*MUTE Vol2 #4 – Out Now! Online and On Paper!*
WEB 2.0: MAN'S BEST FRIENDSTER?
Web 2.0’s democratisation of media produces a wealth of new
perspectives. Those formerly excluded from the public sphere have the
chance to make their voices heard. But this wave of participation is as
important for busines as it is for the newly included. Mute's Web 2.0
special uncovers the work in social networking and the centralisation of
the means of sharing
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
INFO-ENCLOSURES 2.0
by Dmytri Kleiner & Brian Wyrick
The hype surrounding Web 2.0’s ability to democratise content production
obscures its centralisation of ownership and the means of sharing.
Dmytri Kleiner & Brian Wyrick expose Web 2.0 as a venture capitalist’s
paradise where investors pocket the value produced by unpaid users,
ride on the technical innovations of the free software movement and kill
off the decentralising potential of peer-to-peer production
http://www.metamute.org/en/InfoEnclosure-2.0
THE SOCIAL SOFTWAR
By Angela Mitropoulos
Do blogs and social network-based sites offer the prospect of a
democratic sociability without borders or wars? Should unpaid producers
of content struggle for fair compensation? Or does the very sense of
ownership, justice and right founded on labour need to be shaken up?
Angela Mitropoulos takes a critical look at the dissident pragmatism of
the startup and the ‘alternative’ economies of the digital commons
http://www.metamute.org/en/The-Social-SoftWar
THE LONG TALE
By Giorgio Agostoni
Web 2.0 relies heavily on identikit forms of self-representation and
sociability. Parallel to the ‘authentic’, self-promoting personae of
MySpace, multi-user virtual worlds such as Second Life (SL) appear to
offer a more malleable, playful version of life online. But as the
imperatives of commercial exchange penetrate deeper into the networked
imagination, is the gap between RL and VR what it used to be? Giorgio
Agostoni reverse engineers material from across the net to construct a
fictional readymade suspended between self-reinvention and self-management
http://www.metamute.org/en/The-Long-Tale
SWARM FORMS: ON PLATFORMS AND CREATIVITY
By Olga Guriunova
Will the ‘hive mind’ of social networking replace classical forms of
knowledge production? Comparing Web 2.0 and small-scale, self-run
cultural platforms, Olga Goriunova maintains the possibility for
originality in both contexts, while identifying how the same old
commercial and institutional pressures still operate
AND ALSO ...
Revised versions of the following texts: Brian Ashton on the global
logistics industry, Paul Helliwell on Ben Watson's biography of Derek
Bailey, Merijn Oudenampsen on the gentrification of Amsterdam, and John
Barker on Iain Sinclair and literary gentrification
http://www.metamute.org/en/Web-2.0-Mans-best-friendster
*
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