinung nach die “Logik der Sozialen Medien” bestehende Institutionen wie z.B. auch Universitäten verändern? Sehen Sie eine Möglichkeit, dass durch Social Media sich bestehende Hierarchien, Gruppen und Arbeitsverhältnisse auch offline langfristig wandeln werden? Wenn ja, wie?

GL: Zu unterscheiden wären hier die sogenannten ‘sozialen Medien’ und das Internet insgesamt. Leider ist in der mediatisierten Öffentlichkeit das Bild der Internetnutzung verzerrt. Sozialen Medien nehmen derzeit etwa 20-30% des gesamten Verkehrs ein. Universitäten sollten daher Facebook und Twitter einfach ignorieren und weiterhin das Internet als öffentliches Netz der Netze ausbauen und sich nicht auf diese und jene Privatdienste einlassen. Wenn wir offene und freie Netze verteidigen hat das ja Konsequenzen, auch für die Art und Weise, wie öffentliche Institutionen ‘sozialen Medien’ in den Netzalltag integrieren. Es ist durchaus möglich, soziale Medien zu tolerieren (oder rede ich zu sehr als Hollanski?). Email kann als offizieller Kanal benutzt werden, Facebook aber nicht. Diese informelle Position der sozialen Medien kann man sehr gut mit den alten Chatrooms wie IRC und ICQ vergleichen. Sie rauschen vor sich hin im Hintergrund. Das ist an und für sich nicht böse. Zum Problem wird es erst, wenn sie in der kollektiven Betrachtung mit den ganzen Internet gleichgesetzt werden.

Frage 4: Welche Rolle spielt die Möglichkeit zur Pseudonymität (auch bezogen auf die Gesetzeswidrigkeit in Deutschland durch das Telemediengesetz) in den von Ihnen beschriebenen Facebook-Alternativen?

GL: Ob Pseudonymität im Moment  verboten oder umgekehrt als Lösung vermarktet wird, sollte uns nicht besonders beschäftigen. Die juristische Lage ändert sich wahrscheinlich ständig. Ich plädiere aus pragmatischen Gründen für Pseudonymität, einfach weil ich nicht (mehr) an absolute Anonymität glaube. Alle Identitäten im Netz sind auf Dauer zu knacken. Das kann einen durchaus depressiv machen. Kryptografie hat nun mal viel mit Kriegsführung zu tun und viele taktische Waffen funktionieren entweder gar nicht oder ganz kurz oder nur an bestimmten Orten, in bestimmten Fällen. Worum es geht ist, nicht auf den Druck von Marc Zuckerberg einzugehen. Auch wenn man seinen Vor- und Nachnamen nicht fälschen möchte gibt es noch viele andere Möglichkeiten, sein Profil zu ändern und nicht überall die Wahrheit einzugeben. Das kann durchaus ein Spiel sein: Andere dein Geburtsjahr, ziehe mal um in ein anderes Land und schaue, was passiert. Das ist was die Deleuzearmee immer mit ‘becoming’ meinen. Hört auf mit dem langweiligen Dasein. Langeweile ist sowieso der Feind Nummer 1 der sozialen Medien.

On January 18, 2013 I attended the first annual meeting of Dutch Communication and Media Design (CMD) schools. Started 10 years ago, this rather diverse group of ‘new media’ ‘polytech’ BA degrees within the Dutch universities of applied sciences now have 6300 students, spread over 9 schools in different parts of the country with 350 staff. There are also CMD schools in Belgium (Hasselt) and Germany (Aachen). There were about 100 staff members present at the meeting, hosted by our Hogeschool of Amsterdam. Our Institute of Network Cultures is a research centre attached to one of them, the former School of Interactive Media, now called CMD at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). Our degree, founded in 2002 by Emilie Randoe, originally positioned in between (web) design, IT and business, now celebrates its 10th anniversary. Next step will be the creation of a European network of CMD degrees. More on that later.

The day started with two talks. The first one started off with a rather depressing yet mainstream Californian-dotcom-VC-style message: top talent will reach firms even without a finished degree. It is a hard reality to swallow for schools that they merely cater for mediocre students. We have heard this time and again: our students will end up at the mid-management level, directing the masses of even more low-level coders and builders. So be it. This guy, a certain Ruurd Priester of (itself very mainstream) Lost Boys company here in Amsterdam stressed the importance of cheap solutions using the three rules: beauty, usability and utility. The trend in the ‘interactive media’ industry is now to assist average companies to become e-commerce firms. We can say to ourselves: fuck marketing, but then what? We need to understand that ‘new media’ is now part of marketing (and not the other way around, despite the objective coolness and historical supremacy of the first).

Priester, who finished the Amsterdam Rietveld art academy himself, presented the audience with five rules:

1. Tech is cool. Tech is the a-priori and creativity will come later, produced in collaboration with others. The nerd is cool and he is the driver and source of everything. The process of Making is central, the person who rulez is the one who Makes (a premise adopted, of course, from the Wired ideologist Chris Anderson).

2. Creativity is embedded in the collaborative creative process. The loners will be excluded. T-shaped personalities are favoured.

3. There is a need for omni creatives. Students need to be ambitious to become the best. What is needed are frontend developers and visual designers, professionals that combine different skills and disciplines.

4. Practice what you preach: as a school become part of the free and open source movement.

5. Think Big. Dig into history.

The second speaker, Vasilis van Gemert of the Mirabeau office interestingly argued for more art history (in order to better understand design) and knowledge of typography. Do not raise specialists. Respect for people with other skills is essential, grow your legal awareness, share old courses, bring up the overall level of the degrees, do less internships and provide students with more knowledge. Firms are struggling with the low level of students.

We will see if 2013 will bring an overall change. The gap and the tension between tech and art in the applied degrees is still there and seems not yet properly addressed. Whereas tech and marketing knowledge dominate, the question where ‘art’ and ‘creativity’ fit into the curriculum was not addressed. What does it mean to educate thousands and thousands of ‘designers’ that do not get even the most basic education into visual design, contemporary arts and art history?

Headlines, 2012: “Next time you’re hiring, forget personality tests, just check out the applicant’s Facebook profile instead.” – “Stephanie Watanabe spent nearly four hours Thursday night unfriending about 700 of her Facebook friends—and she isn’t done yet” – “Facebook apology or jail time: Ohio man gets to choose” – “Study: Facebook users getting less friendly” – “Women tend to have stronger feelings regarding who has access to their personal information” (Mary Madden) – “All dressed up and no place to go” (Wall Street Journal) – “I’m making more of an
effort to be social these days, because I don’t want to be alone, and I want to meet people” (Cindy Sherman) – “30 percent posted updates that met the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria for a symptom of depression, reporting feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness, insomnia or sleeping too much, and difficulty concentrating” – Control your patients: “Do you hire someone in the clinic to look at Facebook all day?” Dr. Moreno asked. “That’s not practical and borders on
creepy.” – “Hunt for Berlin police officer pictured giving Nazi salute on Facebook” – “15-year-old takes to Facebook to curse and complain about her parents. The disgusted father later blasts her laptop with a gun.”

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/what-is-the-social-in-social-media/

(The Italian short version appeared in l’Unita, November 7, 2012, and here is the full version, in English /geert)

Amsterdam/Rome, early November 2012

Teresa Numerico: One of the most interesting ideas that you suggest in your book, and I completely agree with you, is that the virtual is becoming more and more real, in the sense of a steady colonization of the virtual from the point of view of real lives. Can you discuss this colonization effect and its consequences (data mining etc.)?

Geert Lovink: Let’s start with saying that I am not a Deleuzian. In our context of the internet the virtual is not a general philosophical category. The virtual is not becoming. It is real, and it is often boring too. It crashes and breaks down. In short, it is the not all too romantic, post-Fordist sphere of labour. There is nothing potential about it. Maybe this is the biggest difference between these days and the roaring mid-nineties. There is no alternative in the virtual, it is not a place for escape, even though in the Italian context, at the time of the media monopoly of Berlusconi, internet culture was seen as a promised land. The cyber counterculture was always taken more serious here than in other countries. It is a question if we can at all speak about the virtual as a space of collective imagination. For me the virtual is first and foremost a military-corporate battle ground, an abstract information space which is in the making, where large political-economic interests and concepts are clashing. It is exciting to take part in debates over protocols, software, interfaces and network cultures but, to be honest, there is not much utopia to be found out there. But yes, it is an interesting question if the everyday lives are being colonized by smart phones, wifi etc. as this also implies a possible anti-colonial struggle for liberation.

TN: In your book you hypothesize that “an important aspect of media literacy is the ability to walk away from the screen” and the “slow communication” ideal. Can you explain how is it possible to teach people to understand when it is time to walk away, and why do you think that this is a crucial capability?

GL: Where are our bodily and mental limits in this virtual place? We don’t always know thus and each of us will have to found out about it by experience. We all have to learn it the hard way that you have work on your posture, weight, eyes and so on if you spend longer periods of time on the computer. In that sense there is a revenge of the body on all this unearthly clicking and typing, in particular when you add stress and age. Walking away is also good to create distance from what you just created (a text, image, service). Distance is essential for reflection; this is what Paul Virilio has always taught me. You also interrupt the speed regime. However, it is not always possible to walk away from the jobs. A friend of mine just quit working at a call centre, after having worked there for two weeks. He couldn’t deal with it much longer. He said the people were nice but he could not deal with the constant typing and talking you have to do. He is my age and we all know that Asian young women with smaller hands can do this type of work much better. The older Western male is anyway written off, there is so much evidence for that.

TN: You affirm that “what we need to defend is the very principle of decentralized, distributed networks”, but do you really think that the Internet is founded on this ‘democratic’ principle? And even if this were the case at the beginning, (but you remind us the political origin of the computer and of the networks, that shows the lack of innocence of the device) how do you think is it possible to defend it now, considering the neo-liberal subjectivity at work within the network?

GL: I do not equalize decentralized, federated networks with democracy, which to me is a political decision model. Decentralization is specific network architecture and in fact there are many of them. Distributed systems are precisely not focused on a central point where it eventually all comes together when a decision is made. This is, in a way, one of the key problems of internet culture: there is no visible centre. Networks potentially dissolve centralized power (and along the way create new forms of power, of course). Networks could be called anti-democratic as they shift the attention away from the Collective Moment of Decision Making towards the noise on the fringes. We all know that networked processes destroy attention. They fragment tidily organized discourses and conversations. What happens with Google, Facebook and Twitter is that they recentralized power behind the back of the users through software and data capture. But this new centre remains invisible and empty. We feel it is there but cannot really grasp its political program. These companies create filters, structure search outcomes and manipulate users to by suggesting products they can buy, new friends they can add etc. with the overall aim to rebuild the centre (which is them). The technical potential of networks to create social structure and to collaborate and the centralized social media reality inside the walled garden is getting bigger by the day. Where will this take us?

TN: At the beginning of the book you discuss the necessity that the internet should not be medicalized or moralized, and you position yourself against the Frankfurt Critical school, however you still underline a critical attitude towards the networks studies. Can you explain us your critical positioning?

GL: Sure, this position goes back to 1994-1995 when Pit Schultz and I founded the nettime list, an international ‘net criticism’ movement of artists, activists, programmer, researchers and designers. We demanded a knowledgeable critique from inside. This was, and still is, our main objection to the Frankfurt School type of complaints, mainly voiced by 1968-generation public intellectuals with little or no internet expertise itself. They mainly appear on TV and in daily newspapers. The academic equivalent is the scholar who only publishes in peer-review journals that no one reads and no one can access anyway. This is not the way to go if we want to build up an engaged and critical networked discourse. We expect that critic has read the book and seen the concert or theatre play, and that this person is an expert in literature etc. The same should be the case with new media (internet, smart phones, games). We should not delegate that to the business pages (even though there is a huge economic component to the networks, which I do not want to neglect at all). What is needed is a new ‘virtual intellectual’ with technical knowledge and a humanities background. This is more than knowing how to operate the iPad. We’re working on it and the signs are good that a new generation is growing up that looks down on Google and Apple and circumvents the traps of cool gadgets and apps. This is a new form of critique which Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht already foresaw and practiced in which the critical users becomes a producer. Critical is not merely a point of view; it is first and foremost an (informed) activity.

TN: In your book you often talk about the necessity of creating a new field of study dedicated to the network culture. Why do you think that this object of research should be considered different from the general media study field? This is very interesting because in Italy we still lack a media study field.

GL: Perhaps one day it will all fit together into one overall Digital Media Discipline, but we’re not there yet. Before we start to synthesize and bring together all platforms and historical broadcast and print media with one method and history, it is important to give some autonomy to digital culture research and network theory because it is really a different paradigm in comparison to the top-down broadcast logic. It is too easy for me to say it is all ‘cross-media’ because that’s again a top-down approach coming from the PR and communication business that wants to push its products through these new channels. It remains important to make a hard cut with the broadcasting paradigm (and related industries) and emphasize the user approach (the community approach, emphasis on feedback and comments, public interface issues, free software and open source principles, using peer-to-peer architectures). We need first of all get a better understanding of the history of cybernetics and the computer. We all carry a computer on our body, spend years on end with these machines but how much do we know where they come from?

TN: Can you describe the objective of the Network Cultures Institute that you founded in Amsterdam in 2004? In particular I am interested in your definition according to which network culture will produce a redefinition of power itself and it could be a ”resonating concept that can be used for research and action”.

GL: I have chosen not to work in the direction of a general network theory or a society approach a la Manuel Castells. Our institute is based inside a large polytechnic university of applied sciences (HvA). It is neither pure academic nor an art school for that matter. The approach needs to focused and pragmatic. It is very Dutch in that sense (not German). So far the school has given us a lot of freedom to develop what we call ‘decentralized research networks that work on emerging topics’: aesthetics of online video, critique of creative industries, net porn research, cultures of search, Wikipedia and now, of course, social media.

TN: Your book resonates with a deep critic on the academic culture relative to the network, but I would suggest that the whole academic culture seems to fall short in understanding the present. You incite us “to open up collective imagination”. Do you think that the academic culture is, or can be open to the fertilization of the outside world? and if yes, how?

GL: I have worked outside of academia fro 20 years and that more or less ruined my academic career in terms of grants etc. I was 44 when I received my PhD. The last years I tried a few things but none have been successful. I am an activist outsider, new media is a new and unstable discipline in the process of both growing and disappearing. And on top of that I am a theorist and critic with an interest in art and design, dedicated to the essay form of writing, which, in the current so-called peer review culture of journals are not appreciated. Maybe I am not the right person to ask what ordinary academics should or should not do. To young people I always say: don’t do what I have done, and do not listen to me.

TN: In the English title of your book you paraphrase the title of a very famous American movie, Rebels without a cause, to discuss about the effects of the time-consuming networks that catch us inside, however your position on the networks role in counter-power activities doesn’t seem to be so negative. Can you explain the possible paradoxical effects of social networks for a reassessment of an antagonist political what strategy?

GL: I am an autonomous anarchist with organizational inspirations. I read enough Lenin, Bakunin (and also Gramsci) and have confronted myself with the harsh realities of actual communism in Eastern Europe ever since the late 1970s. I believe in the power of social movements and I have been part of many (squatting, anti-nuclear, no borders) but also understand how wasteful the energies can be once a movement goes downhill. In potential social media can become incredible powerful tools for mobilization but right now the movements are simply not there to make a long lasting sustainable use of them. Just try to imagine what the 1930s would have been with social media. You think it was dark and messy then? Then prepare for worse in the decades to come. Italy is the perfect example of messy politics but can still learn a lot from other places where the mélange of left and right and no wing is even more pronounced. What Italy is lacking yet the pragmatics of the post-ideological, but that’s coming.

TN: You seem to be very interested in the relationships between networked technologies and political and cultural practices. But how can you reconcile the observation according to which “no social movement or cultural practice, however radical can escape the commodity logic” and your positive attitude toward the effect of technologies on political empowerment of dissent?

GL: Thousands of anarcho-communistic programmers educating the people in the use of save crypto p2p phones? Why not? Can we imagine a social media arms race? These days we have Tor, Wikileaks, Anonymous, but also IndyMedia, Global Voices and now perhaps Twitter. The problem here it is that we cannot walk into the trap to believe that technology will do the dirty job for us to organize people. We need to do that. At the same time we know that the tools that we use, shape us. That’s why Ned Rossiter and I have emphasized to find out more how ‘organized networks’ could look like. We need to design and test future forms of political organization that are, for instance, both local and global (but not at the same level). What do you make of the semi-autonomous cells as a model? How would you orchestrate today’s strategic debates? Occupy Wall Street experimented will the model of the Greek chorus that collectively repeat the argument in a move to slow down, and embody the rhetoric of the Other. Could we translate that into this relentlessly real-time environment of the net? As far as we have been able to figure out social media only made an impact on the dozens of OWS camps that existed late 2011 in an indirect way.

TN: Why do you think that organization should have a new central role in a new start of political practice? Are you really convinced that the commons by Negri and Hardt that you suggested is the science of revolution can be supported with the new forms of organization? My feeling is that their approach is completely based on a spontaneous movement of the multitude, while I agree with your emphasis on the centrality of organization.

GL: Will the big change come in response to make events such as war or crises, natural catastrophes or will it be a result of decades of preparation and hard work of many small groups, individuals and campaigns? Right now we lots of revolts with a lot disastrous use of social media as people are simply not prepared. They are drawn into the Event. Think of the London riots. The question that we have not yet touched is how we will eventually scale up from the grassroots level of networks and small groups. In the past this was clearly more different. That’s why there was a need for organizational forms such as the political party, trade union and the church. Creative individuals can make amazing experiences with sudden shocks of media attention and fame (only to disappear soon after). The meme is the cultural form of the day. On a campaign level this works very well but in order to prepare for a political takeover we need a large social network that we can trust. Global media all the time draw us away from that laborious task.

TN: You suggest that networking logic is at odd with present democratic mechanisms and that networks starts from a post-representational positioning. If this is the case how can you discuss the new forms of organization of dissent within the Internet network culture?

GL: There is clearly a democratic deficit in the networking paradigm and we need to address that problem. Networks are neither flat nor hierarchical; they are vague. It is a cloud and it is a real challenge to theorize a cloud! What does it mean to disperse? The answer to the democratic issue will, most likely, not be a technical one. We have to be open for that. The famous Dutch hacker Rop Grongrijp always inspires me. I met him for the first time in 1989. He is the founder of the ISP xs4all, is involved in the Berlin Chaos Computer Club and at some point worked together with Julian Assange on the Collatoral Murder video, early 2010. At some point Rop started a campaign against electronic voting machines. He has proved time and again that they are not safe and he is still working in many countries across the globe to support local campaign. Did you hear that Mitt Romney owns the voting machines in Ohio? I like the idea that technology assists us in on the informal level so that we can push the technology aside at the moment supreme, switch off the smart phones and have real life encounters. This requires a lot of training and wisdom

TN: You end the book with a very suggestive discussion on the Wikileaks effect, stating that it is the end of the content/carrier debate and that it is the end also of the debate between traditional journalism and hacker-citizen journalism. Croudsourced analysis does not happen automatically and Assange needed the help of well-known newspapers to obtain the great success. Do you think that Western democracies are ready for the transparency and openness that the Wikileaks model suggests or will they rebel against it?

GL: Wikileaks is a drama, an ongoing techno-activist disaster that I have been following on a daily basis since 2009. We can, of course, also look at it from the artistic-absurdist perspective and call it a Brechtian Lehrstück. There is a lot to be learned from this case study. First of all it tells us a lot what happens when you leave behind the NGO model of incorporation, do not set up national chapters (as Indymedia, Wikipedia and Global Voices have done) and try to do global politics from your laptop in a room with a bunch of friends who are most of time elsewhere. The dialectics between Assange and the mainstream press have never interested me. In that issue I am on his side. OK, you try and work with journalists and outlet to get the story out, giving others the possibility to do research on the vast material, but in the end the documents should be out there, in the public access, for everyone to read. The exclusivity aspect of news is there, but annoys me as well, as a net activist.

In their contribution to the International Journal of Communication 6 (2012) Bregtje van der Haak, Michael Parks and Manuel Castells ask why journalism is in a crisis. Journalists feel that competition increased while it is also said that the willingness to pay for content declined. Instead of the usual emphasis on the drop in profitability of media corporations the authors stress the role of journalism as a public good. The three think it is “sad to see many journalists close the door to new technological opportunities and refuse generous offers of active citizens.” The authors then provide an overview of new tools and practices in networked journalism such as ‘crowd-gathering’ of news and other use of ‘user-generated content’. On the level of data visualization there is a lot happening and the same can be said of web documentaries and other forms of ‘visual journalism’. Networked journalism, the authors conclude, “is not a threat to the independence and quality, but a liberation from strict corporate control.”

In response to this optimistic emphasis on tools and their possibilities we can ask why journalists have turned conservative and protective concerning the methods used in their profession. The technological possibilities, which are clearly out there, remain, by and large, unused and circulate mostly as demo design, media art works and prototypes on the edge of the media sphere, on temporary display in cultural contexts such as festivals and exhibitions. The answer why this is case cannot be found in some hidden agenda of a bunch of Luddites, these backward-looking executives that are caught in the 20th century. The new tools need both space and time to develop—and these are precisely the rarest commodities. In order to reinvent itself journalism has to first of all free itself of the real-time paradigm. The news industry is still caught in the rat race of live reporting (from CNN to Twitter). This machine is surrounded by an ever-growing parasitic cloud of PR and communication advisers who forgot to distinguish between content and advertisement ages ago.

If network journalism wants to explore the tools that are out there it needs to first of all take back time (through stretching and decompressing). We cannot lament the decrease of investigative journalism and continue our presence on Facebook. Slow food may be a passion, but so should be slow media. And as Peter Sloterdijk describes it well, the way to get there is through daily exercise, in analogy to physical training in sports. That’s our new culture of information, one that is not merely technical. And once we are bored with real-time status updates, we will soon enough access other forms of knowledge (narrative, visual, political). The question here is one of critical mass. How can we kick-start the demolition of the attention economy?

Interview with Geert Lovink by Elisabetta Demaris (Volontari per lo Sviluppo, Italy)

ED: Nowadays social networks like Twitter and Facebook are celebrated as a participation medium that empower the common people to create information, becoming themselves citizen journalists. This fact is seen positively, giving the ordinary people the chance to report and discuss problems related to justice and society. What do you think about it?

GL: It is empowerment without consequences. Most social media users don’t talk about political problems on these sites. I would say people do not ‘report’ on Facebook as it is not a public forum or medium. It’s a digital cage. At best they update others they know over what happened. The critique of social media says that they are so limiting because of their ‘walled garden’ architecture. They are centralized whereas the potential of the internet is lying in its decentralized yet open possibilities. If the Internet as an overall infrastructure was already a closed chapters not so many people wouldn’t bother and spend their time and energy on other, more important issues. The social media as we know them right now are not very intelligent tools for organizing and do not seem to be interested to develop further in that direction. Instead it is all about monetazing private data and firing targeted advertisement on users. Social networking is reduced to backroom gossiping and self-promoting. That’s nice and sometimes important (and of course all too human) but limiting the potential of digital networked media. Why limit the social? The reduction on Facebook of all forms of  social relationships to the ‘friend’ status on is the classic example. Another would be the persistent refusal of Facebook to install a ‘dislike’ button’ (the history of that continuing uproar of users has yet to be written). A variation of that would be the ‘don’t want’ button, ‘boring’ and ‘bullshit’ buttons (or ‘nonsense’ for that matter).

ED: Being the most used mass media today, the social networks give a good chance to no profit organisations too, promoting themselves and creating a follower community. Don’t you think it is a great opportunity for these organisations that work for a global public good and that don’t gain money except from their follower?

GL: I am sorry but radio, TV and print are still the most used mass media today, even in the USA, let alone in other countries. Social media are, at best, invisible updating networks that can never come up with background details of stories and properly debate complicated matters as they were not designed to do so in the first place. Twiiter is a minority channel (and in my opinion functions well as long as it remains more or less flat and does not fall back into ‘broadcasting’ mode). Think of the 5 billion mobile phone users in the world. Twitter would be 10% of that, Facebook 20% (and these are optimistic figures). Considerable but not the standard. The fact that in authoritarian countries people use internet functions as an alternative source of information is no doubt true but social media are always speeding up and aggregating the counter/subcultural sources, and not the source itself. Those are blogs, websites, places like YouTube and Vimeo and of course the web presence of the large ‘official’ news organizations such as the BBC and The New York Times (but I do not trust them for political reasons).

ED: If you think that Facebook and Twitter can not produce social impact, how a real change can happen in a digital era were we are living in?

GL: I never said that these particular US-American platforms lack social impact. They do. But maybe it is not what I have in mind, and what lots of people would want to see happening, on the long-term. Their version of the social for me is a cheap similation. We try to keep up with the status updates but what do we get done? OK, you know what your so-called friends are up to. They might live across Italy, Europe or the world, and then what? Do you get together? Party? Conspire a revolt or a revolution? I doubt. It’s the tyranny of the informal. The South of Italy at it worst. The internet was made for change. Remember, that was the promise of 1990s and beyond. There is the promise to organize media, work and income in a different way. Open and distributed, not through such closed and controlled communication platforms. We need to break through the barrier of informal information. I don’t want to upset Twitter and Facebook users. They are neither stupid nor ignorant. The aim of the Unlike Us network is not to promote some better, politically correct software. What we would like to organize is a public debate about network architectures.