Dr.Richard Barbrook

* the Net as a promoter of globalisation;
* the role of network communities;
* the network society as the latest stage of capitalism;
* the fetishisation of information.

* Virtual Communities: how the networks make it possible to breed cultural common grounds, perpetuating global opinion movement by a
instant media connections. Radical islamic movements are a good example as they are globally glued via satellite TV (i e multicast networks) and the internet (mailinglists, chatrooms). But networked-based channels do not replace neighborhoods and networked-based communities can also lead to a new form of usurpation. Many opinion websites are actually false identities invented by corporation to support their own
propagandist agenda.

John Coate

The New Underground

Although the Internet itself was created for the US Defense Department
and mainframe computers were invented by corporations with defense
contracts, the PC and the Net that we know today and the empowerment
that it has brought was mostly created by free-spirited individuals in
their own workshops and garages. These individuals&Mac226; ethic of sharing,
discovery and freedom was a unique hybrid of the classic scientist&Mac226;s
quest and the values of sharing and openness that had its most recent
revitalization in the revolutionary period of the 1960s. It is no
coincidence that much of it was created in the San Francisco Bay Area.

But nothing with so much value and empowerment can stay pure for long.
The true spirit of the Net was almost destroyed by greed. San Francisco
was invaded by marketers and people with half-baked ideas only
interested in stock options and making money. In the end, they didn&Mac226;t
succeed. Now, the big bubble has burst and most of the phony
e-businesses have gone away. But the genie is long out of the bottle
and the corporations are deeply entrenched. Just like the record
companies that wandered down Haight Street in the 60s looking for ways
to exploit a social revolution, media corporations and their government
partners wish to control all communication and transactions on the
Internet. New laws are pending that would fundamentally change the
architecture of computers and networks so that giant media corporations,
whose distribution empires are threatened by the decentralized nature of
the Net, can preserve their business models. In their quest for
control, they seek to make the general purpose computer illegal!

It is a fight between freedom and control. Now there is a "new
underground" that continues the spirit of sharing and community and will
route around the obstructions of the corporate state by inventing and
using new and often free or programmable technologies like open-source
Linux, ultra-wideband wireless, peer-to-peer filesharing such as
post-Napster application Gnutella and personal webcasting programs like
weblogs - where users post and forward their own writing and news
stories - independent of any commercial network. In the realm of the
virtual community, no business has been able to make a large profit.
Yet, there are online communities of every size and description
flourishing online. In the Bay Area, craigslist.org has created a local
classified and community site that has taken tens of millions of dollars
away from the local news chains and converted once-expensive classifieds
into a free community service.

For every corporate or government attempt to control the flow of
information and communication online, there is a popular response that
"treats censorship like a bug and routes around it," as EFF founder John
Gilmour stated years ago. This new underground is world-wide and will
not be defeated, even if the climate in any given country, even the USA,
becomes too oppressive. Creative people just move elsewhere, away from
censorship and privacy invasion and keep working. This is the true
spirit of the Net. It is a revolution that is not being televised.

BIO:
John Coate develops and manages innovative hypermedia networks that are
dedicated to strengthening community and advancing public knowledge. He
was the founder and General Manager of SF Gate (1994-2001), the number
one news and information website for the San Francisco Bay Area.
Previously, he was the Marketing Director and Conferencing Manager of
the WELL for its first six years (1986-1991). He was instrumental in
creating the online community that Wired! Magazine called, "the world's
most influential." He came to the online world through working and
living in intentional communities, most notably the Farm in Tennessee,
that came out of the psychedelic milieu of San Francisco in the 1960s
where he learned the dynamics of community and social human nature. His
web site is www.cervisa.com

He is currently Director of Development for the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF). The EFF is the leading organization defending freedom
and civil liberties in cyberspace.

Thomas Feuerstein

Im Netz der Kontingenz oder Die unmögliche Geschichte

Hat der Mensch als Stand-alone-Gerät ausgedient und mutiert er vom Individuum zum vernetzten Polyviduum? Stehen wir vor dem Ende der Geographie und vor dem Beginn einer neuen Netz-Topologie, die Fragen des Raumes, des Wissens sowie unser Verhältnis zu Maschinen, Politik und Gesellschaft grundlegend verändert? Wie können wir mit stetig ansteigender Komplexität und Welthaltigkeit umgehen und welche Funktionen übernimmt dabei die Kunst?

BIO:
Born 1968 in Innsbruck, studied art history and philosophy at the
University of Innsbruck, doctorate 1995; works as artist and author in the fields of fine art and media art. From 1992 - 1994 co-editor with Klaus Strickner of the magazine Medien. Kunst. Passagen., published by Passagen Verlag Vienna. 1992 founded the office for intermedia communication transfer and the association medien.kunst.tirol. 1992 and 1993 research commissions from the Austrian Ministry of Science on art in electronic space and art and architecture. Since 1997 lectures and seminars at
colleges and universities.

http://www.t0.or.at/&Mac249;tfeuerstein, http://thing.at/eugen,
http://www.soap.ch/avatar, http://www.xcult.org/leviathan,
http://www.myzel.net, e-mail: support@myzel.net

pingfm

------
streaming technology offers the possibility of worldwide reception, to connect and interact with people around the globe. the very own aesthetic of this technology, the mode of communication and the interfaces to other media as radio, television, cinema, theater or club are aspects that are
of interest to the members of pingfm in their work.

Since 2000 pingfm produces audio-video mixes for and with the use of the internet - every sunday from 20:00 (cet). pingfm is a webcastband. the process of mixing evolves most of the time around an underlying theme and is done live. it is dedicated to explore the (im)possibilities of the medium and to enjoy the freedom of deformating our work.

pingfm is member of the experimental Radio Department of Bauhaus
Universtiy Weimar (http://radiostudio.org) and of the Indepndent
International Webcaster DFM rtv Int. (http://dfm.nu).

..........pingfm.....141.54.xx.xx ... .. . .
live audio/video, everysunday from 20:00 CET/GMT +1
at http://pingfm.org, irc-net-chat: #pingfm

back