Last Monday (May 21st) Geert Lovink appeared on the Dutch radio program Villa VPRO in a broadcast on social media.  Other guests were multimedia journalist Peter Olsthoorn and internet expert Danny Mekic. In the first half of the broadcast they discussed the power of Facebook and Google, and in the second half they reflected on the issue of privacy and the influence of social media on our daily lives.

The broadcast is in Dutch and can be listened to at the website of Villa VPRO.

By Stijn Peeters

It’s become an almost reassuring ritual: whenever Facebook changes its layout, adds a feature or modifies its privacy policy, the internet will quickly be filled with people screaming bloody murder, sharing ways to keep using the older settings and setting up petitions to let Facebook know that this time they’ve really made a mistake.

In the end, Facebook usually pushes their changes one way or the other and inevitably, the process repeats itself after a few months. It is amongst other things this practice – a social network changing its service and conditions without consulting the users – that has fostered the emergence of so-called “alternative social networks”. Such networks often allow people to socialise online like on Facebook and other big, monolithic networks, but also offer people more choice with regards to customizing their experience and managing their personal data.

However, even these alternative networks are often rather similar to Facebook with regards to the features they offer to users; friend lists, group pages and personal “walls” have become a staple of services both alternative and mainstream. At a glance, it would therefore be easy to conclude that this is all there is to social networks online. Even on these alternative social networks such as Diaspora1 and Lorea2, the user experience is to a large extent fixed on the template set by current and previous social networking giants.

There’s more, though; when looking further than just the immediately obvious, there are several services and technologies that do not fit in the Facebook-sized box. A peculiar example is IRC, or Internet Relay Chat. First developed in 1988, which makes it almost prehistoric by internet standards, this chat protocol continues to enjoy a niche popularity and still boasts hundreds of thousands of concurrent users. IRC users connect to an IRC network, where they join a chat channel – often specific to a certain topic or community – and take part in discussions with other people in the room. People often stick around in certain channels, which fosters a sense of community with the other people present.

This makes a good case for seeing IRC as a social medium and, given the way users gather in specific rooms and form ad hoc communities, perhaps even
a social network. Yet it is fairly different from the current “big” social media such as Facebook in the way it is set up and the software for it is developed and released; there is no central authority or entity that develops the software or controls the networks, and much of the software used by IRC users was made by these users themselves. This is especially interesting with regards to “alternative” social networks such as Lorea or Diaspora, which often claim to offer a higher grade of user empowerment. At the same time, these projects are often – as I will argue in this article – quite similar to the larger, more mainstream networks in several aspects, some of which in fact impede the ways in which users can have a say over their social network experience. Perhaps taking a page out of IRC’s book could be beneficial to these alternative networks with regards to increasing user empowerment.

In this article, I will therefore explore what features or paradigms specific to IRC could be beneficial for wider use within alternative social networks. It can be expected that the user-driven development and, importantly, deployment of features on top of the IRC protocol both fosters a sense of community and allows for a feature set that is customizable enough to satisfy all involved users. As such a degree of user involvement has not been employed by any (alternative) social networks yet, this can be a viable new approach for them.

I will first attempt to establish a clear definition of what “alternative social network” actually means. To do so, I will first explore the general definition of what a social network is. As a starting point boyd & Ellison’s general definition will be used, taking into account the criticisms it has received from David Beer and Thelwall. Having established this, I will investigate in what way alternative social networks are different from “mainstream” social networks. I will then take a look at how the way the software alternative social networks run on inhibit or enhance user empowerment, a core value of many alternative social network sites.

I then turn to IRC and analyse how the protocol makes for a software ecosystem which fosters user empowerment. I compare this with FOAF, a prominent example of an approach to social networks that resembles the “IRC approach” in some aspects. I specifically focus on the role network architecture plays, as it is one of the major differences between the two technologies. Based on this analysis, I identify strengths and weaknesses of FOAF – as a prominent example of an IRC-like approach to social networks – with regards to its suitability as underlying technology of a user empowering social network, based on my analysis of what makes IRC’s approach successful.

Stijn Peeters worked as a research intern for the Unlike Us program at INC. Download his final essay The IRC Paradigm: An Alternative Approach for Alternative Social Networks as PDF.

Also be sure to read Beyond distributed and decentralized: what is a federated network? and Open source alternative social networks: empowering users or same old?

By Andrew Erlanger

Y U No Guy has been bestowed with ‘God Tier’ status on Memegenerator.net for articulating some of society’s most pressing questions. In this instance, he inquires as to why Facebook couples seem intent on projecting their relationships throughout Mark Zuckerberg’s empire rather than keeping them private – a curious trend that shows no sign of abating. One response to this pensive query might be that users are simply embracing the newfound representative potential afforded by social network sites. Unlike mass media, which have traditionally thrust romantic representations upon the relatively passive consumer, social media actively encourage the ‘prosumer’ to depict his or her own intimate ties. As such, offline romance is increasingly taking form inside the blue boundaries of Facebook, with updates, tags, posts and likes all serving to publicise private affinities. Perhaps the site is being used as a tool of rebellion against the idealised intimacy that has been driven down our throats for so long. Then again, perhaps we are in fact so besotted with the historical narrative of romance that we want to boast it as inextricably woven within the fabric of our own lives. As always, Y U No Guy’s question is as complex as it is crucial. But this does not mean it is unanswerable, and British pop music may provide a surprisingly good starting point for unravelling the mystery.

In the year 2000, previously obscure London quartet Coldplay achieved instant international stardom courtesy of their hit single 'Yellow'. A melancholy ode to vocalist Chris Martin's unrequited love, the song stormed top forty charts the world over as it tugged at our collective heartstrings. But not all bestowed praise upon this overnight sensation. In Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, Chuck Klosterman playfully bemoans the very existence of the band and their iconic tune, taking particular aim at the somewhat mawkish flavour of Martin’s lugubrious lyrics:

‘For you I bleed myself dry,’ sang their blockhead vocalist, brilliantly informing us that the stars in the sky are, in fact, yellow. How am I going to compete with that shit? That sleepy- eyed bozo isn’t even making sense. He’s just pouring fabricated emotions over four gloomy guitar chords, and it ends up sounding like love.

In the eyes of Klosterman, melodramatic artists of the Coldplay ilk delude us into believing that ‘fake love’ should be a part of ordinary living. We measure our actual relationships against this fictional benchmark and, unsurprisingly, find they come up short every time.

Despite writing with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, Klosterman's take on Coldplay is emblematic of a broader societal concern. For decades, academics, philosophers, psychologists and the like have observed an intricate and potentially harmful interplay between mass media and romance, whereby we are perpetually subjected to idealistic representations of how being in love is supposed to feel. In seeking to attain the unattainable, we place undue pressure on our relationships and thus preclude the possibility of falling in love with any acumen of normalcy. There can be no ‘normal’ if everybody is twisted by the same forces simultaneously.

Of course, such twisting forces can be found well beyond the confines of the music industry. Contemporary culture is in fact saturated with what might be called the 'myth' of romance, an elaborate illusion fraught with danger. Take popular Western cinema, for example, which testifies to both the historic and present-day pervasion of fantastical relationships. Writing on the politics of Hollywood romance, Robert Lapsley and Michael Westlake (1992) contend that the thematically dominant strain of American narrative cinema is not only that the sexes are complimentary but that such harmony is figured nowhere more perfectly than in romantic love.

For the most part, the romance in question lives happily ever after. All barriers to intimacy are eventually overcome and the newly united couple can finally lock lips just before the end credits roll and the curtains close. They did it. They found true love. Of course, such predictably saccharine sentiment is partly derivative of an underlying social desire for perfect romance and the promise of happiness it entails. But by resolving romantic tension in the ephemeral realms of music and cinema, mass media only serves to perpetuate romantic insecurity in the unpredictable drama that is life. As Tania Modelski explains, illusions of romance “inevitably increase the reader’s own psychic conflicts ... [just as] certain tranquilizers taken to reduce anxiety are, though temporarily helpful, ultimately anxiety producing” (1982: 57).

But if traditional forms of media are bombarding us with fake love, do social media finally afford an opportunity to represent the real? There is little doubt that such platforms have radically transfigured the one-to-many paradigm once central to transmissive technology, giving rise to a new breed of communicative possibilities. Present-day prosumers are granted unprecedented freedom in broadcasting fragments of their own lives, sharing everything from the frivolous to the fundamental with an audience of hundreds, if not thousands. The same can be said of the virtual ‘us’: the romantic relationships we cast online. No longer limited to mass media outlets, representations of romance are now projected by the ‘many’, perennially pervading our streams and feeds. This is no more evident than in the case of Facebook, where the emblem of the relationship status is increasingly serving to substantiate offline intimacies.

So what to make of those little pink hearts that populate our profiles? If he gatekeepers and architects of Facebook indeed wield great social and organizational power, it is important we adopt a critical lens to examine the ways in which the platform can meditate our relationships. To this end, the central question of this paper can be formulated as follows: In what ways and to what extent is romance represented on Facebook?

Within the highly immersive realm of social media, questions of representation are closely connected to notions of ‘real’ and ‘virtual’. As such, this paper will first outline the ongoing convergence of online and offline identity, which ostensibly lends a false sense of ‘realness’ to Facebook romance. The variety of ways in which Facebook’s interface facilitates romantic conception will then be addressed, focussing specifically on the simplification, definition and validation of the relationship. Finally, the tendency for users to curate an ‘ideal us’ within the constraints of the system will be considered, before a critical conclusion is drawn.

Andrew Erlanger worked as a research intern for the Unlike Us program at INC. Download his final essay The Curated Couple: Romantic Representation on Facebook as PDF.

This fall the Institute of Network Cultures invites you to the second Society of the Query conference on search and search engines - in theory and practice, present and history. Join us on November 7 and 8 in Amsterdam in our quest to re-think search! In the coming weeks the program will be put together, so be sure to check up on the Society of the Query page regularly.

Also, we're happy to announce that the next INC Reader will be concerning online search and is planned for publication early 2014. Both the conference and the reader will be produced in collaboration with René König, who has worked with the INC in 2012-2013. Expect a Call for Contributions soon. The previous reader came out last February, see Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives.

When interested in search, do read up on the Re-search blog or go back into the archives to the first Society of the Query conference in 2009.

Ideas and comments are welcome as always.

By Ali Balunywa 

A qualitative research of the mobile money phenomenon in Uganda carried out by Geert Lovink (INC), assisted by Ali Balunywa (independent media consultant)

Background

Five Master students from the University of Amsterdam, Ali Balunywa, Wouter Dijkstra, Ben White, Guido van Diepen and Kai Henriquez Uganda for two months of field research. The aim of the research was to understand how local African communities engage ICT. Each researcher had an individual approach and research question and wrote a personal Masters Thesis based on the two months of field research. Geert Lovink was the project advisor.
The aim of the research was to better understand the significance of ICT from the end user perspective. In this way the group chose to focus on the “man on the street” as opposed to an organizational or governmental approach. This is out of the interest to understand how ICT has already found a presence at a local level and irrespective of organizations or governments involved. After graduation, the 5 students encouraged by their supervisor; Geert Lovink, summarized their theses into a book; Beyond ICT4D: New Media Research in Uganda. Beyond ICT4D: “New Media Research in Uganda is a collection of ethnographic reports from diverse perspectives of those living at the other end of the African ICT pyramid. Crucially, these texts refocus on the so-called “ICT4D” debate away from the standard western lens, which depicts users in the developing world as passive receivers of Western technological development, towards Ugandans whose use and production of technologies entail innovations from the ground up. It is this ‘other’ everyday point of view that is too often missing in the ICT4D debate: valuable voices that put technologies, projects and organizations into their proper context” (http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/theoryondemand/titles/no-10-beyond-ict4d-new-media-reseach-in-uganda/).

Inspiration and preparations

After publishing the research and completing the book project, Dr. Lovink decided to fulfill his urge to visit Uganda to carry out more research especially on the mobile money phenomenon. After a few mishaps, the journey was confirmed. Travel would be in December 2012. Preparations started midyear. Appointments with the relevant organizations and people were made and confirmed. Among the mobile money operators, it was only MTN that failed/refused to respond to our requests for an interview. We went through many contacts including MTN staff, but unfortunately, the only responses were to those people who would have liked to help, but insisted this was not their docket.

We were fortunate to get the email of the person responsible; Charlotte Kaheru and 2 others (Email: kaheruc@mtn.co.ug, ntabgoj@mtn.co.ug, kirengs@mtn.co.ug), but our repeated mails went unanswered and unacknowledged! In spite of MTN being one of the big operators, it did not deter us from confirming our appointments with the Airtel, Warid and UTL.

On 3 December 2012, we started our day with a visit to the Makerere University Business School (MUBS) who were privileged to be the official hosts of Dr. Lovink. After a cordial morning meeting with the Principal of the School; Prof. Waswa Balunywa, Dr Lovink offered the MUBS Library 50,000 free digital off line books. The principal postponed receiving the books until the next day when his senior staff would be around to share the good news.

We then proceeded to Airtel where we met a Mr. Albert Mugisha. He took us through the Airtel money solutions confirmed to us that Airtel money was already integrated with bank services. He added that Airtel money supports a number of integrations including merchant integration platforms where money transfers and purchase of goods and services online is made possible from website Sales by mobile payments.

On being asked how banks reacted, Mr. Mugisha responded that banks are embracing mobile money players and not taking them as competitors. In the US, Europe and Asia, the credit card system works unlike here where mobile money rules.

“Is mobile money taking over?” we asked. Mugisha answered that Mobile money is largely restricted to person to holder, not to the Internet, which has reduced fraud unlike he credit card system.

Reconciliation with agents must be regular to avoid fraud and embezzlement with this system. Mr. Mugisha assured us that at Airtel unlike other providers, there have been no incidents of hacking into the systems yet.

Will the operators grow too big to be banks themselves?

Mugisha said there is that possibility and that the future is in mobile money, not credit cards. The currency of the future will not be dollar or euro.... but something connected to mobile money and that if mobile money operators become banks.... then they will define the economies

The technical system used by Airtel money is just the database and the big thing about it is the security. The machinery is within reach of technicians, not just cloud computing, which is remote. The Airtel Kenya office runs most technical things, troubleshooters and the Apps developers.

A separate company runs Airtel money detached from the mother telecommunication company.

We also talked to Mr. Stephen Waiswa the Public relations officer and Mr. Bernard Anguyo; the director mobile money at Airtel. They reassured us that the ambience the banks like Standard Chartered and or Barclays banks scares the peasants. The local banks can't open branches all over the country like Mobile Money does. Airtel in one year already has 8,000 agents and MTN (which started a couple of years ago) 15, 000. With a combination of all operators, the whole country is covered

Airtel receives money on behalf of merchants and sends goods to clients. Merchants; collection accounts, have interface set up on PC and or phone. Service providers like Umeme (Electricity), National Water etc have no sim cards, but have mobile numbers connected online. The transaction begins with cash, buy Airtel money, send to a provider, who receives mobile cash or e value which he transfers to credit card and credit card tokens are received to enable one to buy goods

Airtel Mobile money products include: School fees payments, bill payments like water and Umeme etc.

In Kenya, the people use their phones, as wallets were money is kept unlike in Uganda where it is send and draw. And Kenya has many other services payments that can be made by phone for example paying fares in taxis. Taxi owners gain by getting their money in a lump sum at once on their mobile phones. In the long run the relationship between Internet and mobile money will grow.

Today, Airtel 9 months later has 1.4 million clients and yet all banks combined have only 3 million accounts.

Another Airtel mobile money product is Bank integration. One can deposit or withdraw money from his account using the mobile phone. So one no longer has to stand in long lines, but do it from the comfort of his home or office. Mobile money also has a rural outreach. This means with integration of banking and mobile money services many clients also can have Bank accounts.

Warid Telecommunications

The next day we visited Warid telecommunications where we talked to Mr. Kimathi; the head mobile money called Warid Pesa. Mr. Kimathi is a Kenyan national and he first explained to us the Kenya situation where he said Mobile money is integrated with Internet. For example, Pesa pal, which is similar to PayPal and can be used to pay online.

Today Warid Pesa has at least a million clients. It has also introduced payments for services like parking fees. He thinks payments in taxis is a far shot, but will soon be achievable.

Kimathi lamented that corruption doesn't allow technology to grow. That utility payments like electricity, pay TV, school fees, taxes, water works well. Though Kenya has gone a step further by making it possible to use the service to pay in supermarkets and fuel stations.

Warid today has 8,000 clients. Warid thinks simple, secure and instant should be the future of mobile money. Almost 30 per cent Warid clients use Warid Pesa. Mobile money keeps clients’ loyalty.

In Kenya, telecom and mobile money is separate. Mobile money is under bank of Kenya, but in Uganda it is all supervised by the Uganda Communication Commission.

Equity bank is the Warid partner bank.

Uganda Telecommunications M-Sente

The next day the team visited Uganda telecoms limited (UTL) and met Mr. Peter Kakaire head M-Sente, the mobile division of UTL. Mr. Kakaire enlightened us on the workings of M-Sente. He said M-Sente has 563,200 clients served by 4,770 agents though only around 55% are active. They have a presence in all the 5 regions of Uganda.

Mr. Kakaire travels often to supervise, see penetration and numerical growth of M-Sente.  UTL stronger in the North compared to elsewhere, though growth is uniform across the country. By the end of 2011, M-Sente had only 700 agents, with a subscriber base of 250,000.

Mobile money is a basic product; it is a generic product most important driver is agent network growth. Not all 1,800,000 telecom subscribers are on M – Sente though. Government is enforcing a sim registration to capture the details of clients like; name, photo, address through the providers. Data collection is centrally stored as and when physical forms come in. but photos are sent online digitally. UTL is using advantage of this exercise to recruit clients to M-Sente.

UTL is already dealing in airtime and the retail outlets are around 40,000. All these vendors are potential agents. Money is now a bigger product than airtime.

The range of products; expand Eco system from just sending money to acceptance of mobile money to pay for goods and services. This competes with cash money where there is no extra charge. On mobile money there is 7% surcharge if you are registered, it is more for unregistered clients. Receiving and sending money also costs money

Special channels can be arranged where preferential rates can be given and the percentage goes down to say 1.4% for example dealing with a company like Shell.

Bulk of the money is not all transferred, but is stored on the phone. Eventually the clients might ask for interest on money kept on the platform.

Telecoms are not ready to have a price war over mobile money, because competition is with banks not each other. Margins on mobile money are very low and cannot be pushed any lower. The telecoms make a small profit. The agents take most of the profit and the telecoms remain with about 1%.

Infrastructure costs are high. In Uganda there are 4 players: Fundamo, Visa, Komviva and Obope. (Platforms). Recently, Visa bought off Fundamo. Uganda’s cash economy will soon turn into a mobile money economy. It is suspected that Visa might be positioning itself to be across all platforms.

Mobile money is more like a debit card done on a mobile phone

When asked about the future of mobile money, Mr. Kakaire said it was very important for the Central Bank to play the supervisory role and not UCC whose core competency is telecommunications and not fiscal policy.

Meanwhile, DFCU is the partner bank of M-Pesa at UTL.

Our next appointment the next day was with I-Network. I – network is a knowledge sharing platform funded by the Dutch IICD. It collects and shares information on its 1600 member mailing list and also publishes a newsletter.  It was established in 2002 and is the most successful D-Group in Uganda today. It organizes workshops, trainings, carries out research for the Uganda Communication Commission and lobbies government for ICT policies. The parliament of Uganda regularly consults it on ICT issues. It also creates awareness on ICT related subjects and shares expert knowledge.

Ms. Margaret Sevume, the Content manager at I-Network was the hostess of the meeting attended by Stephen Musoke, Ali Ndiwalana, Albert Mucunguzi, Elisha Wasukira, Geert and myself among others. It was noted that mobile money in Uganda has picked up, though the numbers seemed too big for the telecoms to handle.  It was also generally agreed that the transaction costs were still too high and that there was no cross network support among the providers.  There is also need for merchant banks to support the service to avoid remaining a dump post by integrating mobile money with bank accounts like Airtel is doing.

Meeting Mr. Albert Mucunguzi and his team of PCTech Magazine rounded up the research. Mr. Lovink made a presentation on how to do a research in this period of social media as the final item of his business in Kampala. The well-attended presentation was made at Makerere Business School Senate room to staff students and ICT interested public.

(pictures: GL)

Reading (academic texts) on networks, it is easy to get confused by the various labels attached to the networks described in texts. Federated, distributed, centralized, decentralized... Stijn Peeters wrote an article trying to clear up the entangled terminology. Read it on the Unlike Us resources-page: Beyond distributed and decentralized: what is a federated network?

Are you interested in the debate around federation and the architecture of future networks, then be sure to check out the report and videos on Are You Distributed? The Federated Web Show, which took place at the latest Unlike Us Conference. Capo, Spideralex, George Danezis, Reni Hofmüller, Vincent Toubiana, Arvind Narayanan discuss, moderated by Seda Gürses and with comment from Harry Halpin.

Arvind Narayanan, one of the authors of the discussion-style article in the Unlike Us Reader, who unfortunately couldn't attend the conference, wrote a blogpost on the topic: Unlikely Outcomes? A Distributed Discussion on Decentralized Personal Data Architectures.

Download nu het Unlike Us Magazine: 10 artikelen over social media! Ga op je tablet naar unlikeus.dmci.hva.nl/ en kies voor 'Voeg toe aan beginscherm'. Je kunt het magazine ook in pdf downloaden: Unlike Us Magazine: 10 artikelen over social media.

Woord vooraf

Als je niet op Facebook zit, tel je niet mee. In elk geval onder studenten lijkt dat vaak op te gaan. Maar wat betekent het om op Facebook te zitten, behalve dat je je vrienden 24 uur per dag kunt updaten over waar je bent en hoe je je voelt? Misschien ben je meer een twitteraar. Is het dan wel wenselijk dat alle tweets ooit verzonden tot in de eeuwigheid bewaard blijven in de Amerikaanse Library of Congress, zoals onlangs weer in het nieuws kwam? Stel nu dat je dat helemaal niet wilt, kun je daar dan wat aan doen?

In de INC Reader Unlike Us: Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives zijn rond de dertig artikelen bijeen gebracht waarin designers, programmeurs, onderzoekers en activisten dit soort vragen aan de orde stellen. Het Unlike Us Magazine biedt een selectie van tien artikelen die zijn vertaald en bewerkt voor een breed publiek. We hopen dat vooral studenten zich aangesproken voelen door het materiaal – tekst, video, links – en dat de discussiepunten aanzetten tot verder nadenken. Iedereen is tenslotte dag in dag uit online te vinden en zelfs als je heel bewust níet voor Facebook of Twitter kiest, is het haast onmogelijk om aan de sociale media-logica te ontsnappen.

Marc Stumpel en Miriam Rasch,
Instituut voor Netwerkcultuur
Amsterdam, maart 2013

Taking place at Leuphana University’s Centre for Digital Cultures, the recent Video Vortex #9 conference aimed to contextualize the immense developments in online video, taking 're:assemblies of video' as the main theme. Of course the INC was present. For a thorough breakdown of the event, be sure to check out the Video Vortex blog, which takes a look at the most prominent themes discussed.

Why is space important as a category? Does video really resist theory? How are online streaming services transforming the politics of protest? What does the future hold for film on the web?

Thursday morning: Video Vortex #9: Beth Coleman – Tweeting the Revolution

Thursday: Video Vortex #9: The art or the end of video

Friday morning: Video Vortex #9: Protest and anti-protest, hero and anti-hero, amateur and pro

Friday afternoon: Video Vortex #9: Video theory – data and perspective

Saturday morning: Video Vortex #9: Breaking the frame in theory and practice

Saturday afternoon: Video Vortex #9: Have a look at the projects

Read online, download pdf or order a copy here.

Video is everywhere, like a space in which we move, an ocean we can dive into. But video is no longer the video we once knew. To address this techno-social shift, Andreas Treske sketches the outlines for a philosophical and practical understanding of online video, offering up a theory for the YouTube generation.

Video is examined up close and as a societal phenomenon. The images of a video constantly refer to other images, to the user and to the world outside. There is a 'thickening of the image'. Videos also exist in relation to each other. On YouTube each video is accompanied by dozens of suggestions commercials and comments. Or consider TED-talks: every presentation refers to many others, all connected in a network and easily changing from one hype to the next.

Useful for comprehending this relational context is the philosophy of Peter Sloterdijk, who describes human society in terms of 'spheres'. Online video can be understood as similar to bubble stuck to other bubbles, coming together to from foam within the connected sphere of the human environment.

Most prominent effects so far is video as a means of protest in the squares of the world, where revolution is filmed an uploaded in real time. Video isn't a defined movie-object watched individually, but a movement of millions of video simultaneously, causing a cascade of reaction throughout the world.

about the author: Andreas Treske is an author, filmmaker and media artist. Currently he teaches in the Cinema and Digital Media Department at Izmir University of Economics, in Turkey. He was the organizer of the third Video Vortex conference in Ankara.

Spheres from Andreas Treske on Vimeo.

colophon: Network Notebooks editors: Geert Lovink and Miriam Rasch. Copy editing: Morgan Currie. Design: Medamo, Rotterdam http://www.medamo.nl. Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. Supported by: CREATE-IT applied research at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Domein Media, Creatie en Informatie).

Andreas Treske, The Inner Life of Video Spheres. Network Notebooks 06, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2013. ISBN/EAN 978-90-818575-3-6

Kom naar de presentatie van de Unlike Us-app donderdag 14 maart. De app bevat tien toegankelijke Nederlandstalige artikelen vol filmpjes, discussiepunten en leestips over sociale media en de kansen en gevaren voor bouwers en gebruikers. De app is gebaseerd op de Unlike Us Reader, een uitgebreide verzameling essays die als boek bij het lectoraat Netwerkcultuur van de HvA verschijnt. In deze essays stellen designers, programmeurs, communicatiestrategen en onderzoekers de vraag: 'Sociale media - deelnemen of afwijzen?’

Theo Ploeg, cultuursocioloog en CMD-docent, Geert Lovink, lector Netwerkcultuur en Marc Stumpel, oud-CMD-student en redacteur van de app presenteren de iPad-versie van de artikelen. Vervolgens kan iedereen meedoen aan de quiz 'Hoe goed ken jij je eigen Facebook-profiel?!'. De winnaars kunnen leuke prijzen winnen, waaronder een toegangskaart voor de Unlike Us #3-conferentie op 22 en 23 maart.

Voor iedere bezoeker ligt bovendien een gratis exemplaar van de Unlike Us Reader klaar!

Wanneer: 14 maart 2013 van 17.00-18.00 uur
Waar: Medialounge, Theo Thijssenhuis, HvA (Wibautstraat 2-4, Amsterdam)
Entree gratis

bekijk hier de flyer: Flyer