new media

About Social Media
by Ippolita

«Open is not free, and published is not public».

Several years have passed since Ippolita insisted on the need to distinguish the opening to 'free market' economy advocated by the gurus of open source from the freedoms that the free software movement continues to pose as basis for its vision of the digital worlds (1) . "Free software is a matter of freedom, not price" (2). Open source dedicated exclusively to define, for an entirely internal to the logic of the market, what are the best ways to distribute a product in an open manner, ie open. The playful attitude of hacker peer sharing was co-opted in a logic of work and time use for profit and not welfare, sterilization experienced the revolutionary potential and identified by Richard Stallman, 'Freedom 3: Freedom to Contribute to the community. "
The subsequent analysis of Google, a clearly hegemonic attempt to "organize all knowledge of the world", moved in the same vein (3). That is, show how the open logic, combined with the philosophy of academic excellence in California, found in the motto "Do not be evil" an excuse to let themselves be co-opted in the service of capitalism abundance of turbo illusion of unlimited growth. The fable is that more, bigger, faster is always better. Tomorrow is another day, and will be a better day, because in the background hatching faith embodied in the mirage on the button "I'm feeling lucky": a technique for good definition, the daughter of a disinterested scientific research, will meet all our needs and desires, immediately and effortlessly, with a simple click of the mouse.
Unfortunately, this claim of informational totalitarianism is less ridiculous than it might appear. Found that there is nothing to produce, and above all that unlimited growth is a chimera, even in the digital world, the race for the next useless shiny gadgets and strictly touch screen could falter, the crisis of growth should be around the corner. A minimum of awareness about our world should blow exhausted: instead of running to the growing chasm with headphones blaring we might begin to look around, look at each other, talk, to exchange what we need, imagine and build together something meaningful .

The net cast

But no. Set up this giant machine made up of data-center technology, first-class brain and codes open promptly limited by NDA (Non-Disclosures Agreements) and the like, gotta fill it with something. Whatever. Can spend as little as possible, or better yet, free. Industrial production had to grow anything under vacuum, at no cost and with fabulous profits for the usual suspects, but how?
The network was already cast. Slowly, the broadband connections have made less asymmetrical (mainly due to investment incentives and a loss of the public sector to 'connect' and bridge the digital divide...), rates are down (but still unjustifiably high), the upload capacity is increased. And here reveal the solution to every problem: dump the contents of online users. What they have on their computers, cell phones, cameras, etc. Here is the ripe fruit opening to 'free market' means the ability to publish for everyone! And the best part, for the ideology of unlimited growth, is that the margin is huge, the process of "webbizzation" has just started and the prospects are excellent. In fact, for now it is mostly of metadata (tags, profiling, etc..), The "cloud" of cloud computing can increase by many orders of magnitude, since the tools to manage online documents (Gdocs, Facebook Doc with Microsoft Fuselabs, etc..) are still little used. One of the most effective weapons of mass distraction (4) ever developed: pantry satisfaction among users of different services so-called "web 2.0", which can not wait to post, tag, comment, link their photos, their video, Twitter, "texts" and those of their "friends" in the great mare nostrum of social networks (and why should it be "our", if you are in someone else's home, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, Netlog, Youtube, or whatever his name?). Happy and excited to have on the table and in the pocket the last expensive tool for self-denunciation from the bottom, always connected and complete with integrated GPS, with which we will soon forget the shopping credit card, because those who should know always know what we are interested in and what we like, where we are, what we buy, what we do, with whom, etc.. etc.. And because the devices are getting smaller and less capacious, it is easy to foresee an explosion of the storage of personal data online.
And we got at today. Unlike when Ippolita crying in the wilderness geek enthusiasm that perhaps there was no need to put "everything on Google," by mail and over, because the delegation (including semi-unconscious) marks the beginning of the domain (in this case , technocratic), today many voices are raised against the social network, accused of violating the privacy of users. To be the result of mock revolutionary ideology, because the Internet is also a social movement, but as elitist and contradictory! (5) In particular, Facebook, say some commentators, is a project based on the ideology of 'radical transparency' (6), so it's in his nature to tend to publish everything indiscriminately, as evidenced by his latest moves (7) . We should also remember that investors on Facebook come from Paypal Mafia who are intertwined with the civilian and military intelligence services, say politicians of the libertarian American far right (people who thought Bush senior was a "moderate", so to speak) (8). Someone dares even to notice, from the privileged observatory of Harvard, that perhaps there is a bubble of social media, even from the economic point of view, since no one has yet shown that these social media make it possible to sell more products through custom targeted advertising (9). Even supporters are beginning to fear the ambitions of Facebook (10).
Beyond the specific proposals, rather unrealistic (The suicide machine on Facebook; Diaspora and Lorea to rebuild a social network 'free' complaints and petitions to the various Authority and the various guarantors also unable to guarantee themselves, etc..) someone begins to put his finger on the problem. The public (11). How 'open' code does not mean "make it free", then 'published' content does not mean making it "public". On the contrary. Continuing with the example for convenience of Facebook? just the opposite: everything that is posted becomes the sole property of the company, just read the TOS (Terms of Service). Why, was not published? It was not public? Oh no, published does not mean public. In almost all cases of "web 2.0" means, on the contrary, private, owned by a corporation or otherwise of a private company. Have you worked for them for free, then those who seek to capitalize on your skin using the advertising that you infect more and more. Then do not complain that you did not know.

Imagine your future

Exactly. The situation is critical. But this story did not begin yesterday, there happened to be in this situation. Following discussions on the technological world, the iPhone iPad, from Android to Windows7, from Facebook to Chatroulette, to laugh for the ingenuity of gurus, passionate, simple user: a bitter laugh, Italy (which belongs to us at least as a way of thinking), a videocracy against our will where it is clear that not always will be the so-called democratic institutions to guarantee our rights, nor the machinery of a multinational voted with the goodness and progress for all to give us free of charge open-minded and freedom.
Rather, what was true yesterday is true today, and we are certainly not the first to support: one must be able to imagine their future in order to understand the present. Recalling his past, and creating a collective story, because memory is a collective, nothing is ever repeated, but the differences are similar, and the insipid soup of yesterday, a little adulterated, may be dished up as a radical innovation for tomorrow . If the imagination is the advertising, television or of another type, and are reflected in the "freedom of choice" of seventy applications for the iPhone (if you have nothing to do, and try to ten days, you'll have to next twenty years) or the possibility of having more than five hundred "friends" on Facebook (one dinner each, barely able to cross them all once every two years), well, maybe we have too little insisted on the need and desire to think of anything better.

The issue of networks

This is what we've written so far, and obviously we have to keep writing. Maybe not useless, but it is very pleasant and enjoyable, it makes us feel good even if it is an activity full of misunderstandings, difficulties and fatigue, once stolen from the need to make a living otherwise. We like to think of escape routes, and try to tell, imagine and build tools to achieve our desires. Make them available to an audience that is made by people, not to publish through the private megaphone of an intrusive Bulletin board of a corporation.
We are many in the same condition, to not cooperating, not wanting to participate in the crowdsourcing of the masses of social media. But we have nothing to do with the multitude, nor with the Empire: These categories are good for the hegemonic thinking, which identifies the alleged classes and interests and organize the fight, which ends however with the oppressed and the oppressors. It is not difficult to draw a parallel between the analysis of the network as host and the theory of NetWare. Fascio-liberist theorists of NetWar (John Arquilla in particular) are not far from the left-inspired negriana scholars of social networks: the basic idea is that you must win the hegemony. From the right or left, look at the issue of networks, space lattice, in a spirit of students of warfare, war of conquest apparently opposite, they think the same way (12). In the analysis of networks, including social, terminology is itself heavily militarized. On the other hand, returning to the material in the strict sense, the computers themselves are made with minerals of semi-conductors extracted from areas for this constantly at war (Central Africa, etc.).. On the other hand, the globalization of goods, especially the globalization of exploitation: our cool and ergonomic tools are produced by masses of workers in Asia, particularly China, to which you declare in the contract that you do not commit suicide at the factory. Thanks, guys. Meanwhile, we, as we gain the latest technological nonsense, can we be happy that some stunted tree was planted to offset emissions of CO2, but the green capitalism remains a folly as every productivist ideology. No one is pure, we are all involved.
But despite being immersed in this technological world, we'd like to take the distances, to write a sort of ethnography of social media. Not how they work (and there are how-to manuals for that), but why we are in this situation and how to influence it, by injecting diversity, chaos, the seeds of independence. We compromised and involved, but this does not mean we accept everything uncritically. Starting from the collective findings may be individual, in a process of alienation that proceed from the inside out, rather than the familiar from the extremity as happens in classical ethnographic observations. The savages are us, and we need to look decidedly subjective, not the supposed objectivity of an outside observer. And then, fortunately, the myth of scientific objectivity survives only in the worst clichés. It is more than a century that the hard sciences have taken the path of relativism, which is now also the "human sciences" to do so decisively. We need radical relativism, to distance ourselves, to observe from outside, to understand what we are doing, to make concrete our business and thus be able to communicate in a public space that must be preserved, and manufactured continuously renegotiated. Using the terminology of Harendt (13), we need to develop a discourse that becomes aware of our research activities.

Does anyone have any idea? We have some, let us know!