Dark fiber : tracking critical Internet culture / Geert Lovink.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lovink, Geert.

Series:

Electronic culture--history, theory, practice

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Internet--Social aspects.

Internet.

Information society.

Culture.

Physical Description:

xi, 382 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [2002]

Summary:

According to media critic Geert Lovink, the Internet is being closed off by corporations and governments intent on creating a business and information environment free of dissent. Calling himself a radical media pragmatist, Lovink envisions an Internet culture that goes beyond the engineering culture that spawned it to bring the humanities, user groups, social movements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), artists, and cultural critics into the core of Internet development.

In Dark Fiber, Lovink combines aesthetic and ethical concerns and issues of navigation and usability without ever losing sight of the cultural and economic agendas of those who control hardware, software, content, design, and delivery. He examines the unwarranted faith of the cyber-libertarians in the ability of market forces to create a decentralized, accessible communication system. He studies the inner dynamics of hackers' groups, Internet activists, and artists, seeking to understand the social laws of online life. Finally, he calls for the injection of political and economic competence into the community of freedom-loving cyber-citizens, to wrest the Internet from corporate and state control.

The topics include the erosion of email, bandwidth for all, the rise and fall of doctom mania, techno-mysticism, sustainable social networks, the fight for a public Internet time standard, and collaborative text filtering. Stressing the importance of intercultural collaboration, Lovink includes reports from Albania, where NGOs and artists use new media to combat the country's poverty and isolation; from Taiwan, where the September 1999 earthquake highlighted the cultural politics of the Internet; and from Delhi, where a new media center explores free software, public access, and Hindi interfaces.

Contents:

Introduction: Twilight of the Digirati 2

Theory

Essay on Speculative Media Theory (1996) 22

Portrait of the Virtual Intellectual (1997) 30

The Digital City

Metaphor and Community (2001) 42

The Moderation Question: Nettime and the Boundaries of Mailing List Culture (2001) 68

Crystals of Net Criticism

Language? No Problem (1996) 122

A Push Media Critique (1997) 130

Mass Psychology of the Net: A Proposal (1998) 136

Net. Times, Not Swatch Time: 21st-Century Global Time Wars (1998) 142

Fragments of Network Criticism (1999) 160

Sweet Erosions of Email (2000) 176

Travelogues

Culture after the Final Breakdown: Tirana, Albania, May 1998 (1998) 182

The 9/21 Aftershocks: Taiwan, December 1999 (1999) 194

At the Opening of New Media Centre Sarai: Delhi, February 2001 (2001) 204

Dynamics of Net Culture

Radical Media Pragmatism (1998) 218

Network Fears and Desires (1998) 226

An Early History of 1990s Cyberculture (1999) 234

The Importance of Meetspace: On Conferences and Temporary Media Labs (2000) 240

An Insider's Guide to Tactical Media (2001) 254

Reality Check

Organized Innocence and War in the New Europe: Adilkno, Culture, and the Independent Media (1995) 276

Soros and the NGO Question, or The Art of Being Independent (1997) 296

Information Warfare: From Propaganda Critique to Culture Jamming (1998) 306

Kosovo: War in the Age of Internet (1999) 318

Towards a Political Economy

Cyberculture in the Dotcom Age (2000) 330

The Rise and Fall of Dotcom Mania (2001) 348

Hi-Low: The Bandwidth Dilemma, or Internet Stagnation after Dotcom Mania (2001) 370.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [380]-382).

ISBN:

0262122499

OCLC:

48761426