Geert Lovink

One of my internet culture friends recommended this to me, otherwise I likely wouldn't have come across it.

It's one of the best researched books I've ever read. The author cites seemingly hundreds of sources, the vast majority of which I've never come across. For this reason, it was a good exposure and a review to a lot of things I wouldn't other dig into.

Lovink's first point is that "social media," ironically enough, is antisocial. I deleted my Facebook account two years ago, so I can show more commiserate on this one.

The book is less of a broad arc and more of a series of vignettes. My favorite chapter is the one of BitCoin [seven], for the ways it gets into the cultural design questions, "how do the ways we design a technology affect our behavior?" My least favorite chapter is the one Uganda [eight], for its rambling nature and lack of a core message. I had high hopes for his MoneyLab chapter [six], but it never got totally off the ground.

Overall, Lovink is asking the kinds of questions that all Silicon Valley CEOs need to be asking. His thesis is that the internet is disappearing. In other words, why isn't there a healthy dialogue about systems design? Why aren't data centers public utilities? Instead, we're stuck in an increasingly worse version of the internet without significant public critique. show less

In questi che sono gli anni della "critica della rete", secondo Geert Lovink, si sta sempre più mettendo in discussione il modello economico del Web 2.0. "Perché gli utenti dovrebbero continuare a pubblicare tutti quei dati privati, dai quali una manciata di aziende ricava miliardi di dollari di profitti? Perché dovrebbero cedere gratuitamente i loro contenuti mentre un pugno di imprenditori del Web 2.0 sta guadagnando milioni? Che prezzo siamo disposti a pagare per la gratuità? Perché show more si usa l'"immaginazione collettiva" per escogitare modelli sostenibili per una cyber-infrastruttura pubblica? E ora di rompere il consenso libertario. E tempo di tornare a essere utopisti e cominciare a edificare una sfera pubblica al di fuori degli interessi a breve termine delle corporation e della volontà di regolamentare dei governi. E ora di investire nell'educazione, ricostruire la fiducia e svincolarsi dalla retorica securitaria post 11 settembre." show less

A collection of essays on digital media, covering a broad scope of issues such as net culture, language use, dotcom rise and fall, co-presence and community. The main theme of the texts, and the direct topic for several of them, is media activism and what Lovink calls tactical media: Using the digital media for politically and ideologically radical means.