* Book: My First Recession. By Geert Lovink.

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Summary

- Reading notes from Michel Bauwens, 2006:

The introduction starts with a description of the dark period that followed the dotcom crash and 9/11 - a period in which many saw 'the internet dying'. But taking such one-sided comment seriously requires a particular blindness. GL says his book will focus on social practices, "bringing together the common experiences of such groups". Social networks do not consume a priori technology, but actively shape it.

In 2003, ten years after the birth of the web, as society is networked, it is time to stop seeing the internet as the liberator of mankind, and to see the fullness of its all too human characteristics.

His methodology of critical internet research is akin to a 'media archeology', a hermeneutic reading of the new against the grain of the past (not a history from past to present!). Because the internet evolves so fast, this infant discipline can be said to be in a third stage (according to David Silver's typology):

- 1) popular cyberculture,: journalistic enthusiasm for the cool factor

- 2) cyberculture studies, focuses on virtual communities and online identities

- 3) critical cyberculture studies focus on the embeddedness of Real Life and Virtual Realities, and the interfaces and discourses about it

This third stage study sees virtual communities as actual social networks which reflect and anticipate new forms of social interaction. Critical internet studies sees the social structure behind the appearances, but is not affiliated with critical theory per se. Lovink calls himself a radical pragmatist, who is concerned with attempts to close down the system, but believes the potential for alternative ways is still there. Though not anti-capitalist per se, he does not accept the market is an adequate metaphor. His is not a outside critique either, but is itself engaged in internet practice.

Net critics are no longer mediating middle men, as the creative class can now express itself directly. The role of the critic has eroded: public intellectuals are not the gatekeepers of cyberspace. The outsider's position, which assumes society and technology can be separated, is no more. Net criticism needs to be 'inside the network'. To be reflexive it has to be at the center of the operation.

The pre-2001 IT consensus culture is dead, replaced by attempts at control and conflict, which the net-critics have to unravel.

Lovink supports the agonistic pluralism approach put forward by Chantal Mouffe: conflict is inevitable and has to be acknowledged, but enemies must be seen and transformed into 'adversaries'. Passion must be mobilized in democratic design. On the internet, the political is embedded in the software, which regulates the social relations. This is one of the things the net-critic should unveil. This space, the underpinning of os many communities of action, is what this book aims to analyze.

Following Zizek's warnings, net criticism is a constant struggle against mythologizing. The idea of the internet as pure communication is itself such a myth, and mailing list software will be used as a case study.

Lists are both the infrastructural and the cultural underpinnings of movements using the internet, including critical internet culture asa movement. Lovink will be looking for patterns in their communication and debates. Lists are long running parts of the internet, but relatively understudied, and too often equated with 'virtual communities', a concept rejected by GL because it implies consensus and is 'idealizing'.

Section: What is Critical Internet Culture?

- "An emerging milieu of non-profit initiatives, cultural organizations and individuals primarily based in the West, cosmopolitan in nature, and interdisciplinary in interest".

Manifesting itself both online and through events such as festivals. I'ts about the user as producer and how to intervene in the very architecture of technology.

Lovink then reviews the chapter structure and has an interesting concluding quote on p. 34:

- "The global network society is no longer a promise but a fluid and dirty reality. Instead of programming the next future, it might be more interesting to presume it already exists, and start to explore its workings.

Chapter 1

The three authors were chosen because they take position and because of the post-crash time frame. Dreyfus is seen by Lovink as belonging to that reactionary class that seeks to stop technology, and its information glut 'that cannot be processed'.

It adheres to the posthuman interpretation that the internet is an agency of disembodiment, some thing Lovink refuses in favour of the idea of the cyborg-ism, our increasing enmeshment with technology.

By focusing on false problems, Dreyfus avoids taking the necessary complex investigations. Dreyfus thinks the Extropians embody the truth of the internet and offers a belated ideology critique: too little too late.

Rather than outdated books, we need 'theories-on-the-run" says Lovink, which can adapt to changing realities.

Dreyfus (2001. On the Internet First Edition. London and New York: Routledge) represents an elite reaction against the democratic levelling of peer to peer networks: "its a fear of the black hole of the commons". Dreyfus also sees anonymity as the default option, while GL points out it is a chosen option amongst many, and unable to withstand security technologies. Likewise for surfing, which is no longer the essence of internet usage. Essentialism ignores phases of development! But the key underlying topic is the selection of meaning out of noise, an issue on which Dreyfus takes an authoritarian option, refreshing the shift of control towards the user. Rather than a "prison of endless relection", the internet is a battleground of adversary groups, concludes Geert Lovink.

Castells brings an overview of US-backed academic literature, but is too aloof to even address techno-libertarianism. He is a pragmatist supporter of network society, but wary of conflict. No war reporting on the dotcom crash is to be found here.

Internet culture is analyzed as a combination of ...

   - 1) the techno-meritocratic
   - 2) the hacker
   - 3) the virtual communitarians and
   - 4) the entrepreneurial culture.

- "The culture of the internet is made up of a technocratic belief in the progress of humans through technology, enacted by communities of hackers, thriving on open and free technological creativity, embedded in virtual networks aimed at re-inventing society and materialized by money-driven entrepreneurs into the workings of the new economy." (p.49)

Lawrence Lessig is known for issuing dire warnings about the trends towards the state (Code) and corporate (The Future of Ideas) control of the internet, which is a threat to openness, and to the social innovation inherent in it. In his comments, Geert Lovink remains very sceptical about the digital commons and the public domain: an an identifiable sphere it has precious little bits in it, so we should see it as a proposal for a legal framework: the Creative Commons is a result of this concern. However, GL is wary of this legal viewpoint, as he is of other idealistic visions of the Commons, preferring to see the antagonisms that it operates under. It is a fluid environment rather than a fixed reality. GL opposes the urge to license everything under US law and says a "license free world is possible".

Anatomy of the Dot Com Mania

The greedy era of market populism developed separately from the non-profit based critical internet culture and can be reconstructed through a number of retrospective biographies which appeared in 2001. The critique culture targeted the "California Ideology" of posthuman escape rather than the dotcoms. The critical sector felt objectively allied with the latter, united in their opposition to the blockage represented by incumbent telcos, whose deregulation had failed and who were now inhibiting a broadband rollout.

What played a great role in fueling the mania was the long boom in the stock market. And when that went down, so went the hyper-evaluation of value. The atmosphere changed from 'greed is good', to calling share-based evaluation the 'root of all corporate evil'. Going over this hangover reaction, Loving faults Kevin Kelly for ignoring his responsibility, while John Perry Barlow admitted it, but both remain convinced that the dot-com mania was caused by an alien force. George Gilder paid the harshest price, losing his house for investing in the failed fiber optic company Global Crossing.

So, what went wrong ?

Lovink looks at the assessment of Manuel Castells and stresses that the latter did not see the downturn coming and that he thought the dotcom boom was part of the growth of IT and networks, instead of being speculative. He stressed the emergence of networks around projects, whereby the 'network <is> the enterprise'. This itself being part of a network society which was inescapable, and should be managed by a 'sustainable', 'natural capitalism'. For GL, MC represents the third generation of pragmatic social scientists, coming after the computer scientists and cyber-visionaries.

Lovink faults him for 'playing it safe', for hailing technology but adding 'caveats'. For GL, there is no 'pure internet', operating outside the market; no Silicon Valley that is victim of financial capital.

Next in line for review is Michael Wolff's "Burn Rate", written during 1994-97, and published in 1998. He was the leader of Wolff New Media, operating under Rosetto's Law (content is king), and burning $500k in VC capital each month. Both he and Rosetto failed: content did not pay. The dromo--Darwinist 'survival of the fittest' dominated their thinking. The metaphor was the 'western land grab', conquering cyberspace through overwhelming presence.

David Kuo's "Dot Bomb" is perhaps the most accessible in the genre. It relates the story of 'Value America', a retail portal that would fail. Kuo concludes his account saying that it was a gold rush without a gold mine. The story of Boo.com is also recalled, burning $130m on 'caviar, champagne, and the Concorde".

Who then are the culprits, asks Geert Lovink: George Gilder, Kevin Kelly, Tom Peters!

The story told by Malmsen is one of disaster on every front: wanting to do all at once, while nothing worked. GL notes that both Kuo and Malmsen were outsiders who did not ever like the internet, seeing technology naively as a tool that should follow human dictates. They were unwilling to tolerate complexity.

No Collar by Andrew Ross tells the similar story of 360hiphop.com .

GL decries the 'credit paradigm', i.e. borrow now, pay back later.

GL then discusses, "The Future Just Happened", by Michael Lewis, which set out to map the impact of the internet. After the dotcom collapse, it looks for internet pioneers untainted by greed. For GL, Lewis mistakenly thinks that first users of technology actually drive the process, while for GL, in realistic terms, it is the military, followed by university research, then large corporations and only occasionally and marginally, a start up. But Lewis celebrates adolescents and takes Finland as the model, citing how youth there developed SMS usage.

Lewis clearly exaggerates his celebration of the 'democratisation of capital', for example, he hails a 15-year daytrader, 'Lebed', but he does explain how other millions lost money. Geert Lovink writes: "because capitalism no longer has an enemy, it can afford experiments, which is why the system tolerates P2P and Open Source. But ultimately, it is about integration, in every hacker, a tycoon struggles to get out."

Lewis holds on to simplistic dualisms, like:

- the New is better than the Old

- the Old holds back youth

- Change is always good, and

- Technology shapes destiny.

The long essay from Brenda Laurel, "Utopian Entrepreneur" is discussed next. GL hails Brenda's account as 'honest and accessible', but says her economic analysis does not cut very deep. She is typical of the naiveté of cultural workers going into business. It is a story about a cultural clash between those seeking value in money, but does not explain the systemic causes for it.

What is lacking in such people, argues GL, is 'critical analysis', which implies a willingness to be negative, and goes against the grain of organized optimism, which is so prevalent in the 'new-age influenced' US culture. It effectively blocks thinking Though Laurel critiques short-term profit thinking - her business Purple Moon was killed by its financiers even though it had regular revenue - she does not advocate any alternative practices. GL says Laura wants to avoid offending both business elites and the radicals, and so her story is very non-committal.

Next GL tells the story of the mailing list, the Syndicate Project, a list that died because of the Kosovo conflict, which split East and Western European cultural workers. This shows that successful online projects need a physical component, and Syndicate was a 'travelling network' as participants would meet during numerous new media conferences and exhibitions. The story then unfolds how the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia undermined the East-West solidarity on the list. The story is in fact quite gripping, even breath-taking.

The B92 events also shattered the illusion that independent media could act as a civil society 'third force', and an alternative to both NATO global capitalism and Balkan nationalisms. Their staff was in danger and the net-strategy broke down in April 1999. GL also notes the huge gap between NGOs and net-activists. Geographical inequality was also a problem as the Kosovars themselves were not connected. Though most of the Syndicate Serbs were anti-Milosevic, they increasingly resented the war against 10m civilians, and became angrier by the day. NATO focused increasingly on general, and thus civilian infrastructures, which made the Serbian members anti-NATO.

The whole episode created a deep malaise in the list, which lost vibrancy. But it would no go under smoothly, but buckling under provocations of a troll, email posters that willfully sought to destroy online communities. They typically try to provoke 'negative attention' and provoke conflicts on freedom of speech vs censorship. GL finally faults the way in which the list was closed, without ritual, without closure, no transmission to a new group. The main lesson is the loss of innocence: the loss of credibility for the utopian promise of the net.

The Principles of Streaming Sovereignty

(p. 131)

The Xchange Network

This chapter deals with a network wanting to promote Streaming Media, and experienced many years of demoralizing stagnation. However, as it was written before the emergence of BitTorrent, podcasting, videoblogging and webcasting, and the extraordinary explosion of videosharing, its conservative conclusions are largely superseded by current events. However, this chapter can still be usefully read as an introduction to contemporary media discussion, and discusses concepts such as 'sovereign media', 'intimate media', etc ...

The Battle over Media Education

Based on a series of 'online interviews' of practitioners who run such programs .. (p. 163)

This is an investigation of how the new educational experiments deal with the hostility of the Fine Arts practitioners, how they integrate and value theory, etc ...

The GPL Society

The GPL Society starts with an overview of the FS/OS software movement and the 3-way split between Stallman, sticking to principles", Linus Torvalds, and the 'market anarchist', Eric Raymond.

- "The essential point is GPL's 'contaminating' character: changes in software cannot be privatized. Unlike open-source licenses, the GPL actively builds a commons." (p. 196)

Geert Lovink describes the Oekonux project and mailing list as a place for rich debate. It believes FS to be a germ form for new social structures. It seeks, through the viral germ form theory, an alternative to both revolution and reform. There is now a crossover of geek culture to the larger society and this has led to a rich set of debates. (GL does not agree with R. Stallman's policing of vocabulary, as that stifles debate)

The debates took place in a number of conferences: Wizard of OS in Berlin; Code in Cambridge. GL is especially positive about the friendly and rational intellectual culture of the German mailing list.

Defining Open Publishing

The last chapter deals with list culture. There is a general problem of information overload, and a specific problem with the moderated / unmoderated dilemma, neither of which is totally satisfying. Geert Lovink also describes the emerging blogosphere and the debates about A-listers. Drawing on his own experience , he uses the Australian FibreCulture list as a case study.

After a description of a number of more recent projects, like the difficulties encountered by Indymedia, GL observes that trolls go to extraordinary lengths in their intent to destroy projects.

So what about the eternal debate between freedom and regulation ? He concludes that there are no 100% free projects, and that the survival and sustainability of communities require coercive measures. More than that, many of the successful projects do indeed have elements of dictatorship, including the Slashdot moderation system. GL also disputes the myth of 100% free contributions.

He notes that all successful projects have a core of paid employees, such as Slashdot. He stresses the importance of the design of the tools which largely determines the scope of possible interactions ("if you only have a hammer, all problems look like nails"). More sophistication is needed.

Then there is the key issue of ownership: who can pull the plug. One question is: who owns the server; the other is: who opened the weblog of the list. Such entrepreneurial starters end up deciding who joins, and in case of conflicts, can exclude.

Overall, both lists and blogs fall short because none allows multi-threading. GL ends the chapter by describing the premises of his own project for forum software: Discordia, which was still under development in 2003.

Concluding Chapter: The Boundaries of Critical Internet Culture

Critical internet culture was desktop based. A number of changes are afoot: the number of internet users is growing massively, the masses are coming, and precisely for that reason it is becoming less attractive to the avant-guard. Mobile phones have attracted twice as many users.

Reviewing content, GL seems to side with those who yearn for micropayment, so independent content producers can be paid. Producing free content is is a financial disaster for those who contribute to it, and leads to a voluntacrcacy: governance by those who have time and have nothing to loose. Regarding the alterglobalization movement, GL notes that technology is largely absent from their concerns. He thinks there is a 'general move away from technology' (??).

Information overload has become the key problem, dampening the enthusiasm for the internet. GL claims there is a demise of independent infrastructure: servers are not owned and need to be paid. GL is convinced a user-pay system needs to be introduced. A key issue is the lack of internal democracy of volunteer projects, it is still a old boys consensus.

My First Recession

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