<nettime> Re: Guy Van Belle

[Patrick May <patrick@digitalanatomy.com>]

> I forwarded all your propoposals to the dictionnaire de l'academie globale
>digitale, and they have a board that will decide over the purity of
>language, and the appropriate mapping of the mind. Since you are convinced
>that a plural form also changes the conceptualisation in ordinary speech,
>we will propose a list of words with singular forms but indicating plural
>entities, either human and non-human, eatable and non-eatable, from
>different languages.

Don't be so snide -- can't anyone make a proposal?

That said, there should be more backing for the claim that one should
recognize the multiple net.cultures intertwined with nettime.

How often on nettime do you here about the Free Software Foundation
(http://www.fsf.org)?  Snicker at Richard Stallman's zealotry, but also
consider the political implications of what he proposes.

If the New Economy is based entirely on computers, then the freedom of
users to acquire and modify software will determine the freedom of
individuals and groups to participate and influence this New Economy.

Case in point: thing.net (nettime's host), rhizome.org, www.etoy.com,
0100101110101101.ORG, www.jodi.org, and www.hell.com all use open source
software (Apache, FreeBSD, Linux; http://www.netcraft.com/whats/).

There is an occasional mention of open source, but nettime serves more
directly political function:

>From the list subscribe email:
"<nettime> is not just a mailing list but an effort to formulate an
international, networked discourse that neither promotes a dominant
euphoria (to sell products) nor continues the cynical pessimism, spread
by journalists and intellectuals in the 'old' media who generalize about

'new' media with no clear understanding of their communication aspects."

On the other hand, the FSF grew out of Richard Stallman's frustration
with not being able to modify proprietary software to his needs.
Namely, a printer driver:

http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html
(search for printer in the body of the text)

These are certainly 2 seperate cultures, with a large gap between the
aspirations of majordomo and a programmer's annoyance at a printer
driver.

However, the programmer's annoyance at has grown into something which
has given a huge number of people, nettime included, the opportunity to
organize and distribute their ideas internationally without paying
$1000+ for an Micro$oft license.

Furthermore, besides these two cultures which interact vertically, there
is a sprawl of other cultures horizontal to nettime on the net -- every
thing else that a person would want to talk with another person.

Just because these two groups (the programers and the activists) are
working together right now in no way guarantees their future
cooperation.  If open source software dies out, then where will
organizations such as nettime get the tools they need to stay in
business?  Where will anybody else who wishes to host his / her own
server get the tools to do so?

Florian Cramer makes an important point.  Lumping all these groups
together hides the delicate connections of circumstance that have
created the opportunities of the internet.  Lumping these groups
together also ignores the identities of these various groups, preventing
any larger organizing effort from happening.

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