Annoyed and Media Theoretical
Who's afraid to die?
A basic question facing producers of radical media today is the purpose
of their own existence.
In the shadow of the Indymedia wave, many amongst us have criticised
the model of communications that it has cultivated. The counts of
indictment are multiple: that the network behaves as a franchise;
that a basic precondition appears an ignorance of pre-existing digital
media efforts and willingness to steamroll over their efforts; that
the system of open publishing has enshrined a fact-oblivious form
of writing easily and regularly manipulated; that it pedestalises
the 'rights of speakers' whilst minimising the 'rights of listeners'.
But indy has undoubtedly been, on some level a success. Rather than
having difficulties in self-reproduction, it has flourished and proliferated.
In the wake of its public profile has arrived cash, from Chumbawamba
for example, and willingness on the part of players formerly uninvolved
to provide the material resources to make the network function.
The space occupied by Indy is somewhat vague, falling between a slashdot
style community and a freewheeling libertarian (in the US sense) speaker's
corner. But practice demonstrates that it has a function, a role,
and given its capacity to support reproduction it will be a fixture
for the foreseeable future, oblivious to any misgivings we may feel
about its operation.
Infoshop.org has flourished as well and is established as the place
for a specifically anarchist/left-libertarian discourse on the network.
Driven by Chuck's determined and for a long time individual efforts,
the pay-off is now clear. A clear community has formed, discussion
is rich and contradictory and the site is breeding offspring such
as the recent launch of a german language edition. Infoshop has further
cultivated a space for research, through the emphasis given to highlighting
specific themes or
political campaigns, be it on the subject of intellectual property
or prisons. Like Indy, infoshop has arrived at the point where it
can support its own reproduction. Exhortations to readers to cough
up cash seem to be paying a dividend. At the end of august, Chuck
launched another 'feed the webmaster' drive to raise a $1000 before
September 6th, but the objective was attained before the end of august.
Rusty at
www.kuro5hin.org dabbled with various means to finance the
maintenance of his discussion site, which is arguably the most intelligent
mass-participatory leftish weblog around. After withdrawing from the
VA linux controlled network he flirted with the idea of using text-based
ads to bring in income in exchange for a non-obnoxious conduit into
his users' cerebral cortex. Eventually, he decided instead to establish
it as a not-for profit foundation and launched a financial appeal.
Within a couple of days more than $35,000 had been raised and kuroshin.org
was on its way to becoming an institutionalised part of a non-commercial
public sphere on the web for infinity.
Having led the Pacifica boycott that brought commercial elements to
their knees, Democracy Now set about raising cash again for the network.
Their web presence is powerful with an archive of mp3's and streamed
versions of the programmes accompanied by content listings. Over a
weekend it is not abnormal for them to take in $3000 in donations
via paypal alone. Of course Amy and her crew also raised $750,000
during the last fundraising drive, so maybe they're just in another
league. But the point is that the users recognise DN's importance
and support it in kind, while they produce quality factual radical
journalism for the kind of mass audience which the web just does not
reach. Yet.
A-Infos is the preferred channel of communication between street based
anarchist organisations. Those who know go directly there to find
out exactly what's happening with the people who persevere in making
the impossible happen. Simplicity of format minimises the technical
aspect whilst reducing bandwidth load, voluntary labour from dedicated
anarchist militants, and assumably the generosity of tao on hosting
the site makes it happen. If there is a Spain '36 in the 21st century,
it will be the primary source for its planning and unfolding in public
documentation.
Think theory on line? Answer nettime. Even those who don't read it
any more can recognise a text that has passed through it.
The point in all this eulogising is that each of these sites has an
obvious and appreciated reason for being. Where money is required,
no problems are experienced in obtaining it - although Indy seem to
have problems disbursing it, but that's another story. Each has a
theatre of operations, a modus operandi broadly approved of by its
own users, and were any of them to be shut down by their hosts or
the state tomorrow, who doubts that they would be back on line within
24 hours.
---------
Unfortunately the same cannot be said for a galaxy of other radical
sites. Updated rarely or inconsistently, visited seldom. Albatross
on the neck of innumerable part-time webmasters. Purveyors of loony
strategies or undiscovered marvels. Their polymorphous political perversity
is the gold of our latter-day International, the seed of creative
refractory reproduction, the beach under the paving stones of the
homogenised ether. But it absorbs resources and fragments our attention
and labour,
often unnecessarily.
I think that those who cannot answer the case put and rebutted by
the examples listed above ought to die or to federate. Or rather,
they should commit seppuku so as to be reborn, at a higher level as
it were(!). That includes the project I participate in myself incidentally,
at slash.autonomedia.org. Dying could be blissful; it could be the
opportunity to abandon our vanity, consolidate our resources, pitch
in with others so as to eke out a new space within a greater collective
endeavor. It would
be a true realisation of a utopian aspect of the web, the dissolution
of one community to become part of another met along the road. Vanity,
and the desire to 'control one's manor' in this area has traditionally
been a trait characterising the university and its critical communities,
careerists are not altogether unknown in the left-libertarian/anarchist
milieu either, but if we're serious about strategising for impact,
their concerns have no place on our agenda. Consolidation of resources
is needed, later I'll try to provide some examples of why.
Federation is an alternative. The means are obvious. The RDF/RSS standard
is really all there is to it. Links are just a sad fake gesture of
love in comparison with ten delicious headlines form your federated
friends frontpage. Those who don't provide RDF/RSS data, or refuse
to integrate others RDF/RSS boxes into their pages are traitors. Unless
they're individualists, in which case my remarks will be treated with
the disdain they merit anyway, or perhaps taken as an opportunity
to inveigh against the ineluctable endpoint of this rationality in
a gulag. I recognise their 'right' to secede.
--------
I think we need this type of portal cut and paste to take the next
necessary steps. Collectives, in my experience, always arrive at a
certain point where the fight against entropy and atrophy absorbs
more time than desiring strategy and 'innovative' action. Internal
dynamics exhaust themselves in frustration or fraction. What helps
revitalise things is a change in context, be it a new set of social
forces or involvement in a new alliance. But the rejuventaory propulsion
always comes from
outside.
**************
Who's afraid of subjectivity?
Once upon a time there was counter-information. That was in the days
where a couple of hundred Algerians, for example, could be massacred
on the streets of Paris and have their bodies thrown into the Seine.
And the newspapers and radio/television didn't even report it. Media
outlets served state interests slavishly and everyone with a critical
lobe knew there was a problem, a lacuna to be filled.
Counter-information occupied that gap. As it became evident that there
was a market for such information commercial operators realised that
there was money to be made from that audience so they started carrying
it. The advent of Usenet and then the web put an end to the dominant
information issue forever, but replaced it with a distribution shortfall.
The other thorny matter arising was excess info and the prospect that
too much data impeded critical thinking, climaxing in a sort of paroxysm
of endless 'uncertainty' stymieing action or response in terms that
would make an economic theorist blush, if
you know what I mean.
Anyway, back to my fable. Lots of bright sparks decided counter-information
no longer being really the crux of the matter, the key was different
voices: immigrants' voices; gay and lesbian voices; gypsy voices;
workers voices (but that was kinda hesitant); womens' voices. That
was an improvement.
Over on an isolated peninsula though there was another interesting
declination of media verbs going on. Having the strongest communist
tradition in the Mediterranean, a sort of permanent mass street mobilisation
and an important anarchist presence (they even liberated parts of
the country from Nazi-fascism during WW2) helped to make it an interesting
experience. The decade-long 1968 in that country witnessed an amazing
upswell of independent radio stations connected with the social movement,
like Pacifica, just bigger. Some become commercial eventually. Many
of them followed the militant and very ideological in content. Faithful
activists tuned in and they were an important, if not central means
of self-organisation, in a manner not unlike the net today. There
was a wild dog amongst all these though. unmistakable. Different.
She was called Alice. Radio Alice in fact. And although Alice only
just about survived to see a first birthday, her impact was unprecedented.
The radical information and critique was there. So were some of those
other voices. And funky music. But there was more. There were 15-year-old
boys ringing in to talk about breaking up with their girlfriends.
There were thirteen year old girls telephoning to speak confusedly
about their first menstruation. Political correspondents pretended
they were in Algiers and spoke of what they imagined they saw in the
local Bolognese dialect. People talked about life, their lives, in
their terms, and their desires and disappointments. To do so, the
parameters of militant, or as its called today, 'activist', discourse
had to be discarded.
In a word Alice embodied subjectivity, the curiousity, wondering,
self-doubt, joy and anger of a new generation coming to a conscious
relationship with the dawning new world and its novel social conditions.
Where is that space today on the web, on our sites? Does it occur
to those who complain about the lack of diversity, the gender imbalance,
the racial lop-sidedness, the marginalisation of both youth and age,
that it may be exactly because the whole style in which we format
our communications structures the exclusion of those 'subjects' (what
a cold word, how it makes me shudder to write it). Is anybody else
really
bored with all this poorly reclothed ideologico-speak? Feel short
on ludic stimulation? Forgotten what a moment of empathy with an adolescent
feels like. Actually identified with a rape victim rather than experiencing
a programmed response.
Our political discourse is narrow. The behaviour of the milieu often
stereotypical. Humour is basically non-existent. Taking a subjective
turn doesn't mean becoming amateur cultural studies pundits or evacuating
substance and contact with reality from thought and action.1
Who's afraid of ambition?
Text has a privileged place in the radical tradition. The consequences
on network communications are plain to see. Everyone is busy getting
their newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, books and miscellaneous screeds
up online, and that defined the first wave of social agitation. Our
own time has witnessed the indelible footprint of the blog and the
discursive form it has catalysed, more focussed and accountable than
a mailing list discussion.
Some feisty folks have done good stuff with radio that if there's
any justice to reality should transform the capacity of low-power
and pirate broadcasters to operate and the quality of the material
imparted.
But I think it's safe to state that the dominant form of literacy
of our time is audio-visual, and that the lack of success in the video
realm is what makes radical communications in 2002 resemble more 1992
rather than that which was once, perhaps too hopefully, envisaged.
What bothers me is the failure to exploit the possibilities which
are available on this level. A survey almost a year ago estimated
that 500,000 TV programs and films were being exchanged each day over
the network using IRC, hotlines and file sharing progs. E-Donkey has
cultivated a method and a community so as to make thousands of data-heavy
videos available. Using cryptographic hashes and review portals to
ensure that downloaders don't waste their time transferring dud files,
trojans or anti-counterfeiting presentations described as 'Fight Club.divx",
MFTP for maximal bandwidth
efficiency etc., e-donkeyites are forging the way forward. The fact
the software is proprietary is shit, but there's no alternative as
Freenet's front end is still traumatising and the anonymity oriented
design undermines performance.
Sharereactor and filenexus allow users to launch their searches directly
from their page provided the prog is running, you don't even need
to negotiate the interface. And where are the radicals?
Where is the portal for radical, critical, subjective funky audio-visual victory?
Nowhere.
Periodically, I conduct the following experiment. Key in Indymedia
to the search interface on
a) Kazaa, Grokster
b) Gnucleus, Sharereaza, Limewire
c) Filedonkey, sharereactor.
The response? Occasionally you'll find Richard Stallman singing the
free software song and a few videos in Italian about Genoa and the
G8. Usually, you'll get nothing at all. Try Manufacturing Consent:
nothing. But the director is actually rather favorable to it being
available. insanity. We have exactly the type of real world networks
which mean that there are machines and bandwidth enough available
to us to launch a serious resource sharing initiative, squaring up
to the moment when we can actually be running bandit audio-visual
dissident networks and it is not being exploited.
In the meantime where courage fails, commerce acts, and we get transmission
films, who are using an e-donkey derivative, Overnet, to distribute
independent movies online out of Canada. They are using the file-sharing
network, users' machines, as their commercial infrastructure. They
are also placing Digital rights Management on the files and allowing
users to have access them for 24 hours after initialisation of an
access-key. On the other hand, they charge $2 a movie and state that
half of that goes to the filmmaker, which for the sake of all my immiserated
independent filmmaking friends and allies gives me a warm glow. But
the DRM pisses me off, and the fact that payment is involuntary is
limiting. But really I feel sore because they are occupying a space
that could be, should be, ours. And some of us have been discussing
this for months. In Italy meanwhile, they've launched a project called
GNU-Global Vision precisely so as to remedy this, and helping to make
a copyleft style treatment the default approach to critical documentary
video on the web.
And that is just one example of the way in which Peer2Peer modes ought
to benefit us. Besides that it's going
to be a central area of political conflictuality on the network for
years to come, implicating the
whole array of media conglomerates, and their henchmen in various
legislatures, in a sustained campaign against users,
where ultimately there is no doubt people will be incarcerated. There
is a hunger for initiatives more
confrontational than the EFF, and the modern centrality of intellectual
property as a means of disciplining individuals and
maintaining the dominant social relationships is a mutation for which
our time will be remembered.
The argument made above for a consolidation and reapportionment of
resources relates derives directly
from my belief that we need to get the resources to make file-sharing,
particularly video, work. If we can agree to store content and provide
bandwidth for access to it, with a searchable database and scheduling
system, and co-ordinated system of resource alternation, there are
essentially all the elements for a permanent g transnational independent
TV station. Without investing false hopes in a misplaced technological
messianism, I think this would be a decent start to improving our
communication strategy. Install a collective T1 or T3, a wireless
hub and gigantic hard disk and community wireless could really move
to the next level. Hook that box up to a low power transmitter - along
the lines of telestreet.it - and there's a low power terrestrial television
station. The right and commerce are ambitious. We need to be more
ambitious.
Who's afraid of self-analysis?
There is a shocking dearth of statistical data about radical network
activity. A year or so ago Indymedia NYC took part in a large public
forum on Independent media where their spokesperson told the assembled
crowd of the extraordinary success they had achieved, receiving more
than 35,000 hits a day. The audience interpreted this as meaning
that there were 35,000 people visiting nyc.indymedia.org every day,
which of course was not the case. Ironically this type of misleading
presentation echoes perfectly the type of snake-oil hyperbole deployed
systematically during the dot com bubble in order to boost their apparent
usage level.
Individual users, numbers of individual page views etc. , no more
than money accumulated through paypal, are not the only measure of
site's contribution, but overall it is important knowledge not least
because it throws into relief the scale of the task facing us, and
provides a basic feedback mechanism to monitor the interest generated
by new methods of promoting the site, identifying topics of broader
interest etc.
Similarly, a content analysis on the articles published would reveal
the biases that wittingly or subconsciously guide our publication
choices. The absence of decent economic analysis and data on our
sites, for example, is something that I find increasingly shocking.
In New York from August until February about 130,000 people lost their
jobs, and we simply haven't provided tools for people whose world
has been shaken by that experience to understand better what is unfolding.
Realising this inadequacy underlined for me the importance of a site
and newsletter such as left business observer, where Doug Henwood
actually crunches that data and follows the discussion of the business
press from a critical standpoint. Elsewhere, we're all familiar with
the way in which the Israeli-Palestinian cyber-conflict periodically
overwhelms Indymedia newswires. This type of quantitative onslaught
functions to really sabotage any other function of those sites during
that time, and serves as a concrete example for the means by which
'open publishing' can be exploited.
Who's afraid of the limitations of the media strategy?
Working with media it is to be expected that one might indulge in
a certain amount of cock-suredness about the importance of communications
in an overall political context. Ultimately we must ask one another
if the emphasis given to communications is excessive especially where
political campaigning strategies effectively morph into pure-play
media activity. There's a fine line between employing a cunning strategy
that makes good media, and becoming reliant on constant media attention
as oxygen. Furthermore it is a truism that many people are fundamentally
distrustful of what they experience through the media, including the
radical media. An obsession with tactical media action strikes me
as sometimes partaking in the abandonment of the social terrain of
everyday life, work or claimant centered agitation, practical tasks
of community construction etc.
Some time ago I translated an interview with an Italian hacker involved
in the Hacklab movement there. He has also been deeply involved in
the development of alternative information structures. The Hacklabs
struck me as something worth importing, as they reflect a highly socialised
treatment of knowledge and informational skills. Eric does something
somewhat similar in ABC.
Blogger Universalism
Slashcode, scoop and php-nuke define the new collectivist approach,
but blogger revolutionised online publication for the individual,
simplifying the process and consequently opening it up to mass participation.
There are other areas where this could be implemented. How many collectives
still struggle with poster design and magazine layout because of lack
of skills, hardware or software? How difficult could it be to assemble
basic templates which could be used off the shelf, filled in following
the same style which animated page-builders on the likes of Geocities
at the beginning? Or do the tools already exist and is the problem
more that of diffusing knowledge of their whereabouts and potential?
What's good about un-security: the ballad of Wolfgang Grams and the
cautionary tale of Klaus Steinmentz
Reading about the session on encryption felt very 1990s. I've been
using PGP and more recently lokmail since 1996, and still can scarcely
find anyone willing to exchange encrypted mail, that's not to say
cryptography is pointless but just to query how effective the push
has been. Reading David Kahn's epic tome 'The Codebreakers', one realises
that for the truly determined no technical protocol or cryptographic
method is both failsafe and feasible; security is simply a function
of the weight of resources thrown at the lock, and where the state
is concerned - at least in the US - those resources are basically
infinite. Moreover, psychologically the consequences of dwelling upon
security as a problem are pretty deleterious due to the paranoia it
cultivates and the closure towards unfamiliar faces that it encourages.
Now more than ever we should be actively 'miscegenating' with the
public, seeking to spread radical ideas like a contagion through this
rotten society.
As in hacking, most vulnerability to repression arises more often
from social engineering than technical indelicacy. The vanload of
putative direct actionists driven straight to the waiting cuffs of
the Philadelphia police in 2000 were not victims of surveillance but
infiltration. And for the really paranoid, here's a story to keep
you awake. In 1992 a Red Army faction member, Wolfgang Grams, was
shot dead in a train station in Bad Kleinen, Germany. The information
leading to his state-execution and the arrest of his companion was
provided by the third member of their cell, Klaus Steinmetz. Through
a mishap he too was arrested, when the plan had been to allow him
to escape and continue his covert activity. Thus the press discovered
that he had been sleeping in the organisation for more than ten years,
waiting for the moment of optimal utility. If we mimic the securitarian
logic of the state, we have no chance, it's not where our strength
and potential lies.
Slash Critique
Elsewhere I've been compiling a list of tweaks that need to be made to our slash page. Some of them are not so minor or involve fundamental divergences from the current state of slashcode, such as the suggestion that all logged in users be allocated moderation powers. Slash codes bestows these powers as occasional 'jury service' on only a small element of the user base. The problem on Aut is that very few users (15 as a maximum so far) actually log in and thus very few people will ever be able to moderate but the site's administrators always have moderation powers and thus their personal preferences are algorithmically determined to establish the scores awarded. If the administrators were systematic moderators this would be a problem of subjectivity, but in fact they exercise their powers rarely, so the nature of the problem is in fact that of a void.
If any credence is to be given to the claims that people engage in online communications/discourse to exchange knowledge/win others attention then this void is a black hole through which potential collaborators are falling. If someone takes a half-hour out to compose a thought and set it out literately before posting it as a comment, then they expect or hope for some response. The most gratifying response one could have is from the author, or from another contributor to whom you are responding. Failing that, a response from anybody at least indicates that the contribution was appreciated and not merely a waste of time. Lastly, where there is no written response, that someone, administrator or peer at least took the time to evaluate your participation is a basic expectation people bring to moderated forums of this type.
Community or Broadcast
Considering the small number of comments made, slash publishes too many stories. Furthermore the majority of those stories originate with us although usually we are not actually the authors or person responsible for the html mark-up. The direction of the information flow is clear however and reflects the practices of a publishing house. Except that the concept of the web-publisher is a misnomer, as the web actually actually collapses that boundary, and all that remains is the residual product of media-socialisation in the time of physical output and scarcity.
The journal system allows us to continue to post these stories without dominating the page. It also allows the users to bring stuff to our attention with an equality absent from the submission system. By installing an RDF box as a default to the front page that lists the last twenty journal updates we also signal to the users that their participation is important and will be given prominence. New versions of slashcode contain a zoo facility that allows users to use the journal feature in more refined ways that have generated a huge amount of horizontal communication outside of the standard publication route, that is to say community based discussion.
A meta section is needed, where the actual design and engineering of the site can be subjected to scrutiny as opposed to technology being black-boxed. This would also supply a conduit for feedback and potentially assistance.
Channel or Network
Television channels diversify their coverage so as to maximise audience on a lowest common denominator basis across a wide range of subject-matter. The network attacked this form of generalism by enabling the emergence of niche communities. Blogs have administered the coup de grace, facilitating access to commentary by individuals
expert in each area. The newspaper with its correspondents covering broad beats cannot match the level of expertise to be found there. For aut i think that means we should not endeavour to cover everything or be involved in constant recycling. Rather we should integrate A-Infos, Nettime, Openflows, Infoanarchy, Infoshop, Doug Henwood's list etc wholeheartedly and leave them to cover the areas that they are best at, freeing us to do other stuff.
Likewise, a box listing sites administered by our users or those who link to us should be present on the front page, which should be a portal to a network, a community rather than a front page for slash.autonomedia, and our design and lay-out should reflect that.
Conclusion
As administrators of the site we have the responsibility to weave a community rather than to broadcast information we deem appropriate or important, although this is not precluded - it's a matter of priorities. Every comment should be rated, and wherever possible answered, particularly in the short-term as it is discussion that generates discussion - community discourse is highly iterative, this is the lesson of successful forums.
We should publish less and facilitate more network communications, whilst also arguing with other webmasters to reciprocate. The journal system should be fixed and then pushed to the user-base. Of the sites listed above only openflows and infoanarchy run a journal system, no surprise that these are the two tech-community orientated sites mentioned. Autonomedia should be a community of writers, critics and social actors who treat one another as equals, enrich one another's perspective's and knowledge and use the space offered by slash.autonomedia.org to do that.
