This year’s Futuresonic festival in Manchester attempted to spark an alternative vision of social networking software. Matthew Fuller, software critic and participating artist, recognises its urgent necessity

Confirmation that 'Stewart Home' is not alone (so to speak) in populating (anti-)social networking sites with pathological quasi-doubles, incubi, revenants or whatever else.  Cornwall police claim that schoolchildren have been 'impersonating paedophiles' on MSN and Bebo chatrooms in an evil plot to scare 'rival'[sic] kids.  Are these the same chatrooms that the ever-vigilant, Hardworking Families-friendly Guardian recently warned have had their Family Filters hacked to pieces by precocious but somehow still defenceless infants?  And how, exactly, doe

Ironic distance is ambiguous. It grounds both critique and detached resignation to the status quo. What becomes of it in the viral world of web 2.0?, ask Pil and Galia Kollectiv

In 1951, in his film Traité de Bave et d'Éternité, Isidore Isou announced: