[iDC] Net autonomy

[Trebor Scholz]

>Well, isn't this 'problem' simply a result of too many people using 
>the products of these large corporations -- we do, after all, have a 
>choice.

Yes, but Del.icio.us, Writely, Odeo, or BubbleShare were unknown little
web places when I started using them. The takeover came much later and
you may not even notice until the ads start to show up.

<http://www.writely.com>
<http://www.bubbleshare.com/upload>
<http://del.icio.us>
<http://odeo.com/tags/activism/>

>Somehow the call to "buy local" becomes a bit revolutionary -- and 
>applies the same for the net (without the implied geographic 
>limitation) -- what about using small ISP's, setting up private 
>servers for mail, lists, irc?  Of course, one then has to deal with 
>renting local network lines and such, but...

The next small (local) thing is often tomorrow¹s big business. 
It¹ll be tempting for your neighbor who built a good web tool to not
hand it over in exchange for life in the sun. Local does not mean
alternative or autonomous. The blogosphere still has pockets that are
not flooded with advertisement. But how much longer will how much of
that prevail? Indymedia is a suitable example. 

Dorothy Kidd in her hopeful essay ³Indymedia.org- A Communication
Commons² points out that the first IMC site was set up in Seattle in
1999 at the occasion of the meeting of the World Trade Organization with
a massive presence of social movements. Groups had called for an
"end-run around the information gatekeepers" to produce autonomous
media. Very few papers had discussed the WTO meeting beforehand. In only
three month and $30.000 from donations the IMC organizers in Seattle
created a "multimedia people's newsroom." The IMC is non-hierarchical
and based on networked distributed decision making. Journalists were
able to use print, radio, video, and photos from the perspective of the
perspective of the democratic globalization protesters. Ex-Microsoft
employee Rob Glaser donated technical expertise and equipment to make
this happen. IMC had the latest streaming technology to distribute
video, audio, text, and images. [1]

However, some questions come up once reality sinks in. How does the IMC
sustain its resources? Also beyond the IMC these questions resurface:

Who can afford to share their time? Dependence on volunteers is hard to
sustain. How can you sustain long-term collaborations without secured
financing? Maintaining participation requires enormous amounts of
resources, energy, and time to motivate and encourage people. 

Also, I rarely go to Indymedia for alternative news. And I don¹t write
there either. What holds many others and me back from participating
regularly in such spaces?  By now, social web media have largely caught
up with the open publishing technology that Indymedia offered in 2000, a
few years before blogs started to blossom in 2004. I don¹t have
statistics on Indymedia sites but my guess would be that the numbers of
participators are on the decline. 

>'information'?  How many are net consumers of digital information? 
>Somehow it seems contradictory for net consumers to be arguing for 
>free consumption -- except from the position of consuming...

I agree with John. Learn to love a wide variety of possibly slower and
less convenient, less immediate tools. Learn how to install and
customize wikis yourself. Find alternatives to iTunes. Don¹t become too
dependent on high bandwidth. 

But apart from these loosely related issues-- What kind of future do you
all see for autonomous spaces online (and off)? What is left?

Also the vocabulary is critical: the terms ³alternative² and
³autonomous² are often played out against each other.  

Autonomous practices are self-governing practices. They ³bypass the
mainstream media through experimentation with new forms of democratic
communication that are relatively independent from corporate and
government power.² and ³ Alternative media strategies are those that
focus primarily on challenging the mainstream media to become more
accountable to the publics they claim to serve...² writes Scott Uzelman
in his essay ³Hard at Work in the Bamboo Garden.²  

But the concept of autonomy is hard to adhere to online. True
independence is hardly possible. The cables of the Internet are owned
privately. We pay an upstream service provider. The corporate enclosures
online grow by the day. 

What are examples of alternative group formation online that lasted over
long periods of time? I¹m not talking about initiatives like Adbusters
or Paper Tiger TV that use the web in line with their goals. I¹m curious
about social networking around those agendas. Just a few obvious
examples:

Guerilla News Network
<http://www.guerrillanews.com/>

Interactivist InfoExchange
<http://slash.autonomedia.org/>

Community Activist Technology (this initiative led to the IMC)
<http://www.cat.org.au/>

Which other spaces constitute online group formation? 
What about weblogs? Collaborative blogs can certainly constitute
community, foster online group formation. 

Mefeedia
<http://mefeedia.com/tags/activism/>

Iraq Blog Count
http://iraqblogcount.blogspot.com/

StreamTime
<http://www.streamtime.org/>

Blogs by Indymedia Activists
<http://indyblogs.protest.net/>

Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents  
<http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542>

Many2Many
<http://many.corante.com/>

We discussed independence here earlier in relation to institutional
involvement. We are always already complicit. There is no spotless, pure
white innocence.  

Scott Uzelman continues: ³Autonomous media strategies often involve
establishing more democratic and participatory forms of television,
radio, print, and internet-based media.² He argues that it is not enough
to open the channels of mainstream media, we also need to radicalize the
means of communication.   

³...alternative media, autonomous media strategies seek to foster new
forms of communication that exist outside of the point-to-mass,
consumptive communicative relationships that privilege representation
over participation, monologue over dialogue. This is to say, these
strategies seek to create communication that is autonomous from logics
of accumulation and centralized control. Autonomous media
strategies are instead based on principles of openness, dialogue and
participation in communication and in the process of creating media
products.² [2]

The word ³autonomous² (having its own laws) is not the most fitting
term. It has connotations of a certain self-sufficiency and isolation.    
I question the long-term sustainability of these initiatives.  
Which term would be more inclusive of the parallel techno-cultural
practices that we do witness? What¹s in your tag cloud?


Trebor Scholz  

[1] Kidd, D. (2003) Indymedia.org- A Communication Commons. In:
Mccaughey M., Ayers, A. eds. (2003) Cyberactivism. Online Activism in
Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. p47-69.

[2]<http://www.global.indymedia.org.au/local/webcast/uploads/thesis-
complete_pdf_.pdf>

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