Psyberspace

Conversation with Manuel Castells, p. 5 of 6

Castells is famous for the thesis that this *is* an Information Society.

A sample quote:

“Absolutely. You see, and it goes both ways. On the other hand, as much as I think the Internet’s an extraordinary instrument for creation, free communication, etc., you can use the Internet to exclude, because you can exclude in terms of the access to the network, the digital divide. But you can also exclude in terms of the culture and education and ability to process all this information that has happened on the net, and then use it for what you want to do, because you don’t have the education, the training, the culture to do it, while the elites of the world do.”

Hmm… books require an even more elitist culture?

O’Reilly Network: Essential Blogging Public Review [May 23, 2002]

Smallworld

“Can anyone in the world reach anyone else through a chain of only 6 friends?
“With your help, we intend to find out.”

I registered.

vonnegutted

“You’re sitting in one place when you use those things.”
“Same as writing a novel. You don’t write your books standing up, moving around.”
He’s backing away, looking to speak with some of the other folks congregated around him, “it sounds sort of like ham radio, people use that to talk all over the world.” And he’s absorbed elsewhere. I write in my notebook, underlined, “He’s old school.”

Nice piece by Justin Hall.

“Cyberspace as Place, and the Tragedy of the Digital Anticommons

The conception of “cyberspace as place” leads to the implication that there is property online, and that this property should be privately owned, parceled out, and exploited. Though private ownership of resources of itself is not problematic, it can lead to the opposite of the tragedy of the commons: the tragedy of the anti-commons. Anti-commons property occurs when multiple parties have an effective right to preclude others from using a given resource, and as a result no-one has an effective right of use. Part IV argues that this is precisely where the “cyberspace as place” metaphor leads. We are moving to a digital anti-commons, where no-one will be allowed to access competitors’ cyberspace “assets” without some licensing, or other transactionally-expensive (or impossible), permission mechanism. The Article shows how the “cyberspace as place” metaphor leads to undesirable private control of the previously commons-like Internet, and the emergence of the digital anti-commons. As we all come to stake out our little claim in cyberspace, then the commons which is cyberspace is being destroyed.”

I still need to read this long paper but it looks interesting.

Creative Commons » Home

“Cultivating a New Creative Commons: Creative Commons is a non-profit organization founded on the notion that some people would prefer to share their creative works (and the power to copy, modify, and distribute their works) instead of exercising all of the restrictions of copyright law.”

This could be good: somehow taylor making licences to suit. That will bring out the range more clearly & we will see a range from open to free – and learn the difference.

Mediamatic: Tofts, McKeich: Memory Trade. A Prehistory of Cyberculture

“In his book Memory Trade Tofts tries to show that in cyberdiscourse – the discussion of computer technology’s influence on communication and culture – there is nothing new under the sun. According to him, the technologisation of the word was not brought into being just by the arrival of the computer (as is sometimes short-sightedly claimed in cyberdiscourse); the word was always already technologised. The subjects Tofts handles in Memory Trade make this clear: alphabet, writing and language as technology; the origins of cyberthought in mnemonics; Finnegans Wake as the original media theory book. These form Tofts’ (pre)history of cyberdiscourse.”

Theology in a Digital World

“Theology in a Digital World is a collection of essays and lectures dating from 1984 to 1987. It was published by the United Church Publishing House and can be obtained through that source. Published here as Web documents are subsequent reflections on technology from a theological perspective. All of these are copyright © David Lochhead, 1995.”

For example:

“A hermenutic of digital technology is likely to resist that direction and to stress in its place a more playful interpretation of what the meaning of the text might become. In the process, our understanding of the authority of the text will undergo a profound shift. Authority will not disappear. But in place of a heteronomous authority of the original context, the authority will one that emerges out of the covenant of our play. ”

from the Footnote to McLuhan item.

Oldies but interesting.

Bulfinch’s Mythology

Nice to have this online!