AltArt Foundation: Bare Share. Culture of File Sharing in Romania (2007)

2 September 2010, dusan

“The exhibition contained the works of largely anonymous artists and some of the best known – active in the digital space. The territory researched is the DC++-based neighborhood networks – providers of an endemic culture where the act of sharing is the prototypical contract of participating in this culture. Sharing while not expecting immediate gratification make neighborhood networks complex gift economies – where the community becomes an entity, the real gifting partner – playing the role of the donor and recipient in the same time.

This ideology of exchange – regardless of legal issues or moral concerns – builds a subculture of consumption that is maintained through giving. Gifting becomes a tool for the collapse of the permission-culture-based capitalist market hegemony while it is serving as an alternative consumption activity at the electronic frontier.”

Curators: Istvan Szakáts, Stefan Tiron
Project by AltArt Foundation

Project website

PDF (updated on 2023-9-27)

Manuel Castells: The Power of Identity: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, 2nd ed. (2009)

29 March 2010, dusan

In this second volume of The Information Age trilogy, with an extensive new preface following the recent global economic crisis, Manuel Castells deals with the social, political, and cultural dynamics associated with the technological transformation of our societies and with the globalization of the economy.

* Extensive new preface examines how dramatic recent events have transformed the socio-political landscape of our world
* Applies Castells’ hypotheses to contemporary issues such as Al Qaeda and global terrorist networks, American unilateralism and the crisis of political legitimacy throughout the world
* A brilliant account of social, cultural, and political conflict and struggle all over the world
* Analyzes the importance of cultural, religious, and national identity as sources of meaning for people, and its implications for social movement
* Throws new light on the dynamics of global and local change

Publisher John Wiley and Sons, 2009
Information Age Series, Manuel Castells
ISBN 1405196874, 9781405196871
Length 584 pages

publisher
google books

PDF
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Kazys Varnelis (ed.): Networked Publics (2008)

22 October 2009, dusan

Digital media and network technologies are now part of everyday life. The Internet has become the backbone of communication, commerce, and media; the ubiquitous mobile phone connects us with others as it removes us from any stable sense of location. Networked Publics examines the ways that the social and cultural shifts created by these technologies have transformed our relationships to (and definitions of) place, culture, politics, and infrastructure.

Four chapters—each by an interdisciplinary team of scholars using collaborative software—provide a synoptic overview along with illustrative case studies. The chapter on place describes how digital networks enable us to be present in physical and networked places simultaneously (on the phone while on the road; on the Web while at a café)—often at the expense of non-digital commitments. The chapter on culture explores the growth of amateur-produced and -remixed content online and the impact of these practices on the music, anime, advertising, and news industries. The chapter on politics examines the new networked modes of bottom-up political expression and mobilization, and the difficulty in channeling online political discourse into productive political deliberation. And finally, the chapter on infrastructure notes the tension between openness and control in the flow of information, as seen in the current controversy over net neutrality. An introduction by anthropologist Mizuko Ito and a conclusion by architecture theorist Kazys Varnelis frame the chapters, giving overviews of the radical nature of these transformations.

Contributors: Walter Baer, François Bar, Anne Friedberg, Shahram Ghandeharizadeh, Mizuko Ito, Mark E. Kann, Merlyna Lim, Fernando Ordonez, Todd Richmond, Adrienne Russell, Marc Tuters, Kazys Varnelis.

Publisher MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 0262220857, 9780262220859
176 pages

author (includes a research blog and lecture videos)
publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-7)