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Re: <nettime> People offline [2x] |
Table of Contents: <nettime> People offline Keith Hart <HART_KEITH@compuserve.com> Re:<n> People offline Janos Sugar <sj@c3.hu> ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 06:06:23 -0500 From: Keith Hart <HART_KEITH@compuserve.com> Subject: <nettime> People offline Steve, Good luck with your research. Your post reminded me that I am trying to put together an article for a Brazilian journal on "the anthropology of the internet". What interests me is less the digital divide between people with and without access to the internet, but how what we do offline influences what we do on it. In this, I have taken some inspiration from Martin Heidegger's book "The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude". He says there that "world" is an abstract metaphysical category for each of us (all that relates to or affects the life of a person) and whose dialectical counterpart is "solitude", the idea of the isolated individual. Every subject makes a world of their own. But we do so from "finitude", the concrete specifics of time and place in which we necessarily live. So "world" is relative both to an abstract version of subjectivity and, more important, to our particularity in the world (seen as a universe of time as well as space). "The internet" is often represented as a self-sufficient entity, Each of us lives alone (solitude) in a world largely of our own making and this seems to be more real when we go online. But both terms are imagined as well as being reciprocal. In fact we approach them from a relative location in society where we actually live. The ideas of 'world' and 'individual' are equally abstract and untenable as an object of inquiry. Therefore it cannot be satisfactory to study the social forms of the internet independently of what people bring to it from elsewhere in their lives. This social life of people offline is an invisible presence when they are on it. This is a different project, of course. I would be glad of any references or anecdotal material that relates to this question. Keith Hart ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 13:44:05 +0100 From: Janos Sugar <sj@c3.hu> Subject: Re:<n> People offline At 8:00 +0300 11/24/03, Steve Cisler wrote: >In 2004 I am going to be collecting stories and writing about people >and groups that are not online. >If you have suggestions of whom I might contact, anywhere in the world, >please let me know. Talán Sebeö: PHILO ADVERT NETWORK Talán Sebeö is maybe the most important unknown figure of the Hungarian contemporary culture. Artist, activist, writer, organizer, in the early 8Oies he started to publish Csere (Swap, Austausch), the only philosophical underground publication (samizdat). In the mid 80ies, with the political changes even the small ads (classified) got rid of censorship. Until this time even small ads had to follow some rules. Talan Sebeo was inspired by the liberalizations of this genre and started a broad advertising activity. He published in a special newspaper for such ads a few messages, with provocative, poetic content, which immediately inspired the very mixed and special readership of the paper. other people started to reply, Talan replied to them, and during a relative short time a new community arose. They call themselves the "32ers" because they used the 32. section (Readers Forum) of this newspaper. Very soon an incredible interesting communication developed, sometime nonsensical, sometime funny, witty messages came and circulated between people who did not even know each others, only by the pseudonyms they were using. With the friendly support of the German publisher of this ad newspaper (Wolfram Helmle) the 32ers filled regularly two large pages with their messages. Kunst mit gesellschaftlicher Munition entwickelt in einer demokratischen Gesellschaft andere Formen, als in einem repressiven Umfeld. Talán Sebeö (Vielleicht Sebeö) hat als radikaler Vertreter der Gemeinschaftskunst seit Anfang der achtziger Jahre Gemeinschaften ins Leben gerufen. Neben der Philosophenhaftigkeit der Austauschfolge und der Titanic vertreten in seinem Schaffen die 32-er den Alltag der Unideologischheit. Seit 1984, als das erste sog. Anzeigenblatt in Ungarn erscheinen konnte, macht Sebeö Talán auch vom Medium des Inserats Gebrauch. Etwas später, im Jahre 1990, generierte er mit einigen in die 32-er Sparte des damals gerade gestarteten Hirdetés-(Annoncen)-Blattes gesetzten Anzeigen eine Bewegung, die auch heute aktiv ist, und mit der Vergleichbares erst ein halbes Jahrzehnt später in den virtuellen Gemeinschaften der online-Welt entstehen sollte. Schon die Konzeption des Anzeigenblattes beruht auf direkten Beziehungen, als ein Forum, wo Verkäufer und Käufer durch das Ausschalten von Vermittlern aufeinander treffen können. Die das Blatt füllenden Anzeigen ergeben ein eigenartiges, aber authentisches Spiegelbild der Zeit. Die von Sebeö Talán inspirierten Korrespondenten der Sparte Leserforum kannten sich anfangs ausschließlich von Pseudonymen, viele verwendeten gleichzeitig mehrere Alter Egos, und die Identität wurde grundlegend von der Kohärenz der publizierten Mitteilungen bestimmt. Die vernetzte Gemeinschaft der 32-er erinnert an eine online-Korrespondenzliste, die zugleich eine riesige und heterogene Leserschaft hat: all derer, die etwas suchen oder anbieten. ------------------------------ # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net