Zero Comments -- Blogging and Critical Internet Culture (Routledge, 2007) In Zero Comments Geert Lovink upgrades worn-out concepts and inquires the latest Web 2.0 hype around blogs, wikis and social network sites. In this third volume of his studies into critical Internet culture, Lovink develops a ‘general theory of blogging.’
The Principle of Notworking -- Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (AUP, 2005), inaugural speech at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, february 2005, with three chapters on multitude, network and culture, the theory of free cooperation and the dawn of the organized networks. This booklet can be download here as a pdf (2.2 MB).
My First Recession -- Critical Internet Culture in Transition (V2-NAi, 2003, translated in Italian), contains essays on Internet theory, dotcom literature, the issue of moderation, lists, blogs and open publishing and case studies of three list communities: Syndicate (Deep Europe), Xchange (streaming media) and Oekonux (GPL society debate).
Uncanny Networks -- Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia (MIT Press, 2002), a collection of interviews with new media artists, theorists and critics from East and West-Europe, USA and Asia who reflect on their concepts and practices. It provides a critical context of ideas, networks and artworks that have shaped the past decade.
Dark Fiber -- Tracking Critical Internet Culture (MIT Press, 2002, translated in German, Italian, Spanish, Romanian and Japanese) brings together texts about new media culture worldwide, with essays on The Digital City Amsterdam and nettime, data dandyism, tactical media strategies and early critiques of dotcommania.
June 27th, 2006 at 9:53 am (#)
This dialouge between Pavlos Hatzopoulos and Geert Lovink raises some significant and interesting perspectives. I find the connections (or disconnections) between ‘new media’ and ‘architecture’ as a practice particularly relevant to the issues I am trying to understand. The manner in which practice and consumption of ‘technology’ in everyday facilitates ‘architectural’ innovations is really fascinating. As I have explored it specifically in the Indian context, the connections and intersections are insidious and subtle instead of being part of a larger imagination. I did some research in Nehru Place, Asia’s largest secondhand hardware and pirated software market. This market complex though conceptualized as a part of the larger post-colonial imagination with corners and maps very clearly marked out for specific purpose has changed in character ‘architecturally because of the prevalence of the ’secondhand’ hardware and ‘piracy’ market. A lot of transactions in these fields require to be shielded off the ‘public’ eye and for that new rooms and spaces are created access to these is usually through a complicated labyrinth and needs specialized knowledge or a well-acquainted escort. Would these ‘innovations’ in the use of the architectural space qualify as media practices influencing them?
I, however, think that this shift where architectural imagination would intersect with the new-media practices is very specific to context and usually employed to create some or the other sort of simulacrum to titillate and give a glimpse of the possibility. As a possibility, I think it has a long way to go. Does the fact that ‘architecture’ as a field has a much more sturdy historical background than the ‘new-media’ technologies make a difference in this regard? As also, at some level the fluidity of the new media practices, does it make the task of epistemologically makes it difficult for the two to intersect?