subjectivty

"Nicht der Algorithmus ist pervers, sondern die Situation in der er lebt."

Update Sept.2014: Dieses Essay liegt nun auch in deutscher Übersetzung vor. Dank an die Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

Update Oct.2014: This essay is now also available as an epub. Thanks a lot to PJ :)

This extended essay, Digital Solidarity, responds to the wave of new forms of networked organisation emerging from and colliding with the global economic crisis of 2008. Across the globe, voluntary association, participatory decision-making and the sharing of resources, all widely adopted online, are being translated into new forms of social space.

This movement operates in the breach between accelerating technical innovation, on the one hand, and the crises of institutions which organise, or increasingly restrain society on the other. Through an inventory of social forms – commons, assemblies, swarms and weak networks – the essay outlines how far we have already left McLuhan’s ‘Gutenberg Galaxy’ behind. In his cautiously optimistic account, Stalder reminds us that the struggles over where we will arrive are only just beginning.

This anthology brings together key texts on the field of art, culture and the public domain published in Open by NAi Publishers and SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain from 2004 until 2012. Together, these essays written by international theoreticians provide powerful insights into the most important areas of theory and practice in today's public space. They also reflect the effort invested and the themes covered by Open in the eight years it has existed. Subjects covered include safety, informal media, makeability, precarity, war, privacy, populism, transparency, mobility and autonomy.

With contributions by
Gijs van Oenen, Wolfgang Ernst, Jorinde Seijdel, Jonathan Sterne, Roemer van Toorn, Saskia Sassen, Stephen Wright, Geert Lovink, Chantal Mouffe, Marc Schuilenburg, Pascal Gielen, Matteo Pasquinelli, Willem Schinkel, Felix Stalder, Yves Citton, Brian Holmes, Boris Groys, Sven Lütticken, Noortje Marres

Editors
Jorinde Seijdel and Liesbeth Melis

Die Erfahrung der ersten Web-Generation, dass man auch Infrastrukturen selber schaffen kann und muss, wird neu formuliert. Das zentrale Stichwort lautet Mesh-Netzwerke

Der Erfolg der Piratenpartei beruht auf dem Wandel der Arbeits- und Lebenserfahrungen. Sie steht für dafür, Partizipation neu zu denken.

Die Feststellung, dass die Piratenpartei eine Protestpartei sei, führt nicht weit. Jede neue Kraft beginnt als Opposition, und der politische „Normalbetrieb“ steckt zu offensichtlich in einer tiefen Krise. Die Entfremdung zwischen BürgerInnen und PolitkerInnen nimmt seit langer Zeit zu. Die alten Transmissionsmechanismen zwischen (Zivil-)Gesellschaft und Politik – die Gewerkschaften, Vereine, Kirchen, Kammern etc. – funktionieren nicht mehr richtig. Entsprechend wird die Politik als abgehoben, von Partikularinteressen manipuliert und in ihren rituellen Appellen zu Wahlkampfzeiten als unglaubwürdig erlebt. Eine wachsende Zahl der BürgerInnen identifiziert sich nicht einmal mehr mit den Parteien, für die sie gerade die Stimme abgeben. Die Zahl der WechselwählerInnen steigt stetig; die Wahlbeteiligung sinkt.

Interessanter ist die Frage, warum der Protest die Form der Piratenpartei angenommen hat.

The current issue of the International Review of Information Ethics on the ethics of sharing, guest-edited by myself and Wolfgang Sützl, is available online now. With contributions by Clemens Apprich, Michel Bauwens, Vito Campanelli, Alessandro Delfanti, Marie-Luisa Frick/Andreas Oberprantacher, Mayo Fuster Morell, and Andras Wittel.

The journal Surveillance & Society just published a debate on the value of concept of privacy in surveillance studies and beyond. The debate was initiated by Colin Bennett's essay "In Defence of Privacy", my piece "Autonomy beyond Privacy?" was one of the responses to it. The others were by Pris Regan, John Gilliom and danah boyd.

Una forma de definir la modernidad occidental, el periodo que estamos justo dejando, es por su particular estructura de control y autonomía.

Researcher Felix Stalder analyses the loss of the key role of the concept of privacy. Privacy long secured the balance between the control of institutions and the autonomy of the citizen. Today, with institutions aiming more and more to provide customized services and the autonomy of both citizens and institutions changing, this role is disappearing, making the danger of an increase in control and power a realistic one. To turn the tide, Stalder argues for a greater transparency of the back-end protocols, algorithms and procedures of the new, flexible bureaucracies.

Source: Open. Cahier on Art and the Public Domain. # 19: Beyond Privacy. New Notions of the Private and Public Domains

One way to characterize Western modernity, the period we are just leaving, is by its particular structure of control and autonomy. It emerged as the result of two historic developments – one leading to large, hierarchic bureaucracies as the dominant form of organization, the other to the (bourgeois, male) citizen as the main political subject. Privacy played a key role in maintaining a balance between the two. Today, this arrangement is unravelling. In the process, privacy loses (some of) its social functions. Post-privacy, then, points to a transformation in how people create autonomy and how control permeates their lives.