Last week, we said we'd re-post notes from the Futures of the Internet discussion at NYU. In lieu of notes, we are pleased to share full-length video documentation of the panel that was just sent to us. Art was a relatively small part of the larger discussion, but some speculations on its future were made.
Last week, we said we'd re-post notes from the Futures of the Internet discussion at NYU. In lieu of notes, we are pleased to share full-length video documentation of the panel that was just sent to us. Art was a relatively small part of the larger discussion, but some speculations on its future were made.
This panel was discussed at length here:
http://www.artfagcity.com/2008/04/18/futures-of-the-internet-a-long-summation-with-pictures/
http://www.artfagcity.com/2008/04/28/the-aesthetics-of-browsers/
I have some ideas of why these kinds of lively discussions by and about next generation net art aren't happening on Rhizome, if anyone wants to email me.
I, as well, have some ideas about why these kinds of lively discussions by and about next generation net art aren't happening on Rhizome, if anyone wants to email me.
+++
Spoiler alert - my ideas have to do with a vast conspiracies by the CIA, The International Art Mob (IAM) and MTAA to control Net Art 2.0’s critical discourse on Rhizome in order to squash freedoms, lower common denominators, and ruin economic evolutions of net art, in general, and the Net Art Next Generation (NANG) specifically.
+++
I can't believe M.River actually wrote that. It must all be part of the conspiracy.
+++
The panel was very good, but the questions got way, way off-track IMHO.
Shirky tried out his new idea that the cognitive surplus freed up by the information age is now going into making LOLcats (amongst other things) as opposed to passively watching sit-coms. He must have expanded on that idea at a conference last week because I saw it all over the 'net earlier this week.
The panel's focus wasn't art, and since art is marginalized so much gin the culture, it was nice that they had Lauren's voice there to inject that perspective. And she made us all sound like geniuses for doing 'crowdsourcing' and 'net 2.0' like projects way back in the dark days of the mid-90s.
Some OLPC partisans hijacked the question period and things got off-track. Plus, there was some crank in the audience that wouldn't shut up. I think the panel was the first time he'd been in a crowd in at least 15 years.
This web interface is killing the conversation for starters. It's soooo much effort to log in just to respond to an email.
One laptop per child seemed like a dumb idea to me but the "OLPC partisan" and his ensuing discussion with Clay Shirky made me rethink that a bit: http://www.tommoody.us/archives/2008/05/02/future-of-the-internet-panel-notes/
Good post. No comments allowed though, so…
I moved off Mac a while ago and now use Ubuntu GNU/Linux. The software is more than good enough to do what I want to. People can install it on their Macs if they want, I was using an old iBook originally. Using Free Software is a very easy way of being progressive.
Sharky's comment about economics is the usual marketarian dogma, it's just useful idiocy for corporatism. His comment that there's no community around OLPC is also true for Windows software in third world schools. And quite how Windows will generate or leverage more social capital than OLPC I don't know, it's a bizarre claim to level against OLPC.
I'm finally reading Liu's "Laws of Cool", its thesis seems relevant to this.
A rainy day project for me (more like rainy month) is to start using Linux on my old PC. I'm bootstrapped into Windows right now because so much of the music software I use is from Europe and optimized for Windows. If I can find music and graphic programs I like as much that run on Linux I will make the switch and never look back.
I will read the Liu book. Another reason I use Windows for art is it's my workplace computer and it made sense to also use it at home (for handling .bmp files and the like). I am also attracted to the idea of artists using the OS of everyday knowledge workers (or misusing it if that's possible). I think all the time about how work drives art and wonder how the reverse could be achieved.