diff in Constant 2016
ficatory language as a complex and interdependent web of relations,
Otlet imagined each element as a point of entry for the other. He stressed that responses to
P.12
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displays in a museum involved intellectual and social processes that where different from
those involved in reading books in a library, but that one in a sense entailed the other. [5]. The
dreamed capacity of his Mondotheque was to interface scales, perspectives and media at the
intersection of all those different practices. For us, by transporting a historical device into the
future, it figured as a kind of thinking machine, a place to analyse historical and social
locations of the Mundaneum project, a platform to envision our persistent interventions
to
th century Utopia of Mundaneum stood
for.
Embedded hierarchies addresses how classification systems, and the dream of their universal
application actually operate. It brings together contributions that are concerned with
knowledge infrastructures at different scales, from disobedient libraries, institutional practices
of the digital archive, meta-data structures to indexing as a pathological condition.
Disambiguation dis-entangles some of the similarities that appear around the heritage of Paul
Otlet
ts, image collections and other materials that make connections
emerge between historical and contemporary readings, unearthing possible spiritual or
mystical underpinnings of the Mundaneum, and transversal inclusions of the same elements in
between different locations.
The point of modest operations such as Mondotheque is to build the collective courage to
persist in demanding access to both the documents and the intellectual and technological
infrastructures that interface and mediate them. Exactly
tions and their vision on digital information sharing. The voices of Sylvia
Van Peteghem and Dries Moreels (Ghent University), Églantine Lebacq and
Marc d'Hoore (Royal library of Belgium) resonate on the following pages.
We hear from them about the differences and similarities in how the three
institutions deal with the unruly practice of digital heritage.
The full interviews with the Royal Library of Belgium and Ghent University
Library can be found in the on-line publication.
• RC = Raphaèle
me
endroit.
RC : Il y avait en tout cas cette idée par la suite, d’avoir une plate-forme commune, qui
s’appelle numériques.be[2]. Malheureusement, ce qu’on trouve sur numeriques.be ne
correspond au contenu sur Pallas, ce sont deux structures différentes. En gros, si on veut
diffuser sur les deux, c’est deux fois le travail.
En plus, ils n’ont pas configuré numérique.be pour qu’il puisse être moissonné par
Europeana[3]. Il y a des normes qui ne correspondent pas encore.
SM : Ce sont
oit se faire à une discipline qui nous impose
aussi de protéger le patrimoine ici, qui appartient à la Communauté Française et qui donc
doit être décrit de manière normée comme dans les autres centres d’archives.
P.32
P.33
C’est une différence de dialogues. Pour moi ce n’est pas un détail du tout. Le fait que par
exemple, certains vont se dire « vous ne mettez pas l’indice CDU dans ces champs » ... vous
n’avez d’ailleurs pas encore posé cette question … ?
ADV : Elle al
en terme de données conservées chez nous. Le débat nous intéresse au même titre
que ce débat existait sous une autre forme fin du 19e siècle avec l’avènement de la presse
périodique et la multiplication des titres de journaux ainsi que la diffusion rapide d’une
information.
RC : Le fait d’avoir eu Paul Otlet reconnu comme père de l’internet etcetera, d’avoir pu le
rattacher justement à des éléments actuels, c’était des sujets porteurs pour la communication.
Ça ne veut pas d
peut mettre sur une plaque et voilà. Il
transforme ça en autre support.
Je pense qu’il a imaginé des choses, parce qu’il avait cette envie de communiquer le savoir,
ce n’est pas quelqu’un qui a un moment avait envie de collectionner sans diffuser, non. C’était
toujours dans cette idée de diffuser, de communiquer quelques soient les personnes, quelque
soit le pays. C’est d’ailleurs pour ça qu’il adapte le Musée International, pour que tout le
monde puisse y aller, même ceux qui ne savaient pas lire avaient accès aux salles et
pouvaient comprendre, parce qu’il avait organisé les choses de telles façons. Il imagine à
chaque fois des outils de communication qui vont lui servir pour diffuser ses idées, sa pensée.
P.34
P.35
Qu’il ait imaginé à un moment donné qu’on puisse lire des choses à l’autre bout du monde ?
Il a du y penser, mais maintenant, techniquement et technologiquement, il n’a pas pu
concevoir. Mais je s
en a fait les frais. Ça peut laisser quelques traces inattendues dans
l’histoire. L’héritage d’Otlet en matière bibliographique n’est pas forcément mis en évidence
dans un lieu tel que la bibliothèque nationale. C’est on le comprend difficile d’imaginer une
institution qui explique certains engagements de manière aussi personnalisée ou
individualisée. On va plutôt parler d’un service et de son histoire dans une période plus
longue. On évite ainsi d’entrer dans des détail
t pas dans la fondation Otlet.
Nous sommes un centre d’archives spécialisé, qui a conservé toutes les archives liées à une
institution. Cette institution était animée par des hommes et des femmes. Et donc, ce qui les
animaient, c’était différentes choses, dont le désir de transmission. Et quand à Otlet, on a
identifié son envie de transmettre et il a imaginé tous les moyens. Il n’était pas ingénieur non
plus, il ne faut pas rire. Et donc, c’est un peu comme Jules Verne, il a rêvé le monde, il a
imaginé des choses différentes, des instruments. Il s’est mis à rêver à certaines choses, à des
applications. C’est un passionné, c’est un innovateur et je pense qu’il a passionné des gens
autour de lui. Mais, autour de lui, il y avait d’autres personnes, n
ontexte
particulier lié notamment à la sociologie, aux sciences sociales, notamment Solvay, et voilà.
Tout ceux qu’on retrouve et qui ont traversé une quarantaine d’années.
Aujourd’hui, nous sommes un centre d’archives avec des supports différents, avec cette
volonté encyclopédique qu’ils ont eu et qui a été multi supports, et donc l’œuvre phare n’a
pas été uniquement Le Traité de Documentation. C’était intéressant de comprendre sa
genèse avec les visites que vous avi
arce que Otlet a écrit que La Fontaine n’a pas travaillé sur le projet. Ce
n’était pas du tout les mêmes personnalités.
SM : On est sur des stéréotypes.
ADV : Otlet a tout de même énormément écrit ?
SM : Otlet a beaucoup synthétisé, diffusé et lu. Il a été un formidable catalyseur de son
époque.
RC : C’est plutôt perdre la pensée d’Otlet en allant dans un seul sens, parce que lui il voulait
justement brasser des savoirs, diffuser l’ensemble de la connaissance. Pour nous l’objectif
P.36
P.37
c’est vraiment de pouvoir tout exploiter, tous les sujets, tous les supports, toutes les
thématiques… Quand on dit qu’il a préfiguré internet, c’est juste deux sché
aujourd’hui encore classent au nom de la CDU
mais ils ne savent pas d’où ça vient. Tout ce travail on l’a fait et ça remettait, quand même,
les choses à leur place et on l’a ouvert quand même au public. On a eu des ouvertures avec
des différents publics à partir de ce moment là.
SM : C’est aussi d’avoir une vision globale sur ce que les uns et les autres ont fait et aussi de
ce qu’a été l’institution, ce qui est d’ailleurs l’une des plus grosse difficulté qui existe. C’est de
s’appeler Mundaneum dans l’absolu.
On est le « Mundaneum Centre d’archives » depuis 1993. Mais le Mundaneum c’est une
institution qui nait après la première guerre mondiale, dont le nom est postérieur à l'IIB.
Dans ses gênes, elle est bibliographique et peut-être que ce sont ces différentes notions qu’il
faut essayer d’expliquer aux gens.
Mais c’est quand même formidable de dire que Paul Otlet a inventé internet, pourquoi pas.
C’est une formule et je pense que dans l’absolu la formule marque les gens. Maintenant, il
tape et
d’éduquer sur l'ouverture au patrimoine. C’est ça aussi notre mission.
Donc Google a sa propre politique. Nous avons mis à disposition quelques expositions et
ceci en est l’intérêt. Mais on a quand même tellement de partenaires différents avec lesquels
on a travaillé. On ne privilégie pas un seul partenaire. Aujourd’hui, certaines firmes viennent
vers nous parce qu’elles ont entendu parler justement plus de Google que du Mundaneum et
en même temps du Mundaneum par l’in
à. À Gand, ils ont numérisé des livres. C’est leur choix soutenu par la Région
flamande. De notre côté, nous poursuivons une même volonté d’accès pour le public et les
P.40
P.41
chercheurs mais avec un matériel un patrimoine, bien différent de livres publiés uniquement !
Le travail avec Google a permis de collaborer plusieurs fois avec l’Université mais nous
l’avions déjà fait avant de se retrouver avec Google sur certaines activités et l’accueil de
conférenciers. Donc
rtoire de tous
ces bouquins, venez l’utiliser, nous on a le répertoire pour reconstituer toutes les
bibliothèques ».
Donc, tout numériser, non. Mais numériser certaines choses pour montrer le mécanisme de
ce répertoire, sa constitution, les différents répertoires qui existaient dans ce répertoire et de
pouvoir retrouver la trace de certains éléments, oui.
Si on numérise tout, cela permettrait d’avoir un état des lieux des sources d’informations qui
existaient à une époque pour u
effectivement, avec l’écriture d’Otlet.
SM : Autant on peut dire qu'Otlet est un maître du marketing, autant il utilisait plusieurs
termes pour décrire une même réalité. C’est pour ça que ne s’attacher qu’à sa vision à lui
c’est difficile. Comme classer ses documents, c’est aussi difficile.
ADV : Otlet n’a-t-il pas laissé suffisamment de documentation ? Une documentation qui
explicite ses systèmes de classement ?
RC : Quand on a ouvert les boîtes d'Otlet en 2002, c’était des caisses à bananes non
classées, rien du tout.
inistrative interne. Il a fallu montrer les éléments et archives sur
lesquels nous nous sommes basés pour bien prouver la démarche qui était la nôtre. Certains
documents expliquaient clairement cela. Mais si vous ne les avez jamais vu, c’est difficile de
croire un nouvel élément inconnu !
RC : On n’a pas beaucoup d’informations sur l’origine des collections, c’est-à-dire sur
l’origine des pièces qui sont dans les collections. Par hasard, je vais trouver un tiroir où il est
mis
ait quoi… Et ça, il
ne l’a pas laissé dans les archives.
SM : C’est presque la mémoire vive de l’institution.
On a eu vraiment cette envie de vérifier dans le répertoire cette façon de travailler, le fait
qu’il y ait des informations différentes. Effectivement, c’était un peu avant 2008, qu’on l'a su
et cette information s’est affinée avec des vérifications. Il y a eu des travaux qui ont pu être
faits avec l’identification de séries particulières des dossiers numéroté
gent, les chercheurs passent… vous avez vécu avec tout ça depuis longtemps. Je
me demande comment le faire transparaître, le faire ressentir?
SM : C’est vrai qu’on aimerait bien pouvoir axer aussi la communication de l’institution sur
ces différents aspects. C’est bien ça notre rêve en fait, ou notre aspiration. Pour l’instant, on
est plutôt en train de se demander comment on va mieux communiquer, sur ce que nous
faisons nous ?
RC : Est-ce que ce serait uniquement en mettant en lig
a, est-ce que c’est vraiment intéressant ?
Dans une base de données dite « classique », c’est ça aussi le problème avec nos archives, le
Mundaneum n'étant pas un centre d’archives comme les autres de par ses collections, c’est
parfois difficile de nous adapter à des standards existants.
ADV : Il n’y aurait pas qu’un seul catalogue ou pas une seule manière de montrer les
données. C’est bien ça ?
RC : Si vous allez sur Pallas vous avez la hiérarchie du fond Otlet. Est-ce que
les plus intéressants et peut-être les plus uniques. Maintenant,
le rêve serait de numériser tout, mais est-ce que ce serait raisonnable de tout numériser ?
FS : Si tous les documents étaient disponibles en ligne ?
RC : Je pense que ça serait difficile de pouvoir transposer la pensée et le travail d'Otlet et
La Fontaine dans une base de données. C’est à dire, dans une base de données, c’est
souvent une conception très carrée : vous décrivez le fond, la série, le dossier, la pièce.
n’est pas ça le musée virtuel.
RC : C’est un autre boulot.
Last
Revision:
2·08·2016
1. Logiciel fourni par la Communauté française aux centres d’archives privées. « Pallas permet de décrire, de gérer et de consulter
des documents de différents types (archives, manuscrits, photographies, images, documents de bibliothèques) en tenant compte
des conditions de description spécifiques à chaque type de document. » http://www.brudisc.be/fr/content/logiciel-pallas
2. « Images et histoi
ion_FR.pdf
6. « L'UNESCO a mis en place le Programme Mémoire du monde en 1992. Cette mise en oeuvre est d'abord née de la prise
de conscience de l'état de préservation alarmant du patrimoine documentaire et de la précarité de son accès dans différentes
régions du monde. » http://www.unesco.org/new/fr/communication-and-information/memory-of-the-
world/about-the-programme
7. Marcel Dieu dit Hem Day
Amateur
Librarian
-A
Course
in
Critical
Pedagogy
Tomislav Medak & Marcell Mars (Public Li
y the ruling classes of that time consisted, indeed, either of a pious moral edification
serving political pacification or of an inculcation of skills and knowledge useful to the factory
owner. Even the seemingly noble efforts of the Society for the Diffusion of the Useful
Knowledge, a Whig organization aimed at bringing high-brow learning to the middle and
working classes in the form of simplified and inexpensive publications, were aimed at dulling
the edge of radicalism of popular movements.[4]
The
uratorial collective What, How and for Whom/WHW, who have presented the
work of Public Library within the exhibition Really Useful Knowledge they organized at Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid,
October 29, 2014 – February 9, 2015.
4. “Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, June 25, 2015, https://
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Society_for_the_Diffusion_of_Useful_Knowledge&oldid=668644340.
5. Richard Johnson, “Really Useful Knowledge,” in CCCS Sel
de la bibliothèque publique en tant qu'institution
permettant l'accès à la connaissance, la tradition prolétaire de la connaissance
réellement utile et la puissance de l'amateur motivée par le développement
technologique, le programme couvre différents secteurs : depuis les flux de
travail directement applicables comme la numérisation, le partage et l'utilisation
de livres électroniques, à la politique et la tactique de conservation des
bibliothèques en ligne, en passant par la théorie
, soit à une édification morale pieuse au service de la pacification politique, soit à
l'inculcation de qualifications ou de connaissances qui seraient utiles au propriétaire de
l'usine. Même les efforts aux allures nobles de la Society for the Diffusion of the Useful
Knowledge, une organisation du parti whig cherchant à apporter un apprentissage intellectuel
à la classe ouvrière et à la classe moyenne sous la forme de publications bon marché et
simplifiées, avaient pour objectif l'atténu
n accès à la connaissance se sont largement étendues, les bibliothèques
publiques se retrouvent particulièrement limitées dans leurs possibilités d'acquérir et de prêter
des éditions aussi bien sous une forme papier que numérique. Cette difficulté est un signe de
l'inégalité radicale de notre époque : une fois encore, l'émancipation politique se bat de
manière défensive pour une base matérielle pédagogique contre les forces croissantes de la
privatisation. Non seulement l'éduca
, behalve verwijzen
en zorgen dat het evengoed vindbaar
is als de print.
Le programme de bibliothécaire amateur développe
plusieurs aspects et implications d'une telle définition.
Certaines parties du programme ont été construites à
partir de différents ateliers et exposés qui se déroulaient précédemment dans le cadre du
projet Public Library. Certaines parties de ce programme doivent encore évoluer s'appuyant
sur un processus de recherche futur, d'échange et de production de connaissan
t, How and for Whom/WHW, qui a présenté le
travail de Public Library dans le cadre de l'exposition Really Useful Knowledge qu'ils ont organisée au Museo Reina Sofía à
Madrid, entre 29 octobre 2014 et le 9 février 2015.
4. 4. « Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, » Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, Juin 25, 2015, https://
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Society_for_the_Diffusion_of_Useful_Knowledge&oldid=668644340.
5. 5. Richard Johnson, « Really Useful Knowledge, » dans CCC
web. [7]
The World Wide Web provides a vast source of information of almost all types,
ranging from DNA databases to resumes to lists of favorite restaurants. However, this
information is often scattered among many web servers and hosts, using many different
formats. If these chunks of information could be extracted from the World Wide Web
and integrated into a structured form, they would form an unprecedented source of
information. It would include the largest international directory of people, the
cale of the web and still perform
using contemporary computing power completing its task in a reasonably short amount of
time.
A traditional algorithm could not compute the large itemsets in the lifetime of the
universe. [...] Yet many data sets are difficult to mine because they have many
frequently occurring items, complex relationships between the items, and a large
number of items per basket. In this paper we experiment with word usage in documents
on the World Wide Web (see Section 4.2 for details about this data set). This data set
is fundamentally different from a supermarket data set. Each document has roughly
150 distinct words on average, as compared to roughly 10 items for cash register
transactions. We restrict ourselves to a subset of about 24 million documents from the
web. This set of docum
e idea of a list ever being considered "unordered" (or in
opposition to the language used in the specification, for order to ever be considered
"insignificant"). Indeed in its suggested representation, still followed by modern web
browsers, the only difference between the two visually is that UL items are preceded by a
bullet symbol, while OL items are numbered.
The idea of ordering runs deep in programming practice where essentially different data
structures are employed depending on whether order is to be maintained. The indexes of a
"hash" table, for instance (also known as an associative array), are ordered in an
unpredictable way governed by a representation's particular implemen
e and Daniel Connolly, June 1993, http://
www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt
11. http://informationobservatory.info/2015/10/27/google-books-fair-use-or-anti-democratic-preemption/#more-279
A Book
of the
Web
DUSAN BAROK
Is there a vital difference between publishing in print versus online other than
reaching different groups of readers and a different lifespan? Both types of texts
are worth considering preserving in libraries. The online environment has
created its own hybrid form between text and library, which is key to
understanding how digital text produces difference.
Historically, we have been treating texts as discrete units, that are distinguished by their
material properties such as cover, binding, script. These characteristics establish them as
either a book, a magazine, a diary, sheet music and so on. One book differs from another,
books differ from magazines, printed matter differs from handwritten manuscripts. Each
volume is a self-contained whole, further distinguished by descriptors such as title, author,
date, publisher, and classification codes that allow it to be located and referred to. The
demarcation of a publicatio
bliographic
information, but the URL.
(3) The text is as long as web-crawlers of a given search engine are set to reach,
refashioning the library into a storage of indexed data.
These are some of the lines along which online texts appear to produce difference. The first
contrasts the distinct printed publication to the machine-readable text, the second the
bibliographic information to the URL, and the third the library to the search engine.
The introduction of full-text search has created an
environ
rrors on chains and pulleys and a set of levered and
hinged mechanical arms to allow me to open the drawers and to privately consult my files
from any location within the sanatorium. The clarity of the image is however so far too much
effaced by the diffusion of light across the system.
It must further be borne in mind that a system thus capable of indefinite expansion obviates
the necessity for hampering a researcher with furniture or appliances of a larger size than are
immediately required. The co
of
handwritten index cards and various folded papers (from printed screenshots to
boarding passes) in the storage space of an institute. Upon closer investigation,
it has become evident that the mixed contents of the box make up one single
document. Difficult to decipher due to messy handwriting, the manuscript
poses further challenges to the reader because its fragments lack a preestablished order. Simply uploading high-quality facsimile images of the box
contents here would not solve the problems o
The day I resigned myself to those forces – and I assume, I had unleashed them upon myself
through my vengeful desire to hxxx {here, a 3-cm erasure} words until I could see carcass
after carcass roll down the stairs [truth be said, a practice that differed from other people's
doings only in my heightened degree of awareness, which entailed a partially malevolent but
perhaps understandable defensive strategy on my part] – that gloomy day, the burning
untitled shape I had been carrying in my mouth
g notes with
my body in a terribly twisted position. And when I'm not sitting, I'm forced to jump.
Agonizing thoughts numb my limbs so much so that I feel my legs turning to stone. On some
days I look up, terrified. I can't even make out whether the diffuse opening is egg- or squareshaped, but there's definitely a peculiar tic-tac sequence interspersed with neighs that my
pricked ears are picking up on. A sound umbrella, hovering somewhere up there, high above
my imploded horizon.
{illegible vertical
e chances of finding us? [Raised
eyebrows and puckered lips as first responses to the scarlet-haired question.] Well, the
incidence is just as low as finding a document or device you're looking for in our storage.
Things are not lost; there are just different ways of finding them. A random stroll, a lucky find
– be that on-line or off-line –, or a seductive word of mouth may be the entrance points into
this experiential space, a manifesto for haphazardness, emotional intuitions, subversion of
neu
list is just a bag of words that orders the common terms used in the works of
Le Corbusier and Paul Otlet with the help of text comparison. The quantity of similar words
relates to the word-count of the texts, which means that each appearance has a different
weight. Taken this into account, the appearance of the word esprit for instance, is more
significant in Vers une Architecture (127 times) than in Traité de documentation (240
times), although the total amount of appearances is almost two times
rmes les plus
communs utilisés dans les travaux de Le Corbusier et Paul Otlet en utilisant un comparateur
de texte. Le nombre de mots similaires rapotés par le comptage automatique des mots du
texte, ceci signifie que chaque occurence a une valeur différente. Prenons l'exemple des
aparitions du mot esprit par exemple sont plus significatives dans Vers une Architecture (127
P.152
P.153
fois) plutot que dans le Traité de documentation (240 fois), et ceci bien que le nombre
d'occurences est prat
most importantly, that he was living in the temporal and cultural context of modernism at
the beginning of the 20th century. The constructed identities and continuities that detach
Otlet and the Mundaneum from a specific historical frame, ignore the different scientific,
social and political milieus involved. It means that these narratives exclude the discording or
disturbing elements that are inevitable when considering such a complex figure in its entirety.
This is not surprising, seeing the parties that are involved in the discourse: these types of
instrumental identities and differences suit the rhetorical tone of Silicon Valley. Newly
launched IT products for example, are often described as groundbreaking, innovative and
different from anything seen before. In other situations, those products could be advertised
exactly the same, as something else that already exists[1]. While novelty and difference
surprise and amaze, sameness reassures and comforts. For example, Google Glass was
marketed as revolutionary and innovative, but when it was attacked for its blatant privacy
issues, some defended it as just a camera and a phone joined togethe
e content, especially in
view of international exchange[14] which already caused problems related to space back then:
the Mundaneum archive counted 16 million entries at its peak, occupying around 150
rooms. The cumbersome footprint, and the growing difficulty to find stable locations for it,
concurred to the conviction that the project should be included in the plans of new modernist
cities. In the beginning of the 1930s, when the Mundaneum started to lose the support of the
Belgian government, Otlet thought of a new site for it as part of a proposed Cité Mondiale,
which he tried in different locations with different approaches.
Between various attempts, he participated in the competition for the development of the Left
Bank in Antwerp. The most famous modernist urbanists of the time were invited to plan the
development from scratch. At the time, the left ba
data centers are similar to
the capitalist factory system; but
P.173
The Traité de Documentation, published in 1934, includes an extended reflection on a
Universal Network of Documentation, that would coordinate the transfer of knowledge
between different documentation centres such as libraries or the Mundaneum[17]. In fact the
existing Mundaneum would simply be the first node of a wide network bound to expand to
the rest of the world, the Reseau Mundaneum. The nodes of this network are explicitl
ighted by the data ports plan in Eemshaven.
Since private companies are the privileged actors in these types of projects, the circulation of
information increasingly respond to the same tenets that regulate the trade of coal or
electricity. The very different welcome that traditional politics reserve for Google data centres
is a symptom of a new dimension of power in which information infrastructure plays a vital
role. The celebrations and tax cuts that politicians lavish on these projects cannot be
still considered one of
their most important realizations as well as a corner-stone in Otlet's overall vision. Its
adoption, revision and use until today demonstrate a thoughtful and successful approach to
the classification of knowledge.
The UDC differs from Dewey and other bibliographic systems as it has the potential to
exceed the function of ordering alone. The complex notation system could classify phrases
and thoughts in the same way as it would classify a book, going well beyond the sole fu
nes like Lycos or Yahoo!, started with a combination of the two. The web directory
consisted of the human classification of websites into categories, done by an “editor”; crawling
in the automatic accumulation of material by following links with different rudimentary
techniques to assess the content of a website. With the exponential growth of web content on
the Internet, web directories were soon dropped in favour of the more efficient automatic
crawling, which in turn generated so many results
or “The University of District Columbia is the most relevant meaning of
the word 'UDC'”.
We (and Google) can read the model of reality created by the PageRank algorithm (and all
the other algorithms that were added during the years[27]) in two different ways. It can be
considered a device that 'just works' and does not pretend to be true but can give results
which are useful in reality, a view we can call pragmatic, or instead, we can see this model as
a growing and improving construction that
I thought that as an au-pair
I would be helping out in the house, but instead I ended up working with the professor on
finishing his book. At the time I arrived, the writing was done but his handwriting was so
hard to decipher that the printer had a difficult time working with the manuscript. It became
my job to correct the typeset proofs but often there were words that neither the printer nor I
could decipher, so we had to ask. And the professor often had no time for us. So I did my
best to make the
s, tells us that it all started as “a 20% project
within Google in 2010 and had its first public showing in 2011. It was 17 museums,
coming together in a very interesting online platform, to allow users to essentially explore art
in a very new and different way."[1] While Google Books faced legal challenges and the
European Commission launched its antitrust case against Google in 2010, the Google Art
Project, not coincidentally, scaled up gradually, resulting in the Google Cultural Institute with
h
al
institutions that provide this cultural material - such as 3D tour views and street-view maps.
So far and counting, the Google Cultural Institute hosts 177 digital reproductions of selected
paintings in gigapixel resolution and 320 3D versions of different objects, together with
multiple thematic slide shows curated in collaboration with their partners or by their users.
P.182
P.183
According to their website, in their ‘Lab’ they develop the “new technology to help partners
publish their
t since it reflects the colonial
impulses embedded in the scientific and economic desires that formed the very collections
which the Google Cultural Institute now mediates and accumulates in its database.
Who colonizes the colonizers? It is a very difficult issue which I have raised before in an
essay dedicated to the Google Cultural Institute, Alfred Russel Wallace and the colonial
impulse behind archive fevers from the 19th but also the 21st century. I have no answer yet.
But a critique of the Go
e commercial function of maritime technologies is
the same as the free – as in free trade – services deployed by Google or Facebook’s drones
beaming internet in Africa, although the networked aspect of information technologies is
significantly different at the infrastructure level.
There is no official definition of technocolonialism, but it is important to understand it as a
continuation of the idea of Enlightenment that gave birth to the impulse to collect, organise
and manage information in
à 20%, qui fut présenté
au public pour la première fois en 2011. Il s'agissait de 17 musées réunis dans une
plateforme en ligne très intéressante afin de permettre aux utilisateurs de découvrir l'art d'une
manière tout à fait nouvelle et différente. »[1] Tandis que Google Books faisait face à des
problèmes d'ordre légal et que la Commission européenne lançait son enquête antitrust
contre Google en 2010, le Google Art Project prenait, non pas par hasard, de l'ampleur.
Cela conduisi
riel culturel -des visites en 3D et des
cartes faites à partir de "street view". Pour le moment, le Google Cultural Institute compte
177 reproductions numériques d'une sélection de peintures dans une résolution de l'ordre
des giga pixels et 320 différents objets en 3D ainsi que de multiples diapositives thématiques
choisies en collaboration avec leurs partenaires ou par leurs utilisateurs.
Selon leur site, dans leur « Lab », ils développent une « nouvelle technologie afin d'aider
leurs par
ions
colonialistes ancrées dans les désirs scientifiques et économiques qui ont formé ces mêmes
collections que le Google Cultural Institute négocie et accumule dans sa base de données.
Qui colonise les colons ? C'est une problématique très difficile que j'ai soulevée
précédemment dans un essai dédié au Google Cultural Institute, Alfred Russel Wallace et
les pulsions colonialistes derrière les fièvres d'archivage du 19e et du 20e siècles. Je n'ai pas
encore de réponse. Pourtant, une
et éléments avec le projet colonial, comme l'exploitation des matériaux nécessaires à la
production d'informations et de technologies médiatiques - ainsi que les conflits qui en
découlent - les technologies de l'information sont tout de même différentes des navires et des
canons. Cependant, la fonction commerciale des technologies maritimes est identique aux
services libres - comme dans libre échange - déployés par les drones de Google ou Facebook
qui fournissent internet à l'Afrique, même si la mise en réseau des technologies de
l'information est largement différent en matière d'infrastructure.
Il n'existe pas de définition officielle du technocolonialisme, mais il est important de le
comprendre comme une continuité des idées des Lumières qui a été à l'origine du désir de
rassembler, d'organiser e
elebration that the “new economy” holds the keys to
individual freedom, liberty and democratic participation and will free labor from exploitation;
however, the material/physical base that supports the economy and our everyday lives tells a
very different story. My analysis presents an integral piece of the physical infrastructure
behind the “new economy” and the space embedded in that infrastructure in order to
elucidate that the “new economy” does not occur in an abstract place but rath
ning
power plant commissioned in 1952 – which has been polluting the area for years – to its 14
th data center powered by renewable power. Shifting from coal to renewable energy seems to
demonstrate how Google has gone “green” and is being a different kind of corporation that
cares for the environment. However, this is a highly calculated business decision given that
relying on renewable energy is more economical over the long term than coal – which is
more volatile as commodity prices grea
nt of struggling former industrial cites by
building Google data centers under the slogan of participation in the “new economy” really
meet social needs, and express democratic values? The “new economy” is boasted about as if
it is radically different from past industrial capitalist development, the solution to myriad social
problems that hold the potential for growth outside of the capitalist realm; however, the “new
economy” operates deeply within the logic of capitalist development –
Globe
NATACHA ROUSSEL
This timeline starts in Brussels and is an attempt to situate some of the events
in the life, death and revival of the Mundaneum in relation to both local and
international events. By connecting several geographic locations at different
scales, this small research provokes cqrrelations in time and space that could help
formulate questions about the ways local events repeatedly mirror and
recompose global situations. Hopefully, it can also help to see which
contextual elements in the first iteration of the Mundaneum were different from
the current situation of our information economy.
The ambitious project of the Mundaneum was imagined by Paul Otlet with support of Henri
La Fontaine at the end of the 19th century. At that time colonialism was at its height,
bringing a ste
expression, de socialiser le droit international, comme on a socialisé le droit privé, et de
[2]
prendre à l’égard des richesses naturelles des mesures de “mondialisation”. » .
The approaches of La Fontaine and Otlet already bear certain differences, as one
(Lafontaine) emphasises an organisation based on local civil society structures which implies
direct participation, while the other (Otlet) focuses more on management and global
organisation managed by a regulatory framework. It is interesting to look at these early
concepts that were participating to a larger movement called 'the first mondialisation', and
understand how they differ from current forms of globalisation which equally involve private
and public instances and various infrastructures.
The project of Otlet and Lafontaine took place in an era of international agreements over
communication networks. It is known and of
La Fontaine both
took part was already very early on trying to formulate a legal discourse that could help
address social inequalities, and eventually come up with regulations that could help 'reengineer' social organisation.
The Mundaneum project differentiates itself from contemporary enterprises such as Google,
not only by its intentions, but also by its organisational context as it clearly inscribed itself in
an international regulatory framework that was dedicated to the promotion of local civil
society. How can we understand the similarities and differences between the development of
the Mundaneum project and the current knowledge economy? The timeline below attempts
to re-situate the different events related to the rise and fall of the Mundaneum in order to help
situate the differences between past and contemporary processes.
DATE
EVENT
TYPE
1865
The International Union of telegraph STANDARD
, is set up it is an important element of the
organisation of a mondial communication
network and will further become the
SCALE
ctures of flows.
He was convinced to work with Van der
Swaelmen, who had already planned a
world city on the site of Tervuren near
Brussels in 1919.[4]
VAN DER SWAELMEN - TERVUREN, 1916
ends.
For Otlet it was the first time that two
notions from different practices came
together, namely an environment ordered
and structured according to principles of
rationalization and taylorization. On the one
hand, rationalization as an epistemic practice
that reduces all relationships to those of
definable me
founded by La Fontaine and Otlet in 1907,
and the League of Nations. “A material and moral representation of The greatest Society of
the nations (humanity);” an international city located on an extraterritorial area in Geneva.[16]
Despite their different backgrounds, they easily understood each other, since they “did
frequently use similar terms such as plan, analysis, classification, abstraction, standardization
and synthesis, not only to bring conceptual order into their disciplines and know
ctures de flux. Il avait été
convaincu de travailler avec Van der
Saelmen, qui avait déjà prévu une ville
monde sur le site de Tervuren, près de
Bruxelles, en 1919.[4]
Pour Paul Otlet, c'était la première fois que
deux notions de pratiques différentes se
rassemblaient, à savoir un environnement
ordonné et structuré d'après des principes de
rationalisation et de taylorisme. D'un côté, la
rationalisation: une pratique épistémique qui
réduit toutes les relations à des moyens et
des
w. And
I'm going to ask you to practice that,
OK? Can you say "raw"?
« Des informations, dont tout déchet et élément étrangers
Audience: Raw.
ont été supprimés, seront présentées d'une manière assez
analytique. Elles seront encodées sur différentes feuilles
Tim Berners-Lee: Can you say
"data"?
ou cartes plutôt que confinées dans des volumes, » ce qui
permettra l'annotation standardisée de l'hypertexte pour
Audience: Data.
la classification décimale universelle ( CDU ).[11] De plus,
La Fontaine et Otlet en 1907, et la Ligue
des nations. « Une représentation morale et matérielle de The greatest Society of the nations
(humanité) ; » une ville internationale située dans une zone extraterritoriale à Genève.[16]
Malgré les différents milieux dont ils étaient issus, ils pouvaient facilement se comprendre
puisqu'ils « utilisaient fréquemment des termes similaires comme plan, analyse, classification,
abstraction, standardisation et synthèse, non seulement pour un ordre co
possible. Puisque « Le Mundaneum est une
Idée, une Institution, une Méthode, un Corps matériel de travaux et collections, un Édifice,
un Réseau. »[18] il devait être conceptualisé comme un « plan organique avec possibilité
d'expansion à différentes échelles grâce à la multiplication de chaque partie. »[19] La
possibilité d'expansion et la redistribution organique des éléments adaptées à de nouvelles
nécessités et besoins garantit l'efficacité du système, à savoir en intég
. Au-delà de cette démarche originale entamée dans un esprit
philanthropique, le centre d’archives propose des collections documentaires à valeur
[25]
historique, ainsi que des archives spécialisées.
In 1993, after some armwrestling between different local fractions of the Parti Socialiste, the
collections of the Mundaneum are moved from Place Rogier to former departement store
L'independance in Mons, 40 kilometres from Brussels and home to Elio Di Rupo. Benoît
Peeters and François Schuite
nts some of the contraptions at work in the Mondotheque
wiki. The name "transclusionism" refers to the term "transclusion" coined by
utopian systems humanist Ted Nelson and used in Mediawiki to refer to
inclusion of the same piece of text in between different pages.
HOW TO TRANSCLUDE LABELLED SECTIONS BETWEEN
TEXTS:
To create transclusions between different texts, you need to select a section of text that will
form a connection between the pages, based on a common subject:
• Think of a category that is the common ground for the link. For example if two texts
refer to a similar issue or specific c
diff in Stalder 2018
zed circle of researchers and artists whose
discussions of techno-economic paradigms have informed this book in
fundamental ways and which has offered multiple opportunities for me to
workshop inchoate ideas.
Not everything, however, takes place in diffuse conversations and
networks. I was also able to rely on the generous support of several
individuals who, at one stage or another, read through, commented upon,
and made crucial improvements to the manuscript: Leonhard Dobusch,
Günther Hack, Katja
Two-Spirit Person.
:::
This enormous proliferation of cultural possibilities is an expression
of what I will refer to below as the digital condition. Far from being
universally welcomed, its growing presence has also instigated waves of
nostalgia, diffuse resentments, and intellectual panic. Conservative and
reactionary movements, which oppose such developments and desire to
preserve or even re-create previous conditions, have been on the rise.
Likewise in 2014, for instance, a cultural dispute bro
dencies of the digital condition that are already quite
advanced: *post-democracy* and *commons*. Both take full advantage of
the possibilities that have arisen on account of structural changes and
have advanced them even further, though in entirely different
directions. "Post-democracy" refers to strategies that counteract the
enormously expanded capacity for social communication by disconnecting
the possibility to participate in things from the ability to make
decisions about them. Everyone is allo
on that may be collaborative, oppositional, or simply
operating side by side. The field of culture is pervaded by competing
claims to power and mechanisms for exerting it. This leads to conflicts
about which frames of reference should be adopted for different fields
and within different social groups. In such conflicts,
self-determination and external determination interact until a point is
reached at which both sides are mutually constituted. This, in turn,
changes the conditions that give rise to shared meaning and personal
i
ies have suddenly revolutionized a
situation that had previously been stable. Depending on one\'s point of
view, this is then regarded as "a blessing or a
curse."[^1^](#c1-note-0001){#c1-note-0001a} A closer examination,
however, reveals an entirely different picture. Established cultural
practices and social institutions had already been witnessing the
erosion of their self-evident justification and legitimacy, long before
they were faced with new technologies and the corresponding demands
these mak
only have been disseminated where demand for
them already existed. This demand was created by social, political, and
economic crises, which were themselves initiated by changes that were
already under way. The new technologies seemed to provide many differing
and promising answers to the urgent questions that these crises had
prompted. It was thus a combination of positive vision and pressure that
motivated a great variety of actors to change, at times with
considerable effort, the established proces
osed by
post-colonialism enabled a greater number of people to participate in
public discussions. In what follows, I will subject each of these three
phenomena to closer examination. In order to do justice to their
complexity, I will treat them on different levels: I will depict the
rise of the knowledge economy as a structural change in labor; I will
reconstruct the critique of heteronormativity by outlining the origins
and transformations of the gay movement in West Germany; and I will
discuss po
o one had put
forward the idea of understanding such a variety of activities as a
single unit.
Machlup\'s categorization was indeed quite innovative, for the dynamics
that propelled the sectors that he associated with one another not only
were very different but also had originated as an integral component in
the development of the industrial production of goods. They were more of
an extension of such production than a break with it. The production and
circulation of goods had been expanding and acc
). This []{#Page_14 type="pagebreak"
title="14"}enabled even larger factories to be built in order to
exploit, to an even greater extent, the cost advantages of mass
production. In order to control these complex processes, new professions
arose with different types of competencies and working conditions. The
office became a workplace for an increasing number of people -- men and
women alike -- who, in one form or another, had something to do with
information processing and communication. Yet all of t
dly possible to distinguish
between the two. Especially in Britain and the United States, the
economic transformation of the 1980s was imposed insistently and with
political calculation (the weakening of labor unions).
There are, however, important differences between the developments of
the so-called "post-industrial society" of the 1970s and those of the
so-called "network society" of the 1990s, even if both terms are
supposed to stress the increased significance of information, knowledge,
and communication. With regard to the digital condition, the most
important of these differences are the greater flexibility of economic
activity in general and employment relations in particular, as well as
the dismantling of social security systems. Neither phenomenon played
much of a role in analyses of the early 1970s. The development
nization of the workforce). It
originated in the new social movements that had formed in the late
1960s. Later on, toward the end of the 1970s, it then became one of the
central points of the neoliberal critique of the welfare state. With
completely different motives, both sides sang the praises of autonomy
and spontaneity while rejecting the disciplinary nature of hierarchical
organization. They demanded individuality and diversity rather than
conformity to prescribed roles. Experimentation, opennes
could only achieve success, moreover, in solidarity with other
freedom movements such as the Black Panthers in the United States and
the new women\'s movement. The goal, according to this film, is to
articulate one\'s own identity as a specific and differentiated identity
with its own experiences, values, and reference systems, and to anchor
this identity within a society that not only tolerates it but also
recognizes it as having equal validity.
At first, however, the film triggered vehement contr
alism." This was understood as
a necessary subordination to the greater struggle against what was known
in the terminology of left-wing radical groups as the "main
contradiction" of capitalism (that between capital and labor), and it
led to strident differences within the gay movement. The dispute
escalated during the next year. After the so-called *Tuntenstreit*, or
"Battle of the Queens," which was []{#Page_24 type="pagebreak"
title="24"}initiated by activists from Italy and France who had appeared
of the social
divide caused by capitalism (that is, one of its "ancillary
contradictions") and thus only to be overcome by overcoming capitalism
itself, or was it something unrelated to the "essence" of capitalism, an
independent conflict requiring different strategies and methods? This
conflict could never be fully resolved, but the second position, which
was more interested in overcoming legal, social, and cultural
discrimination than in struggling against economic exploitation, and
which focused
of the mass media with their own
multifarious media productions. In doing so, they typically followed a
dual strategy: on the one hand, they wanted to create a space for the
members of the movement in which it would be possible to formulate and
live different identities; on the other hand, they were fighting to be
accepted by society at large. While []{#Page_25 type="pagebreak"
title="25"}a broader and broader spectrum of gay positions, experiences,
and aesthetics was becoming visible to the public,
d the classical attributions of
men and women. A new generation of intellectuals, activists, and artists
took the stage and developed -- yet again through acts of aesthetic
self-empowerment -- a language that enabled them to import, with
confidence, different self-definitions into the public sphere. An
example of this is the adoption of inclusive plural forms in German
(*Aktivist\_innen* "activists," *Künstler\_innen* "artists"), which draw
attention to the gaps and possibilities between male and fe
ant and legitimate.
:::
::: {.section}
### Beyond center and periphery {#c1-sec-0005}
In order to reach a better understanding of the complexity involved in
the expanding social basis of cultural production, it is necessary to
shift yet again to a different level. For, just as it would be myopic to
examine the multiplication of cultural producers only in terms of
professional knowledge workers from the middle class, it would likewise
be insufficient to situate this multiplication exclusively in the
een formulated and analyzed by the theory of "post-colonialism."
Long before digital media made the challenge of cultural multiplicity a
quotidian issue in the West, proponents of this theory had developed
languages and terminologies for negotiating different positions without
needing to impose a hierarchical order.
Since the 1970s, the theoretical current of post-colonialism has been
examining the cultural and epistemic dimensions of colonialism that,
even after its end as a territorial system, have remained responsible
for the continuation of dependent relations and power differentials. For
my purposes -- which are to develop a European perspective on the
factors ensuring that more and more people are able to participate in
cultural []{#Page_29 type="pagebreak" title="29"}production -- two
points are especially relevant be
this,
it was necessary first of all to develop a language -- indeed, a
cultural landscape -- that can manage without a hegemonic center and is
thus oriented toward multiplicity instead of
uniformity.[^43^](#c1-note-0043){#c1-note-0043a}
A somewhat different approach has been taken by the literary theorist
Homi K. Bhabha. He proceeds from the idea that the colonized never fully
passively adopt the culture of the colonialists -- the "English book,"
as he calls it. Their previous culture is never simp
ich resources should be appropriated from them, and how these
resources should be used? At the heart of the matter lie the abilities
of speech and interpretation; these can be seized in order to create
space for a "cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an
assumed or imposed hierarchy."[^45^](#c1-note-0045){#c1-note-0045a}
At issue is thus a strategy for breaking down hegemonic cultural
conditions, which distribute agency in a highly uneven manner, and for
turning one\'s own cultural production -- which has been dismissed by
cultural authorities as flawed, misconceived, or outright ignorant --
into something negotiable and independently valuable. Bhabha is thus
interested in fissures, differences, diversity, multiplicity, and
processes of negotiation that generate something like shared meaning --
culture, as he defines it -- instead of conceiving of it as something
that precedes these processes and is threatened by them. Accordingly, h
dominant
cultures and those who are on the defensive against discrimination and
attributions by others. Instead of relying on the old recipe of
integration through assimilation (that is, the dissolution of the
"other"), the right to self-determined difference is being called for
more emphatically. In such a manner, collective identities, such as
national identities, are freed from their questionable appeals to
cultural homogeneity and essentiality, and reconceived in terms of the
experience of immanent difference. Instead of one binding and
unnegotiable frame of reference for everyone, which hierarchizes
individual positions and makes them appear unified, a new order without
such limitations needs to be established. Ultimately, the aim is to
provide n
-0068a} In doing so, they
aligned themselves with the critique of the "culture industry," which
had been formulated by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno at the
beginning of the 1940s and had become a widely discussed key text by the
1960s.
Their differences aside, these perspectives were united in that they no
longer understood the "public" as a neutral sphere, in which citizens
could inform themselves freely and form their opinions, but rather as
something that was created with specific intentio
were able to operate self-organized and non-commercial television
programs. This gave rise to a considerable public-access movement there,
which at one point extended across 4,000 cities and was responsible for
producing programs from and for these different
communities.[^72[]{#Page_45 type="pagebreak"
title="45"}^](#c1-note-0072){#c1-note-0072a}
What these initiatives shared in common, in Western Europe and the
United States, was their attempt to close the gap between the
consumption and productio
er
revolution," which in the late 1980s had made video equipment available
to broader swaths of society, stirring visions of democratic media
production, with the newly arrived medium of the internet. Despite still
struggling with numerous technical difficulties, they remained constant
in their belief that the internet would solve the hitherto intractable
problem of distributing content. The transition from analog to digital
media lowered the production hurdle yet again, not least through the
ongoing
lity outside of
the media. Television was analyzed down to its own legalities, which
could then be manipulated to affect things beyond the media.
Increasingly, culture jamming and the campaigns of so-called
communication guerrillas were blurring the difference between media and
political activity.[^77[]{#Page_47 type="pagebreak"
title="47"}^](#c1-note-0077){#c1-note-0077a}
This difference was dissolved entirely by a new generation of
politically motivated artists, activists, and hackers, who transferred
the tactics of civil disobedience -- blockading a building with a
sit-in, for instance -- to the
internet.[^78^](#c1-note-0078)
What this new generation of media activists shared in common with the
hackers and pioneers of computer networks was the idea that
communication media are spaces for agency. During the 1960s, these
programmers were also in search of alternatives. The difference during
the 1960s is that they did not pursue these alternatives in
counter-publics, but rather in alternative lifestyles and communication.
The rejection of bureaucracy as a form of social organization played a
significant role in the critique
f life -- communes, shared
apartments, and cooperatives -- were explored in the country and in
cities. They were meant to provide the individual with greater autonomy
and the opportunity to develop his or her own unique potential. Despite
all of the differences between these concepts of life, they nevertheless
shared something of a common denominator: the promise of
reconceptualizing social institutions and the fundamentals of
coexistence, with the aim of reformulating them in such a way as to
allow
were longing for new forms of
peaceful coexistence.[^86^](#c1-note-0086){#c1-note-0086a} They all
rejected the bureaucratic model, and the counterculture provided them
with the central catchword for their alternative vision: community.
Though rather difficult to define, it was a powerful and positive term
that somehow promised the opposite of bureaucracy: humanity,
cooperation, horizontality, mutual trust, and consensus. Now, however,
humanity was expected to be reconfigured as a community in coopera
rarchies and their methods for
resolving conflicts -- commands (by kings and presidents) and votes --
were dismissed. Implemented in their place was a pragmatics of open
cooperation that was oriented around two guiding principles. The first
was that different views should be discussed without a single individual
being able to block any final decisions. Such was the meaning of the
expression "rough consensus." The second was that, in accordance with
the classical engineering tradition, the focus shoul
cause they saw that
their contributions were being adopted swiftly, which led to the
formation of an open community of interested programmers who swapped
ideas over the internet and continued writing software. In order to
maintain an overview of the different versions of the program, which
appeared in parallel with one another, it soon became necessary to
employ specialized platforms. The fusion of social processes --
horizontal and voluntary cooperation among developers -- and
technological platform
of artists and
knowledge workers alone, but rather something that is required by an
increasingly broader stratum of society and is already being taught in
schools. Users of social mass media must produce (themselves). The
development of specific, differentiated identities and the demand that
each be treated equally are no longer promoted exclusively by groups who
have to struggle against repression, existential threats, and
marginalization, but have penetrated deeply into the former mainstream,
no
message which contains
information primarily accessible to him and not to me. When I control
the actions of another person, I communicate a message to him, and
although this message is in the imperative mood, the technique of
communication does not differ from that of a message of fact.
Furthermore, if my control is to be effective I must take cognizance of
any messages from him which may indicate that the order is understood
and has been obeyed." Norbert Wiener, *The Human Use of Human Beings:
Cybe
ent. I
will discuss this phenomenon in greater depth below.
To work with existing cultural material is, in itself, nothing new. In
modern montages, artists likewise drew upon available texts, images, and
treated materials. Yet there is an important difference: montages were
concerned with bringing together seemingly incongruous but stable
"finished pieces" in a more or less unmediated and fragmentary manner.
This is especially clear in the collages by the Dadaists or in
Expressionist literature such
n a digital form. Think of photographs and slides,
which have become so easy to digitalize. Even three-dimensional objects
can now be scanned and printed. In the future, programmable materials
with controllable and reversible features will cause the difference
between the two domains to vanish: analog is becoming more and more
digital.
Montages and referential processes can only become widespread methods
if, in a given society, cultural objects are available in three
different respects. The first is
aper than one from a religious
canon. The third is material: it must be possible to use the material
and to change it.[^6[]{#Page_61 type="pagebreak"
title="61"}^](#c2-note-0006){#c2-note-0006a}
In terms of this third form of availability, montages differ from
referential processes, for cultural objects can be integrated into one
another -- instead of simply being placed side by side -- far more
readily when they are digitally coded. Information is digitally coded
when it is stored by means of a lim
analog handwriting
and transformed them into standardized symbols that could be repeated
without any loss of information. In this practical sense, the printing
press made writing digital, with the result that dealing with texts soon
became radically different.
::: {.section}
### Information overload 1.0 {#c2-sec-0003}
The printing press made texts available in the three respects mentioned
above. For one thing, their number increased rapidly, while their price
significantly sank. During the first tw
te-0018){#c2-note-0018a} It would
simply be too demanding to do so. Because he pursues the project without
any financial interest and has saved so much []{#Page_66
type="pagebreak" title="66"}from oblivion, his efforts have provoked
hardly any legal difficulties. On the contrary, UbuWeb has become so
important that Goldsmith has begun to receive more and more material
directly from artists and their heirs, who would like certain works not
to be forgotten. Nevertheless, or perhaps for this very reason
instance, of closed exchange platforms or of
university intranets. Few seminars take place any more without a corpus
of scanned texts, regardless of whether this practice is legal or
not.[^22^](#c2-note-0022){#c2-note-0022a}
The lines between these different mechanisms of access are highly
permeable. Content acquired legally can make its way to file-sharing
networks as an illegal copy; content available for free can be sold in
special editions; content from shadow libraries can make its way to
publi
areness of users, who have understandably come
to appreciate the ubiquitous availability and more convenient
processability of the digital versions of analog
objects."[^23^](#c2-note-0023){#c2-note-0023a} In this context of excess
information, it is difficult to determine whether a particular work or a
crucial reference is missing, given that a multitude of other works and
references can be found in their place.
At the same time, prodigious amounts of new material are being produced
that, before the
to be
developed and then store the pictures somewhere. Cameras also became
increasingly "intelligent," which improved the technical quality of
photographs. Even complex procedures such as increasing the level of
detail or the contrast ratio -- the difference between an image\'s
brightest and darkest points -- no longer require any specialized
knowledge of photochemical processes in the darkroom. Today, such
features are often pre-installed in many cameras as an option (high
dynamic range). Ever sin
es not articulate an
interpretive field of reference but merely a connection, created by
constantly changing search algorithms, between a request and the corpus
of material, which is likewise constantly changing.
Precisely because it offers so many different approaches to more or less
freely combinable elements of information, []{#Page_70 type="pagebreak"
title="70"}the order of the database no longer really provides a
framework for interpreting search results in a meaningful way.
Altogether, the
rder to point to this and not to
something else. Thus, a process of validating what exists in the excess
takes place in connection with the ultimate scarcity -- our own
lifetimes, our own bodies. Even if the value generated by this act is
minimal or diffuse, it is still -- to borrow from Gregory Bateson\'s
famous definition of information -- a difference that makes a difference
in this stream of equivalencies and
meaninglessness.[^26^](#c2-note-0026){#c2-note-0026a} This singling out
-- this use of one\'s own body to generate meaning -- does not, however,
take place by means of mere micro-activities throughout the day
equire, re-enactment and cosplay
are somewhat extreme examples of singling out, appropriating, and
referencing. As everyday activities that almost take place incidentally,
however, these three practices usually do not make any significant or
lasting differences. Yet they do not happen just once, but over and over
again. They accumulate and thus constitute referentiality\'s second type
of activity: the creation of connections between the many things that
have attracted attention. In such a way, paths are forged through the
vast complexity. These paths, which can be formed, for instance, by
referring to different things one after another, likewise serve to
produce and filter meaning. Things that can potentially belong in
multiple contexts are brought into a single, specific context. For the
individual []{#Page_75 type="pagebreak" title="75"}producer, thi
identities, family
values, and lifestyles promoted by these institutions has likewise been
in decline. The great mechanisms of socialization from the late stages
of the Gutenberg Galaxy have been losing more and more of their
influence, though at different speeds and to different extents. All
told, however, explicitly and collectively normative impulses are
decreasing, while others (implicitly economic, above all) are on the
rise. According to mainstream sociology, a cause or consequence of this
is the individualization
n their own lives. As a
result they suffer, in Ulrich Beck\'s terms, "permanent disadvantage."
Under the digital condition, this process has permeated the finest
structures of social life. Individualization, commercialization, and the
production of differences (through design, for instance) are ubiquitous.
Established civic institutions are not alone in being hollowed out;
relatively new collectives are also becoming more differentiated, a
development that I outlined above with reference to the transformation
of the gay movement into the LGBT community. Yet nevertheless, or
perhaps for this very reason, new forms of communality are being formed
in these offshoots -- in the
king tradition, Ferdinand Tönnies\'s polar distinction
between "community" (*Gemeinschaft*) and "society" (*Gesellschaft*),
which he introduced in 1887, remains
influential.[^40^](#c2-note-0040){#c2-note-0040a} Tönnies contrasted two
fundamentally different and exclusive types of social relations. Whereas
community is characterized by the overlapping multidimensional nature of
social relationships, society is defined by the functional separation of
its sectors and spheres. Community embeds every in
t. In
the traditional village community ("communities of place," in Tönnies\'s
terms), neighbors are involved with one another, for better or for
worse, both on a familiar basis and economically or religiously. Every
activity takes place on several different levels at the same time.
Communities are comprehensive social institutions that penetrate all
areas of life, endowing them with meaning. Through mutual dependency,
they create stability and security, but they also obstruct change and
hinder soci
nships. Society, according to
Tönnies, separates its members from one another. Although they
coordinate their activity with others, they do so in order to pursue
partial, short-term, and personal goals. Not only are people separated,
but so too are different areas of life. In a market-oriented society,
for instance, the economy is conceptualized as an independent sphere. It
can therefore break away from social connections to be organized simply
by limited formal or legal obligations between actors w
historical situations, be it in harmony or in
conflict.[^42^](#c2-note-0042){#c2-note-0042a} []{#Page_82
type="pagebreak" title="82"}These impressions, however, which are so
firmly associated with the German concept of *Gemeinschaft*, make it
rather difficult to comprehend the new forms of communality that have
developed in the offshoots of networked life. This is because, at least
for now, these latter forms do not represent a genuine alternative to
societal types of social
connectedness.[^43^](#c2-
ses, professional learning (for instance, in their case study of
midwives) does not take place as a one-sided transfer of knowledge or
proficiency, but rather as an open exchange, often outside of the formal
learning environment, between people with different levels of knowledge
and experience. In this sense, learning is an activity that, though
distinguishable, cannot easily be separated from other "normal"
activities of everyday life. As Lave and Wenger stress, however, the
community of practice is
, expectations, and room to interpret one\'s own
activity. All members are active participants in the constitution of
this field, and this reinforces the stress on []{#Page_83
type="pagebreak" title="83"}practice. Each of them, however, brings
along different presuppositions and experiences, for their situations
are embedded within numerous and specific situations of life or work.
The processes within the community are mostly informal, and yet they are
thoroughly structured, for authority is distribu
formation is no longer to
be self-aware but rather to be
self-motivated.[^51^](#c2-note-0051){#c2-note-0051a} Nor is it necessary
any more for one\'s core self to be coherent. It is not a contradiction
to appear in various communal formations, each different from the next,
as a different "I myself," for every formation is comprehensive, in that
it appeals to the whole person, and simultaneously partial, in that it
is oriented toward a particular goal and not toward all areas of life.
As in the case of re-mixes and other referent
one
another in the narrow and regulated domain of their profession -- but
rather a communal formation in which the engagement of the whole person,
both one\'s professional and social self, is scrutinized. The
abolishment of the separation between different spheres of life,
requiring interaction of a more holistic nature, is in fact a key
attraction of []{#Page_97 type="pagebreak" title="97"}these communal
formations and is experienced by some as a genuine gain in freedom. In
this situation, one is
But for others the experience can be quite the opposite because the
informality of the communal formation also allows forms of exclusion and
discrimination that are no longer acceptable in formally organized
realms of society. Discrimination is more difficult to identify when it
takes place within the framework of voluntary togetherness, for no one
is forced to participate. If you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, you
are free to leave at any time. But this is a specious argument. The
areas of free software or Wikipedia are difficult places for women. In
these clubby atmospheres of informality, they are often faced with
blatant sexism, and this is one of the reasons why many women choose to
stay away from such projects.[^67^](#c2-note-0067){#c2-note-0067a} In
2007, according
is an indispensable
precondition for existing within the network at all. Protocols exert
power without there having to be anyone present to possess the power in
question. Whereas the sovereign can be located, the effects of
sociability\'s power are diffuse and omnipresent. They are not
repressive but rather constitutive. No one forces a scientist to publish
in English or a woman editor to tolerate disparaging remarks on
Wikipedia. People accept these often implicit behavioral norms (sexist
comments
ersonal compunction.
One is forced to do something that might potentially entail grave
disadvantages in order to have access, at least, to another level of
opportunities or to create other advantages for oneself.
:::
::: {.section}
### Homogeneity, difference and authority {#c2-sec-0017}
Protocols are present on more than a technical level; as interpretive
frameworks, they structure viewpoints, rules, and patterns of behavior
on all levels. Thus, they provide a degree of cultural homogeneity, a
set
nable exchange itself -- whereas everyone on the outside has not
done so. When everyone is speaking in English, the conversation sounds
quite monotonous to someone who does not speak the language.
Viewed from the inside, the experience is something different: in order
to constitute oneself within a communal formation, not only does one
have to accept its rules voluntarily and in a self-motivated manner; one
also has to make contributions to the reproduction and development of
the field. Everyone is urged to contribute something; that is, to
produce, on the basis of commonalities, differences that simultaneously
affirm, modify, and enhance these commonalities. This leads to a
pronounced and occasionally highly competitive internal differentiation
that can only be understood, however, by someone who has accepted the
commonalities. To an outsider, this differentiation will seem
irrelevant. Whoever is not well versed in the universe of *Star Wars*
will not understand why the various character interpretations at
[]{#Page_100 type="pagebreak" title="100"}cosplay conventions, which I
discussed above, might be brilliant or even controversial. To such a
person, they will all seem equally boring and superficial.
These formations structure themselves internally through the production
of differences; that is, by constantly changing their common ground.
Those who are able to add many novel aspects to the common resources
gain a degree of authority. They assume central positions and they
influence, through their behavior, the development of
ved from a quantitative
perspective -- no one can survey the "library" of digital information,
which in practical terms is infinitely large, and all of the growth
curves continue to climb steeply -- today\'s cultural reality is
nevertheless entirely different from that described by Borges. Our
ability to deal with massive amounts of data has radically improved, and
thus our faith in the utility of information is not only unbroken but
rather gaining strength. What is new is precisely such large quanti
inspire technical
development.[^77^](#c2-note-0077){#c2-note-0077a} Although it is
impossible to draw clear theoretical lines, the attempt to make such a
distinction can nevertheless be productive in practice, for in this way
it is possible to gain different perspectives about the same object of
investigation.[]{#Page_103 type="pagebreak" title="103"}
:::
::: {.section}
### The rise of algorithms {#c2-sec-0020}
An algorithm is a set of instructions for converting a given input into
a desired output by means of a finite number of steps: algorithms are
used to solve predefined problems. For a set of instructions to become
an algorithm, it has to be determined in three different respects.
First, the necessary steps -- individually and as a whole -- have to be
described unambiguously and completely. To do this, it is usually
necessary to use a formal language, such as mathematics, or a
programming language, in order to
er algorithms will
replace or simply supplement traditional journalism. Yet because media
companies are now under strong financial pressure, it is certainly
reasonable to predict that many journalistic texts will be automated in
the future. Entirely different applications, however, have also been
conceived. Alexander Pschera, for instance, foresees a new age in the
relationship between humans and nature, for, as soon as animals are
equipped with transmitters and sensors and are thus able to tell thei
but about which it might no longer be possible to know why it functions
or whether it actually is the best possible solution. The fundamental
methods behind this process largely derive from the 1970s (the first
stage of artificial intelligence), the difference being that today they
can be carried out far more effectively. One of the best-known examples
of an evolutionary algorithm is that of Google Flu Trends. In order to
predict which regions will be especially struck by the flu in a given
year, it evaluates the geographic distribution of internet searches for
particular terms ("cold remedies," for instance). To develop the
program, Google tested 450 million different models until one emerged
that could reliably identify local flu epidemics one to two weeks ahead
of the national health authorities.[^94^](#c2-note-0094){#c2-note-0094a}
In pursuits of this magnitude, the necessary processes can only be
adminis
ults), whereby the document with the highest value was listed
first.[^99^](#c2-note-0099){#c2-note-0099a} This algorithm was extremely
successful because it reduced the unfathomable chaos of the World Wide
Web to a task that could be managed without difficulty by an individual
user: inputting a search term and selecting from one of the presented
"hits." The simplicity of the user\'s final choice, together with the
quality of the algorithmic pre-selection, quickly pushed Google past its
competition.
st version of the PageRank
algorithm was developed, the problem of judging the relevance of
documents whose content could only partially be evaluated was not a new
one. Science administrators at universities and funding agencies had
been facing this difficulty since the 1950s. During the rise of the
knowledge economy, the number of scientific publications increased
rapidly. Scientific fields, perspectives, and methods also multiplied
and diversified during this time, so that even experts could not su
s on
a purely quantitative basis, large amounts of data can be quickly
structured with them, and especially relevant positions can be
determined. The second advantage of this approach is that it does not
require any assumptions about the contours of different fields or their
relationships to one another. This enables the organization of
disordered or dynamic content. In both cases, references made by the
actors themselves are used: citations in a scientific text, links on
websites. Their value for
within a dynamic informational world that exists for everyone
externally. Instead, it now assigns a rank to their content within a
dynamic and singular universe of information that is tailored to every
individual user. For every person, an entirely different order is
created instead of just an excerpt from a previously existing order. The
world is no longer being represented; it is generated uniquely for every
user and then presented. Google is not the only company that has gone
down this path. Orde
behavior that can be evaluated on the basis of a particular search
without promising to represent a person as a whole -- and they consist,
on the other hand, of clusters of multiple people, so that the person
being modeled can simultaneously occupy different positions in time.
This temporal differentiation enables predictions of the following sort
to be made: a person who has already done *x* will, with a probability
of *y*, go on to engage in activity *z*. It is in this way that Amazon
assembles its book recommendations, for the company kno
n which has already
been incorporated into its index. Everything else remains invisible. The
relation between []{#Page_119 type="pagebreak" title="119"}the recorded
part of the internet (the "surface web") and the unrecorded part (the
"deep web") is difficult to determine. Estimates have varied between
ratios of 1:5 and 1:500.[^115^](#c2-note-0115){#c2-note-0115a} There are
many reasons why content might be inaccessible to search engines.
Perhaps the information has been saved in formats that search
r
could be explained, predicted, and controlled purely by our outwardly
observable and measurable actions.[^126^](#c2-note-0126){#c2-note-0126a}
Psychological dimensions were ignored (and are ignored in this new
version of behaviorism) because it is difficult to observe them
empirically. Accordingly, this approach also did away with the need
[]{#Page_122 type="pagebreak" title="122"}to question people directly or
take into account their subjective experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
People were re
re unable to formulate an adequate
assessment for themselves, for it is ultimately impossible to answer
this question without certain resources. Outside of rapidly shrinking
domains of specialized or everyday knowledge, it is becoming
increasingly difficult to gain an overview of the world without
mechanisms that pre-sort it. Users are only able to evaluate search
results pragmatically; that is, in light of whether or not they are
helpful in solving a concrete problem. In this regard, it is not
par
(January 4,
2014), online.
[20](#c2-note-0020a){#c2-note-0020} See the documentary film *TPB AFK:
The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard* (2013), directed by Simon Klose.
[21](#c2-note-0021a){#c2-note-0021} In technical terms, there is hardly
any difference between a "stream" and a "download." In both cases, a
complete file is transferred to the user\'s computer and played.
[22](#c2-note-0022a){#c2-note-0022} The practice is legal in Germany
but illegal in Austria, though digitized texts are r
lth. Those who are economically or socially marginalized are
confronted with the same phenomenon. Their primary experience of this
excess is with cheap goods and junk.
[26](#c2-note-0026a){#c2-note-0026} See Gregory Bateson, "Form,
Substance and Difference," in Bateson, *Steps to an Ecology of Mind:
Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and
Epistemology* (London: Jason Aronson, 1972), pp. 455--71, at 460:
"\[I\]n fact, what we mean by information -- the elementary unit of
information -- is *a difference which makes a difference*" (the emphasis
is original).
[27](#c2-note-0027a){#c2-note-0027} Inke Arns and Gabriele Horn,
*History Will Repeat Itself* (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, 2007), p.
42.[]{#Page_187 type="pagebreak" title="187"}
[28](#c2-note-0028a){#c2-note
ers make it Germany's largest NGO.
Parallel to this, between 1970 and 2010, the proportion of people
without any religious affiliations shrank to approximately 37 percent.
That there are more churches and political parties today is indicative
of how difficult []{#Page_188 type="pagebreak" title="188"}it has become
for any single organization to attract broad strata of society.
[39](#c2-note-0039a){#c2-note-0039} Ulrich Beck, *Risk Society: Towards
a New Modernity*, trans. Mark Ritter (London: SAG
](#c2-note-0054a){#c2-note-0054} The term "weak ties" derives from a
study of where people find out information about new jobs. As the study
shows, this information does not usually come from close friends, whose
level of knowledge often does not differ much from that of the person
looking for a job, but rather from loose acquaintances, whose living
environments do not overlap much with one\'s own and who can therefore
make information available from outside of one\'s own network. See Mark
Granove
arly as 2011, the latter was able to identify dogs in images with 80
percent accuracy. Three years later, this rate had not only increased to
93.5 percent (which corresponds to human capabilities), but the
algorithm could also identify more than 200 different types of dog,
something that hardly any person can do. See Robert McMillan, "This Guy
Beat Google\'s Super-Smart AI -- But It Wasn\'t Easy," *Wired* (January
15, 2015), online.
[99](#c2-note-0099a){#c2-note-0099} Sergey Brin and Lawrence Pag
er to resolve this ostensible contradiction between developments
that take place in a manner that is uniform and beyond influence and
those that are characterized by the variable and open-ended
implementation of diverse interests, it is necessary to differentiate
between two levels. One possibility for doing so is presented by Marxist
political economy. It distinguishes between *productive forces*, which
are defined as the technical infrastructure, the state of knowledge, and
the []{#Page_125 type="p
t the new protocol and made it open to discussion, it was
established from the outset that communication should be enabled between
independent networks.[^8^](#c3-note-0008){#c3-note-0008a} On the basis
of this standard, it is thus possible today for different providers to
create an integrated space for communication. Even though they are in
competition with one another, they nevertheless cooperate on the level
of the technical protocol and allow users to send information back and
forth regardless of
vely closely linked to that on which generally binding decisions
are made and implemented. In this sense, email is not a post-democratic
technology.
:::
::: {.section}
### Centralization and the power of networks {#c3-sec-0004}
Things are entirely different in the case of new social mass media such
as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, or most of the other
commercial services that were developed after the year 2000. Almost all
of them are based on standards that are closed and controlled by the
e
number of online interactions reaches its peak 12 days before a
relationship begins and hits its low point 85 days after the status
update (probably because of an increasing number of offline
interactions).[^22^](#c3-note-0022){#c3-note-0022a} The difference in
the frequency of online interactions between the high point and the low
point was just 0.14 updates per day. In other words, Facebook\'s
statisticians could recognize and evaluate when users would post, over
the course of seven days, one mor
numbers of users generating
immense volumes of data. Accordingly, these new []{#Page_136
type="pagebreak" title="136"}analytic possibilities do not mean that
Facebook can accurately predict the behavior of a single user. The
unique person remains difficult to calculate, for all that could be
ascertained from this information would be a minimally different
probability of future behavior. As regards a single person, this gain in
knowledge would not be especially useful, for a slight change in
probability has no predictive power on a case-by-case basis. If, in the
case of a unique person, the probab
o possible to influence large groups by changing the parameters
of their informational environment. Many online news portals, for
instance, simultaneously test multiple headlines during the first
minutes after the publication of an article (that is, different groups
are shown different titles for the same article). These so-called A/B
tests are used to measure which headlines attract the most clicks. The
most successful headline is then adopted and shown to larger
groups.[^23^](#c3-note-0023){#c3-note-0023a} This, however, is
k of influence at
all if only 250 people had altered their behavior. Personal experience
suggests that one cannot be manipulated by such things. It would be
false to conclude, however, that such interventions are irrelevant, for
matters are entirely different where large groups are concerned. On
account of Facebook\'s small experiment, approximately 60,000 people
voted who otherwise would have stayed at home, and around 340,000 extra
votes were cast (because most people do not go to vote alone but ra
rmations.
As such, commons are neither new nor specifically Western. They exist in
many cultural traditions, and thus the term is used in a wide variety of
ways.[^67^](#c3-note-0067){#c3-note-0067a} In what follows, I will
distinguish between three different dimensions. The first of these
involves "common pool resources"; that is, *goods* that can be used
communally. The second dimension is that these goods are administered by
the "commoners"; that is, by members of *communities* who produce, use,
a
or books based on the content of Wikipedia
articles. The relationships between the people who use a certain
resource communally, however, are not structured through money but
rather through direct social cooperation. Commons are thus
fundamentally different from classical market-oriented institutions,
which orient their activity primarily in response to price signals.
Commons are also fundamentally distinct from bureaucracies -- whether in
the form of public administration or private industry -- which are
organized according to hierarchical chains of command. And they differ,
too, from public institutions. Whereas the latter are concerned with
society as a whole -- or at least that is []{#Page_152 type="pagebreak"
title="152"}their democratic mandate -- commons are inwardly oriented
forms that primarily exist by means
0012}
Commoners create institutions when they join together for the sake of
using a resource in a long-term and communal manner. In this, the
separation of producers and consumers, which is otherwise ubiquitous,
does not play a significant role: to different and variable extents, all
commoners are producers and consumers of the common resources. It is an
everyday occurrence for someone to take something from the common pool
of resources for his or her own use, but it is understood that something
wil
cultural, and technical dimensions. Commons realize an
alternative to the classical separation of spheres that is so typical of
our modern economy and society. The economy is not understood here as an
independent realm that functions according to a different set of rules
and with externalities, but rather as one facet of a complex and
comprehensive phenomenon with intertwining commercial, social, ethical,
ecological, and cultural dimensions.
It is impossible to determine how the interplay between these three
dimensions generally solidifies into concrete institutions.
Historically, many different commons-based institutions were developed,
and their number and variety have only increased under the digital
condition. Elinor Ostrom, who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in
Economics for her work on the commons, has thus refrained from
formul
keep their
animals, it is important to limit the number of members for the simple
reason that the resource in question might otherwise be over-utilized
(this is allegedly the "tragedy of the
commons").[^71^](#c3-note-0071){#c3-note-0071a} Things are different
with so-called non-rival goods, which can be consumed by one person
without excluding its use by another. When I download and use a freely
available word-processing program, for instance, I do not take away
another person\'s chance to do the sam
represents an important incentive for
these members to remain in the group. This is in the interest of all
participants, and thus the authority of the most active members is
seldom called into question. This does not mean, however, that there are
no differences of opinion within commons. Here, too, reaching consensus
can be a time-consuming process. Among the most important
characteristics of all commons are thus mechanisms for decision-making
that involve members in a variety of ways. The rules that
e immense commons of the Debian Project encompasses a nearly
unfathomable number of variations. The distribution is available in over
70 languages (in comparison, Apple\'s operating system is sold in 22
languages), and diverse versions exist to suit different application
contexts, aesthetic preferences, hardware needs, and stability
requirements. Within each of these versions, in turn, there are
innumerable []{#Page_160 type="pagebreak" title="160"}variations that
have been created by individual users with different sets of technical
or creative skills. The final result is a continuously changing service
that can be adapted for countless special requirements, desires, and
other features. To outsiders, this internal differentiation is often
difficult to comprehend, and it can soon leave the impression that there
is little more to it than a tedious variety of essentially the same
thing. What user would ever need 60 different text
editors?[^79^](#c3-note-0079){#c3-note-0079a} For those who would like
to use free software without having to join a group, a greater number of
simple and standardized products have been made available. For
commoners, however, this diversit
ion and thus protected from rampant
copyright conflicts, large and well-structured []{#Page_162
type="pagebreak" title="162"}cultural commons were established, for
instance around the online reference work Wikipedia (which was then,
however, using a different license). As much as the latter is now taken
for granted as an everyday component of informational
life,[^83^](#c3-note-0083){#c3-note-0083a} the prospect of a
commons-generated encyclopedia hardly seemed realistic at the beginning.
Even the fou
n revenue, half of
which was obtained from donations and half from holding
conferences.[^89^](#c3-note-0089){#c3-note-0089a} That said, OSM is
nevertheless a socially, technologically, and financially robust
commons, though one with a model entirely different from Wikipedia\'s.
Because data are at the heart of the project, its needs for hardware and
bandwidth are negligible compared to Wikipedia\'s, and its servers can
be housed at universities or independently operated by individual
groups. Around t
ithms, for anyone can write his or her own algorithm or commission
others to process data in various ways and in light of various
interests. Because algorithms cannot be neutral, their diversity -- and
the resulting ability to compare the results of different methods -- is
an important precondition for them not becoming an uncontrollable
instrument of power. This can be achieved most dependably through free
access to data, which are maintained and cultivated as a commons.
Motivated by the conviction
ta can or must be collected by individuals, for a great deal
of data already exists. That said, many scientific and state
institutions face the problem of having data that, though nominally
public (or at least publicly funded), are in fact extremely difficult
for third parties to use. Such information may exist, but it is kept in
institutions to which there is no or little public access, or it exists
only in analog or non-machine-readable formats (as PDFs of scanned
documents, for instance), or its u
," in
Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search: Die Politik des
Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009), pp.
112--31.
[18](#c3-note-0018a){#c3-note-0018} Thus, in 2012, Google announced
under a rather generic and difficult-to-Google headline that, from now
on, "we may combine information you\'ve provided from one service with
information from other services." See "Updating Our Privacy Policies and
Terms of Service," *Google Official Blog* (January 24, 2012), onlin
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