In the Shade of the Commons Towards a Culture of Open Networks Towards a Culture of Open Networks in the Shade of the Commons
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In the Shade of Commons In the Shade of the Commons Towards a Culture of Open Networks a Culture Towards Towards a Culture of Open Networks In the Shade of the Commons Towards a Culture of Open Networks In the Shade of the Commons Towards a Culture of Open Networks Authors (in alphabetical order): Ayisha Abraham, Shaina Anand, Konrad Becker, Ewen Chardronnet, Mike Davis, Peter Drahos, Alexander Galloway, Sheela Gowda, Abishek Hazra, Paul Keller, Jamie King, Lawrence Liang, Geert Lovink, David Lyon, Arjen Mulder, Rajivan, Joseph M. Reagle Jr. , Saskia Sassen, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Felix Stalder, Ashok Sukumaran, Eugene Thacker, Kenneth C. Werbin Editors: Lipika Bansal, Paul Keller, Geert Lovink Layout: Ron Boonstra Printed in India by Impress, C.R. Park, New Delhi Cover photo: Paul Keller © 2006, Waag Society Amsterdam, The Netherlands ISBN-10: 90-806452-3-0 ISBN-13: 978-90-806452-3-3 Except where otherwise noted the contents of this book are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Netherlands License. You are free: • to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work • to make derivative works • to make commercial use of the work Under the following conditions: Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor. Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one. • For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. • Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Full license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/nl/legalcode As part of the project ‘Towards a Culture of Open Networks’ this publication has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union’s Economic Cross Cultural Programme. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the authors and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union. http://www.delind.ec.europa.eu 2 Contents Introduction 4 Chapter 1: Towards ���a Cultu��re of Open Networks The Delhi Declaration of a New Context for New Media 9 The Vienna Document 17 A Letter to the Commons 19 Chapter 2: Worlldd Informatio���n City Bangalore World-Information City: Cultural intelligence for the Urban Multitudes 25 Security, Seduction and Social Sorting: Urban Surveillance 30 Disembedding from Psycho-urban Containment 43 The New Security Culture 47 Haussmann in the Tropics 53 Fragmented Urban Topographies and their Underlying Interconnections 57 Cities of Planning and Cities of Non-Planning: A Geography of Intellectual Property 61 IP and the City - Restricted Lifescapes and the Wealth of the Commons 64 Pirate Aesthetics 66 Electric Fences, Human Sheep 70 ARTeries: Networks of an Art Route Notes on the World Information City Exhibition 76 Air Around 81 Someplace 82 WIC TV 88 World-Information City: a Photographic Review 105 Chapter 3: Open Networks Introduction to Open Networks, Power and Politics of Good Intentions 123 Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s and the Birth of Open Systems 125 Sometimes a Great Notion: a Reflection on Cybernetics, Isolated Systems and Open Beings 133 In Defiance of Existence: Notes on Networks, Control and Life Forms 141 Open Source, Open Society? 146 On the Plane of the Para-Constituted: Towards a Grammar of Gang Power 150 Open Communities and Closed Law 165 On the Differences between Open Source and Open Culture 168 3 Introduction Paul Keller & Shuddhabrata Sengupta This publication attempts to offer a conclusion of three years of working together glimpse into the discussions, activities and we have come to realize the validity and coincidences that have constituted the project worth of this confusion. It has become a kind ‘Towards a Culture of Open Networks’ of guiding vision. A bridge between our own and even now - after almost three years of very different work cultures, attitudes and activity - we find ourselves having to check imaginations. the precise order of words in the title of our project. Are we ‘Towards a Culture of Open Over the last two and a half years Waag Networks’ or, are we ‘Towards a Network of Society (an Amsterdam based media Open Cultures’? Lab) Sarai-CSDS (a Delhi based research programme that embraces urban space and In fact, if we begin to consider the full title media forms) and Public Netbase (a web- of the project (which has been made possible focused cultural institute in Vienna) have set by the generous support of the European out to build this bridge. We have done this Union’s EU-India Economic Cross Cultural through a series of common workshops and Programme) it becomes even more difficult public events, through an experimental web to remember, primarily because its absurd platform and a number of publications both length: small and large. For a good part this has also meant exchanging ideas, teaching each other So here it is – concepts and providing information to others. ‘Towards a Culture of Open Networks Information has been the key in this project, – a collaborative initiative on bridging that has animated all our interactions. ‘information society’ in Europe and India through culture and communication’. Information - by which we mean the gamut of practices and processes of knowing As you see, if you pay careful attention to and making; the world can also be seen as that the title, it is both about creating networks constellation of embodied intellectual labour, that open spaces in culture, and about cultures accumulated cultural capital and evolving that lead to the opening out of networks. knowledge systems that plays a key part in the So, the confusion, about the order of words maintenance of the fabric of contemporary in the title, which sometimes befuddles existence. us, does have its productive edge. We are a network of openness, we are at the same Information seems to be implicated in time creating the conditions of openness in everything - from piracy to privacy, from cultural communication. As we draw to a commoning to control, from identification 4 to identity, from repression to resistance, well as erode) ‘commons’ of information, from learning to labour, from border patrols and to consider ways in which practices of to border crossings, from urban planning knowledge, interpretation and creativity to urban. Yet, information, which acts as a uphold, transgress or subvert governing ‘glue’ that adheres reality to representation protocols of social, cultural and political life. is a grossly under-theorized, hyped and misunderstood category. Our work at Waag We hope that by doing this, we will help Society, Sarai-CSDS, and Netbase has a keep the emergent ‘commons’ of culture great deal to do with information, though and communication between us, between we all come at it from different angles. This people working in India, Europe and indeed, publication, which marks in one sense a elsewhere, alive. We dedicate this publication culmination of our joint efforts is also an effort to all that we hope will grow in the soil of that on our part to place on record the discussions fertile trans-continental commons. that we hope will animate our future work, as Looking back at our collaboration the title well as contribute to debate within the public of this project - as hard to remember as it may domain. be - has proven to be a good choice. We have indeed managed to create an open network While currently prevailing notions of that has enabled many different actors to join ‘information-society’ belabour under the our discussions and events; they are far to delusion that more efficient information many to name them here, but the contribution management systems (such as ‘e-governance’) of one organization – the Alternative Law are the panacea for all societal problems, the Forum in Bangalore stands out. Without term ‘information’ also seems to conjure for them the ‘World Information City’ event, many, anxieties of loss of agency in the face which is documented in chapter 2 would not of excessive information control. A more have been possible and their contributions nuanced view suggests that the everyday life have found a way in almost every publication of information in contemporary societies that has come out of this project. occupies a far more slippery terrain than can be listed by the narratives of either ‘progress’, Paul Keller, Shuddhabrata Sengupta or ‘paranoia’, it consists of surveillance regimes November 2006, Delhi/Amsterdam and counter-surveillance processes that work only inconsistently, of a chain of intellectual property claims and violations that bring a new level of constant attrition and strain to bear on capitalism, of complex histories and conflicts about knowing Our network has aimed to initiate reflections on the histories of different information regimes, on the transformation of urban spaces in the emerging global information economy, on the realities of intellectual property, surveillance and censorship (and efforts to counter them), on the efforts to found and sustain (as 5 Towards a Culture of Open Networks The Delhi Declaration of a New Context for New Media The Open Networks Agenda for International Collaboration in Media and Communication Arts The discussions that gave rise to this document Situating New Media in the Space of a took place at a meeting of an international Working Global Urban Contemporaneity Group on New Media Culture hosted by Sarai CSDS in The streets of our cities are January 2005 in the framework of the project ‘Towards crowded with signals. Cinemas, desk a Culture of Open Networks’. top publishing, satellite television and The meeting brought together artists, theorists, critics, fm radio, increasingly pervasive and curators, arts administrators, researchers, social ubiquitous computing, mobile telephony, scientists and software programmers from India, the telecommunications and the internet Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Finland, surrounding us in a matrix that also Italy, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.