Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet CultureNet criticism that establishes the principles and foundation for a collaborative, global new media culture. 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 humanities, user groups, social movements, nongovernmental 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 dot-com mania, techno-mysticism, sustainable social networks, the fight for a public Internet time standard, the strategies of Internet activists, mailing list culture, 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
Essay on Speculative Media Theory | 22 |
Portrait of the Virtual Intellectual | 30 |
Case Studies | 41 |
The Digital CityMetaphor and Community | 42 |
Nettime and the Boundaries of Mailing List Culture 2001 | 68 |
Crystals of Net Criticism | 121 |
Language? No Problem 1996 | 122 |
A Push Media Critique 1998 | 130 |
Radical Media Pragmatism 1998 | 218 |
Network Fears and Desires 1998 | 226 |
An Early History of 1990s Cyberculture 1999 | 234 |
On Conferences and Temporary Media Labs 2000 | 240 |
An Insiders Guide to Tactical Media 2001 | 254 |
Reality Check | 275 |
Adilkno Culture and the Independent Media 1995 | 276 |
Soros and the NGO Question or The Art of Being Independent 1997 | 296 |
A Proposal 1998 | 136 |
21stcentury Global Time Wars 1998 | 142 |
Fragments of Network Criticism 1999 | 160 |
Sweet Erosions of Email 2000 | 176 |
Travelogues | 181 |
Culture after the Final Breakdown Tirana Albania May 1998 1998 | 182 |
Taiwan December 1999 1999 | 194 |
Delhi February 2001 2001 | 204 |
Dynamics of Net Culture | 217 |
From Propaganda Critique to Culture Jamming 1998 | 306 |
War in the Age of Internet 1999 | 318 |
Towards a Political Economy | 329 |
Cyberculture in the Dotcom Age 2000 | 330 |
The Rise and Fall of Dotcom Mania 2001 | 348 |
The Bandwidth Dilemma or Internet Stagnation after Dotcom Mania 2001 | 370 |
Bibliography | 380 |