For those literate in Italian, there’s an interesting book, Networking: The Net as Art, on the intertwining histories of art and network culture in Italy which is freely available online as well as in print.

From the description at networkingart.eu:

The book represents a first tentative reconstruction of the history of artistic networking in Italy, through an analysis of the realities which during the past twenty years have given way to a creative, shared and aware use of technologies, from video to computers, contributing to the formation of Italian hacker communities.
Written by Tatiana Bazzichelli, with the preface of Derrick De Kerckhove and the epilogue of the videoartist Simonetta Fadda.

Networking means to create nets of relations, by sharing experiences and ideas in order to communicate and experiment artistically and where the publisher and the reader, the artist and the public, act on the same level.

In Italy, thanks to the alternative use of Internet, during the past twenty years of experimentation a vast national network of people who share political, cultural and artistic views has been formed. Active in underground environments, these projects use diverse media (computers, video, television, radio and magazines) and deal with technological experimentation, or hacktivism, depending on the terminology used in Italy, where the political component is a central theme.

The Italian network proposes a form of critical information, diffused through independent and collective projects where the idea of freedom of expression is also a central theme.

The book describes the evolution of the italian hacktiviam and net culture from the Eighties till today. At the same time, it builds a reflection on the new role of the artist and author who become networker, operating in collective nets, reconnecting to neoavant-garde artistic practices of the 1960’s (first and foremost Fluxus), but also Mail art, Neoism and Luther Blissett.

Visuarios is not another “funny videos” site – their tagline “broadcast your skills” is also a clever variation of the more general YouTube one “broadcast yourself”: Visuarios lets you “share your videos about everyday knowledge with everyday people.” Obviously a service like this is only as good as the user submitted content and probably needs to grow over time to be really useful for a lot of people. But in a way this kind of project is like a visual how-to Wiki and this obviously has a lot of potential.

Visuarios is still quite new (they launched in October), here their blog, their FAQ and their Terms of Use – it is always recommended to read a service’s TOS before submitting content. (Their TOS appears to be more or less the same as those by many other better known video sharing sites.) In their FAQ Visuarios also mentions that “People can pay you for the help you provide through your videos. (You need a PayPal account to be able to receive payment).”

It would be great if Visuarios could also support Creative Commons licenses – most video sharing sites don’t at this point. Exceptions: blip.tv, Ourmedia (and of course its host the Internet Archive) and Ning Videos.

Maybe Visuarios is a site that could be especially interesting for educators…?

Tai Chi 48, 8′ 41″, by Visuarios user weihong

Tags: visuarios, p2p, how-to, howto, knowledge, transfer, video

David Ronfeldt of RAND (one of the authors of the brilliant book Networks and Netwars) continues his elaboration of a framework for societal evolution that he began in Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks in his new work:

IN SEARCH OF HOW SOCIETIES WORK
Tribes — The First and Forever Form
By: David Ronfeldt

Not only is it a great read, but it also has a lot of open-ended questions and thoughts for us to ponder.

If you are in Paris on Feb 03 2007, be sure to check out:

BarCampBank

In French

Saturday February 3, 2007, from 2:00pm to 7:00pm

faberNovel, 42, boulevard de S̩bastopol Р75003 Paris

The aim of BarCampBank is to foster innovations and the creation of new business models in the world of banking and finance.

If you are an innovator, a disruptor or a professional of the banking and finance industry, if you are excited by or just curious about all the innovations that the new technologies could bring to the banking and finance world, if you want to present a project, confront your ideas or just echo lively debates with your own experience, then you should definitely consider joining us on this first full-blown edition of the BarCampBank.

One of the clearest signs of the depth to which online social networks have enmeshed themselves into our culture is demonstrated in the acceptance of the verb “to friend.” danah boyd tackles the practice of “friending” in these networks (MySpace in particular) in her piece “Friends, friendsters, and top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites” for First Monday. Beyond describing the development of “friending” from Friendster to MySpace, boyd also makes the critical point that the public display of “friends” on social networks – and the implicit choices such a process involves – in fact has little to do with what we traditionally call friendship.

“While Friending is a social act, the actual collection of Friends and the display of Top Friends provides space for people to engage in identity performance. As Judith Donath and I argued in ‘Public Displays of Connection,’ people display social connections to reveal information about who they are.”

Rather than “friends” resulting from an active performance of identity in a social context, in the world of online social networks, identity has become increasingly reliant on the active performance of social context itself. A Star Wars fan will reify his connection to the community of other Star Wars fans by becoming “friends” with the likes of Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker. While this example is quite concrete, the practice, as danah explains, operates more subtly as a performance of identity for the user’s audience – an audience, which it is important to note, is also made up of his/her “friends.” For a high school student, the choice to have the prom queen versus the geek (as two familiar characters in the popular American vision of education) in his/her “top 8″ becomes the explicit and public navigation of an otherwise rarely articulated social universe.

danah also makes sure to note the importance in seeing online and offline interaction as two entirely separate beasts:

“Jenny Sundén (2003) argues that, in order to exist online, we must write ourselves into being. From the flow of text in chatrooms to the creation of Profiles, people are regularly projecting themselves into the Internet so that others may view their presence and interact directly with them. Social network sites take this to the next level because participants there write their community into being through the process of Friending. In doing so, they help define themselves and the context in which they are operating.”

Unlike our interactions offline, online subjectivity is the direct product of archived cultural production. Within a public and self-determined environment, “friendship” – and indeed identity – becomes a very different concept. We write ourselves into being and into an ever expanding cultural database from which others will attempt determine the minutiae of our being; and in such a world, context becomes everything. danah’s analysis hits these crucial points that are often missed in analyses of online social networks. It it becoming ever more clear that the conceptual and cultural preeminence of singular autonomy has begun to distintegrate within the reified context of these networks. We interact in an increasingly peer-to-peer environment, and as a network of peer-to-peer subjectivities.

Interesting posting from science-fiction author David Brin. Thanks to Scott Carpenter for alerting us.

Excerpt:

“…. almost no attention has been paid to improving the reliability and utility of our cell networks, to assist citizen action during times of emergency. To the best of my knowledge. no high level demand has gonenout – from FEMA or any other agency — for industry to address
cell-system problems revealed in the devastation of America ‘s Gulf Coast. A correction that should be both simple/cheap and useful to implement.

“What do we need? We need ways for citizens to self-organize, both in normal life and (especially) during crises, when normal channels may collapse, or else get taken over by the authorities for their own use. All this might require is a slight change — or set of additions — in
the programming of the sophisticated little radio communications devices that we all carry in our pockets, nowadays.

“How about a simple back-up mode for text messaging? One that could use packet-switching to bypass the cell towers when they are down, and pass messages from phone to phone — or peer-to-peer — at least among phonesthat are of the same type? (GSM, TDMA, CDMA etc.) All of the neededpacket-switching algorithms already exist. Moreover, this would allow a
drowning city (or other catastrophe zone) to fill with tens of thousandsof little spots of light, supplying information to helpers andreassurance to loved ones, anywhere in the world.”

Bitmunk has an interesting business model for distributing music and other digital content. It has some important features that could make it successful:

• Bitmunk provides a secure base for the business of exchanging digital goods and money. All users are authenticated.
• Artists can register their work directly and set their own prices.
• Others are encouraged to sell the work and even earn a fee for doing it thus encouraging support for the artist and distributing bandwidth requirements.

Bitmunk says they don’t use DRM but what they mean is they don’t use ‘strong’ Technological Protection Measures (TPM) that technically control what a consumer can do with their copy. The do use soft DRM though. Each traded work is uniquely watermarked and so can be identified if it starts being distributed in the wild. If this happens the consumer who originally purchased the work can be penalised by Bitmunk and possibly sued by the artist for copyright infringement. I wonder if this responsibility will be too onerous for the consumer? An honest consumer could accidental loose track of a copy and be penalized when an unknown third party illegally distributes the content.

Bitmunk also describes itself as a P2P service but again this only partly true. It does encourage a certain amount of distributed distribution where anyone can set up as a seller and earn a fee for the distribution of the content thus potentially relieving the load on the central Bitmunk service but here is the rub. Bitmunk centrally controls all transactions and charges 15% for doing it. This may be a valid, essential and worthwhile service but dose it fit a pure P2P model?

Watermarks are becoming popular:

Another company, Infoflows, has also announced digital object recognition by the use of unique watermarks. The trick this time is that the watermarks provide a link to the Handle system that in turn provides persistent links to the source of content, licenses or meta-data.

To answer this, I will be drawing on an excellent answer by CI pioneer George Por.

I want to precede it with my own version of a nested hierarchy of forms of knowedge, which I developed back in my cybrarian days in the early nineties.

Data are just snippets, the basic units that are as yet unconnected.

Information is connected/correlated data.

Knowledge is when information is integrating in a pre-existing body of …. Knowledge

(I’m aware that’s a circular definition, but that is because we always already have knowledge, from inside the womb onwards, at which point it somehow emerges, but that’s a question for scientists).

This is important: knowledge is always situated, always needs to be integrated, digested by a person or group or institution.

Finally, when this knowledge is applied, to action, i.e. to a choice involving the future, we have intelligence.

Intelligence becomes wisdom when it is totally integrated in life, when we walk the talk.

So, if we know what intelligence is, and we know what peer to peer is, i.e. the relational dynamic between peers in a distributed network of people, then how are both concepts related?

For the answer, I’m relying on George Por.

The short version of the answer is: collective intelligence is why we congregate as peers for. Learning from each other in view of individual and collective action, is why we engage as peers.

George Por:

‘I suggest an approach to define CI in terms of a domain of practice shared by a community of peers.

1. No Domain of Knowledge is separate from the community using it

A domain, in the context of communities of practice, is a “domain of knowledge worthy of the collective attention of a group of peers.” (Etienne Wenger) Suggesting the “communities of practice” approach to describe what CI is, we recognize that the definition of no domain of knowledge is separable from the community using and developing it. It helps us avoiding the trap of semantic debates, abstract theorizing, and the typical misunderstandings when practitioners of very different disciplines try to describe an object common to all.

In that sense, the question is not what is CI but what is CI to us as a potential community? What is our shared sense of the domain that we are engaged in? “What makes our domain a coherent body of knowledge? Where does it fit in the broader scheme of things? What exactly is our domain? Where does it stop?” (Etienne Wenger) There are as many definitions of CI as different kinds of discipline-oriented or mission-oriented communities practicing it.”

BUT, importantly, in his conclusion, George adds:

‘there are community straddlers with membership in multiple communities, and tools and techniques that can span and help cross-fertilizing multiple domains.’

The term ‘culture’ is a big word. It is frequently disputed and differentiated by researchers locating culture in institutions (think organisational culture), national culture (societies such as the American culture that is distinct from all other societies), and for cultural institutions, there is the cultural phenonema – such as the collective cultures of museums.

This post do not attempt to define ‘culture’ in any way – but aims to argue for the benefits of the peer to peer model as a guidepost for collective action especially for cultural institutions.

Giddens calls the cumulative effects of people living and working in social frameworks (a dynamic he termed structuration) the production and re-production of culture. In this he implies a recursive effect by which cultural contexts are continuously generated and re-generated through the interplay of action and structure. He calls this the ‘duality of structure’. In essense, structuration theory holds that ‘man actively shapes the world he lives in at the same time as it shapes him’ (Giddens, 1982, p. 21).

Hofstede (2001) found similar things in a cross-cultural study of IBM, arguing that ‘societal norms shape institutions which in their turn reinforce societal norms…Institutions reflect minds and vice versa’ (Hofstede, 2001, p. 20).
This is important for cultural institutions to recognise as they fulfil their core purpose of promoting the disciplines they represent (such as arts, education, sciences, history) and making meaning for the communities they serve. The cultural institution is influencing and influencing by, recursively, by the national culture formed by local communities, the global culture shaped by people’s minds, and the cultural phenomena of cultural institutions. These factors are in turn shaping and shaped by each other, again in a recursive way. This is represented in the illustration below.

By no means an exhaustive picture – this illustration has been simplified for the purpose of discussion. How can the peer to peer model guide cultural institutions to fulfil their missions? For one, there is no selection criteria for participation in peer to peer projects. Cultural institutions frequently face the challenge of reaching out to infrequent users (I call them the ‘hard-to-reach’ groups). The capacity to engage is contained in the process of engagement – an attractive point of entry for people and an effective method of inclusion for the cultural institution.

There is the occasional misunderstanding that the P2P model is ‘structure-less and hierarchy-less’ (Bauwens, 2005) – which of course may not be practical for any organisation. They are not – there are structures and hierarchies, the only difference is that these are flexible and non-obligatory, and are ‘based on merit used to enable participation’ (Bauwens, 2005). This opens up new avenues for community engagement, without the traditional impositions of the institution (which can cause barriers).

Together with the affordable infrastructure (enabling distributed access to resources) that comes with P2P processes, the recursive effects of culture are exponetially quickened and expanded. The social networks existing within various cultures, whether they are institutional, communal, or global, when amplified by the infrastructure and processes of P2P, enable broader, faster, and lower cost coordination of activities. Meanings, like collective knowledge, are emergent in the P2P model – which is effectively integrated in the recursive cultural effect of cultural institutions (see figure above).

Cultural institutions, small and large; local or state, national or international are, par excellence, curators of knowledge and resources that ‘bind space and time’ for their societies, and share the knowledge that equals power for citizens of a democracy.

Communication technologies have always been essential to their role, but the peer to peer model offer attractive capabilities. There are of course other effects of P2P; but this post has been focused on the implication of the P2P model in the recursive cultural effect of cultural institutions.

References

Bauwens, M. (2005). The Political Economy of Peer Production. In A. Kroker & M. Kroker (Eds.), 1000 Days of Theory. Available online: www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499

Giddens, A. (1982). Profiles and critiques in social theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s Consequences. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc.

This is a continuation of our previous posting on the essay of Margareth Wheatley et al, which offers a three-stage model of social change, based on emergence.

Stage One: Networks.

We live in a time when coalitions, alliances and networks are forming as the means to create societal change. There are ever more networks and now, networks of networks. These networks are essential for people finding likeminded others, the first stage in the life-cycle of emergence. It’s important to note that networks are only the beginning. They are based on self-interest–people usually network together for their own benefit and to develop their own work. Networks tend to have fluid membership; people move in and out of them based on how much they personally benefit from participating.

Stage Two: Communities of Practice.

Networks make it possible for people to find others engaged in similar work. The second stage of emergence is the development of communities of practice (CoPs). Many such smaller, individuated communities can spring from a robust network. CoPs are a self-organized. People share a common work and realize there is great benefit to being in relationship. They use this community to share what they know, to support one another, and to intentionally create new knowledge for their field of practice.

These CoPs differ from networks in significant ways. They are communities, which means that people make a commitment to be there for each other; they participate not only for their own needs, but to serve the needs of others.

In a community of practice, the focus extends beyond the needs of the group. There is an intentional commitment to advance the field of practice, and to share those discoveries with a wider audience. They make their resources and knowledge available to anyone, especially those doing related work.

The speed with which people learn and grow in a community of practice is noteworthy. Good ideas move rapidly amongst members. New knowledge and practices are implemented quickly. The speed at which knowledge development and exchange happens is crucial, because local regions and the world need this knowledge and wisdom now.

Stage Three: Systems of Influence.

The third stage in emergence can never be predicted. It is the sudden appearance of a system that has real power and influence. Pioneering efforts that hovered at the periphery suddenly become the norm. The practices developed by courageous communities become the
accepted standard. People no longer hesitate about adopting these approaches and methods and they learn them easily. Policy and funding debates now include the perspectives and experiences of these pioneers. They become leaders in the field and are acknowledged as the wisdom keepers for their particular issue. And critics who said it could never be done suddenly become chief supporters (often saying they knew it all along.)

Emergence is the fundamental scientific explanation for how local changes can materialize as global systems of influence. As a change theory, it offers methods and practices to accomplish the systems-wide changes that are so needed at this time. As leaders and communities of concerned people, we need to intentionally work with emergence so that our efforts will result in a truly hopeful future. No matter what other change strategies we have learned or
favored, emergence is the only way change really happens on this planet. And that is very good news.