<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt">what I would like to see happen with social bookmarking, is automated help that shows which other tags are 'closest' to the one we are using, and so create very specific clouds of tags that lead to similar material,<br><br>Michel<br><div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Anna Munster <A.Munster@unsw.edu.au><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Michael Bauwens <michelsub2003@yahoo.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cc:</span></b> Frank Pasquale <frank.pasquale@gmail.com>; iDC@mailman.thing.net<br><b><span style="font-weight:
bold;">Sent:</span></b> Tuesday, January 27, 2009 7:43:46 AM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [iDC] Are We Google's Paint?<br></font><br>many thanks for those tags Michael - very useful! Once I systematize my delicious site by propery bundling - I'll see what I 've got!<div>cheers</div><div><div>Anna</div><div><br><div><div>On 27/01/2009, at 11:38 AM, Michael Bauwens wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: 'times new roman','new york',times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Certainly inadequate to the task you propose, but I
have collated critical and other material here through<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://delicious.com/mbauwens/Google">http://delicious.com/mbauwens/Google</a><br><br>Any other tags on Google that tag criticisms?<br><br>Michel<br><div style="margin: 0px;"> </div>The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer alternatives.<br><br><div style="margin: 0px;">Wiki and Encyclopedia, at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://p2pfoundation.net">http://p2pfoundation.net</a>; Blog, at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a>; Newsletter, at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank"
href="http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p">http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p</a></div><br><br><div style="margin: 0px;">Basic essay at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499">http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499</a>; interview at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html">http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html</a>; video interview, at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/09/29/network_collaboration_peer_to_peer.htm">http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/09/29/network_collaboration_peer_to_peer.htm</a><div style="margin: 0px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: 'times new
roman','new york',times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: 'times new roman','new york',times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Anna Munster <<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:A.Munster@unsw.edu.au" target="_blank" href="mailto:A.Munster@unsw.edu.au">A.Munster@unsw.edu.au</a>><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Michael Bauwens <<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:michelsub2003@yahoo.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:michelsub2003@yahoo.com">michelsub2003@yahoo.com</a>><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cc:</span></b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Frank Pasquale <<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:frank.pasquale@gmail.com" target="_blank"
href="mailto:frank.pasquale@gmail.com">frank.pasquale@gmail.com</a>>;<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Wednesday, January 21, 2009 12:09:51 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Re: [iDC] Are We Google's Paint?<br></font><br>Thanks for the post Michael and also to Frank's original musings.<div style="margin: 0px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin: 0px;">I have to say I agree with Michael's comments but I also think we need to delve deeper into Lessig's analogy and deeper into our analysis of Google.</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin:
0px;">First the paint-Leonardo/content-Google analogy. Not only is it dangerous but it's just plain stupid, I'm afraid and I have to say shows a completely inadequate understanding of the history of media and mediation. Paint is NOT content but rather a medium...although, of course, the relation between media and content is by no means separable (in spite of Greenberg and the history of American modernist theory in the second part of the 20thC). </div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin: 0px;">However, paint is also not a medium but a material and one which da Vinci himself influenced. In fact, we could say that his experimentation with techniques for boiling oil and combining with bees wax enabled him to set lighter coloured pigments and therefore helped develop a tonal range for his paintings that were part of his 'creativity' (god I hate that word!!). Certainly his experiments with oil
paint influenced the development and application of painting. So, da Vinci did not just go and get his 'content' from elsewhere he was a material experimenter. I have to say I really hate ill-informed metaphors drawn from the history of art.</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin: 0px;">To extend this to more contemporary times, we could also say that experimentation with data and its imbrication in interfaces, applications and architecture within the Web 2.0 environment does in fact mean that content producers are consistently driving the real development of something like the Google architecture/machine. Collective shapings of Google Maps' APIs for example have certainly seen mapping, Google and its potentialities shift in weird and wonderful ways quite unforseen by Google itself.</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin: 0px;">The problem is, and
I think this is also what Michael is proposing, the economic, cultural and political value of the force of such collective content production upon networked architecture is neither valued nor measured by Google (although it is certainly stored and accumulated for future ventures). Google's epistemo-political sleight of hand is to help remap the knowledge economy as a division of labour between 'architecture' vs. content, with architecture the province of the post-fordist corporation and content 'free' for everyone else to produce. It is this 'dispositif' that requires rigorous criticism.</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin: 0px;">Unfortunately I still find really hard hitting critiques of Google itself hard to come by. I'm aware of all the more general post Fordist work and of course critiques of Google with respect to its data collection arm and privacy issues. But no one in the
English speaking world has really undertaken a very thorough analysis of Google's many arms and aspects ( I know Michael Zimmer has a book out and Siva Vaidhyanathan is working on the Googlization of Everything). But I am still not convinced that this work does much more than go beyond the now overstated issues of privacy, ubiquity etc. I'll be interested to see Siva's book when it comes out as it promises to be more comprehensive.</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin: 0px;">But what about a post-network media studies analysis of Google?? I'm not seeing much around...</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin: 0px;">This tends to apply to the art world's relation to Google as well with one of the only really hard hitting pieces on Google being 'Google will Eat itself' (<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank"
href="http://gwei.org/index.php%29">http://gwei.org/index.php)</a>. The irony of course is that Google does eat itself and then it just turns its own shit into search results!!</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin: 0px;">I also wrote a piece for the new CTheory reader in Critical Digital Studies on Google Earth called: 'Welcome to Google Earth'. A pdf is available at:</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://staff.cofa.unsw.edu.au/%7Eannamunster/people/">http://staff.cofa.unsw.edu.au/~annamunster/people/</a></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div
style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">But is anyone aware of other theoretically rigorous analysis? </div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">cheers</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">Anna</div></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br><div style="margin:
0px;"><div style="margin: 0px;">On 20/01/2009, at 8:00 PM, Michael Bauwens wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: 'times new roman','new york',times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Thanks Frank,<br><br>I think Lessig's metaphor is dangerous, because it implies that the Google docs, written by all of us, since most of the invisible (i.e. officially produced) web is not accessible via Google, are in fact just as worthless as paint ... This is not the case, but Google and other platforms do add a network effect to their original
value.<br><br>So, certainly, all of us who produce documents for google, photo's for flickr, and videos for youtube are creating direct use value of our own, but Google creates on top of that, value out of aggegration and by building a platform which both enables it, extracts added layers of intelligence from it, and funds it plus makes a profit out of selling scarcity-driven extra value to the marketplace of 'attention'.<br><br>What is significant, is that people do create their own use value directly, without passing through the marketplace, but that new players find ways to monetize it, so we have a reconfiguration of 'workers' into peer producers, and capital owners into 'netarchical capitalists', who only marginally rely on intellectual property (but they do protect some data and added layers to keep them scarce, though they do this through secrecy and non-access rather than through IP) in their strategies.<br><br>This creates new fields of
tension, which I have attempted to describe here:<br><br>The social web and its social contracts. Re-public, . Retrieved from<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=261" class="external free" title="http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=261">http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=261</a><br><div style="margin: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: 'times new roman','new york',times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: 'times new roman','new york',times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Frank Pasquale <<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:frank.pasquale@gmail.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:frank.pasquale@gmail.com">frank.pasquale@gmail.com</a>><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Monday, January 19, 2009 11:44:10 AM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>[iDC] Are We Google's Paint?<br></font><br><div class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px;"><p>Hi list,</p><p>Over the past few days I've been dipping into Cory Doctorow's<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Content</em>, David Weinberger's<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Everything is Miscellaneous</em>, and Larry Lessig's<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Remix</em>. I like them all for different reasons; Doctorow is an irrepressible enthusiast for
online openness, Weinberger connects that openness to older patterns of information storage and retrieval, and Lessig sings of the creativity it can unleash.</p><p>Anyone thinking deeply about the new relationships between art and commerce created by the internet should consult Lessig's book; it's beautifully written and animated by a strong moral vision of what the net can be. However, this quote from Lessig provoked me:</p><blockquote>"Some draw a downright foolish conclusion from the fact that Google's value gets built upon other people's content. Andrew Keen, for example . . . writes 'Google is a parasite: it creates no content of its own.' But in the same sense you could say that all of the value in the Mona Lisa comes from the paint, that Leonardo da Vinci was just a 'parasite' upon the hard work of the paint makers. That statement is true in the sense that but for the paint, there would be no Mona Lisa. But it is false if it
suggests that da Vinci wasn't responsible for the great value the Mona Lisa is. . . "</blockquote><blockquote>"The complete range of Google products is vast. But . . . practically everything Google offers helps Google build an extraordinary database of knowledge about what people want, and how those wants relate to the web. Every click you make in the Google universe adds to that database. With each click, Google gets smarter." (127-128)</blockquote><p>The picture/paint metaphor is a provocative one. Is Lessig vividly illustrating the new economy mantra that information is rapidly being commoditized? I've always thought of Google as an aid to helping me find things--a utility that mixes elements of a telecom carrier and a card catalog index. Does Google's supervenient value of organizing the web by query really make it as much more meaningful, more expressive, than the content it indexes, as the Mona Lisa is more meaningful than paint? I know few people
searching for search results, so I'll conclude that's not a good interpretation.</p><div id="a004963more" style="margin: 0px;"><div id="more" style="margin: 0px;"><p>Another way of glossing the metaphor is to deem Google the "Lord of the Memes," because, as David Brooks wryly observes, "prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser." I like this interpretation because it complements Lessig's characterization of Google as "getting smarter" with every click.</p><p>Indeed it is--but it's also getting more powerful, more capable of framing your window on the world. We may celebrate a world where we can all personalize our search results, and where each of us has a chance to fight for salience in Google results on a topic (rather than pray for a New York Times editor to pull our editorial out of the slushpile). But do we really understand how that salience is determined? Is there any objective answer to how it should
be done? And as in so much of our weightless economy online, isn't the perception of relevance really the reality?</p><p>To his credit, Lessig has been more frank than most fans of Silicon Valley about the dangers this power poses (as this<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/magazine/30google-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print">Jeffrey Rosen article</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>notes):</p><blockquote>"During the heyday of Microsoft, people feared that the owners of the operating systems could leverage their monopolies to protect their own products against competitors," says the Internet scholar Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School. "That dynamic is tiny compared to what people fear about Google. They have enormous control over a platform of all the world's data, and everything they do is designed to improve their control of the underlying data.
If your whole game is to increase market share, it's hard to do good, and to gather data in ways that don't raise privacy concerns or that might help repressive governments to block controversial content."</blockquote><p>So perhaps we are left with the idea that Google does some good things, and some bad things--and that Lessig's new cause of anti-corruption activism is designed to produce a government capable of promoting the former and curbing the latter.</p></div></div></div><div style="margin: 0px;">Anyway, I'm just wondering what types more creative than myself think of this implicit ordering of creative work and the technology that makes it accessible.</div><div style="margin: 0px;"> </div><div style="margin: 0px;">--Frank</div><div style="margin: 0px;"> </div><div style="margin: 0px;"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.law.yale.edu/faculty/FPasquale.htm">Frank Pasquale</a></div><div style="margin:
0px;">Visiting Professor of Law, Yale Law School</div><div style="margin: 0px;"> </div><div style="margin: 0px;"> </div><div style="margin: 0px;"> </div><div style="margin: 0px;"> </div><div style="margin: 0px;">PS: I have links and a bit more analysis of the issue here:</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2009/01/the_picture_and.html#more">http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2009/01/the_picture_and.html#more</a></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><span id=""></span>iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://distributedcreativity.org/">distributedcreativity.org</a>)<br><a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net" target="_blank"
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href="http://del.icio.us/">Del.icio.us</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>by adding the tag iDCref<br></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (distributedcreativity.org)<br><a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a><br><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc">https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc</a><br><br>List Archive:<br><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/">http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/</a><br><br>iDC Photo Stream:<br><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/</a><br><br>RSS feed:<br><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank"
href="http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc">http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc</a><br><br>iDC Chat on Facebook:<br><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647">http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647</a><br><br>Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref</div></span></blockquote></div><br><div style="margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px;">A/Prof. Anna Munster</div><div style="margin: 0px;">Deputy Director Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics</div><div
style="margin: 0px;">School of Art History and Art Education</div><div style="margin: 0px;">College of Fine Arts</div><div style="margin: 0px;">UNSW</div><div style="margin: 0px;">P.O. Box 259</div><div style="margin: 0px;">Paddington</div><div style="margin: 0px;">NSW 2021</div><div style="margin: 0px;">612 9385 0741 (tel)</div><div style="margin: 0px;">612 9385 0615(fax)</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:a.munster@unsw.edu.au" target="_blank" href="mailto:a.munster@unsw.edu.au">a.munster@unsw.edu.au</a></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br></div><br></div></div><br></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div><br></div></div></div></div></div><br></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></blockquote></div><br><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal;
font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div style=""><div><div><div>A/Prof. Anna Munster</div><div>Deputy Director Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics</div><div>School of Art History and Art Education</div><div>College of Fine Arts</div><div>UNSW</div><div>P.O. Box 259</div><div>Paddington</div><div>NSW 2021</div><div>612 9385 0741 (tel)</div><div>612 9385 0615(fax)</div><div><a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:a.munster@unsw.edu.au" target="_blank" href="mailto:a.munster@unsw.edu.au">a.munster@unsw.edu.au</a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br></div></div><br></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div><br>
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