Following our internal editorial discussions as well as the welcoming notes on the closed cc: mailing list, I thought it is time to open our debate! I personally think it is important to emphasise – and here I refer to Geert Lovink – that this debate likes to be understood as a critical debate which locates itself outside of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation; this debate wants to be a forum which is not ‘anti’ but reflective. CPoV means Critical Point of Views in plural and that is why not only scholars, researchers but also practitioners, artists and users are invited to present and discuss their views. I am looking very much forward!!

Nishant Shah talks about dis/location as key notion of resistance in the context of Wikipedia. Also, Nate Tkacz introduces openness/closure as key dichotomy to think about. And there are lots more to imagine: in/exclusion, ir/rationality, global/local, de/centralization, integration/fragmentation… I am interested if and how to move beyond these notions. For me, the CPoV debate is about learning more about latency – latency which operates at core of the in/visible. In November 2009, Carsten Zorn has published a critical, German-only book article in which he places the recent debates about swarms in the historical context of both, media latency and political latency. He develops this position-fixing as a story of dis/continuities. On the one hand he identifies these debate as a modified continuation of the “invisible hand” (Foucault), “revolutionary subject” (Marx) and the mass. This continuation evolves around the following question: How emerges the hidden into the light, so to say, and manifests itself as power? On the other hand, he sees differences to the swarm-discourse’s precursors in terms of a non-relation to traditional collectivization references such as nation, class, and mass. With the notion of swarms, the discourse opens itself to think somehow outside of traditional forms of belonging. I am particularly interested into ideas about how to think Wikipedia as a translingual space. In general and looking at Wikipedia, I wonder what we can learn about latency in order to inform our imaginary of (new) media and the political…