Re: <nettime> [Fwd] A Spit in the Ocean (or the limits of social network paranoia)

[John Hopkins <jhopkins@neoscenes.net>]

> So, what's the real alternative if any?
>
> The alternative, I think, is perhaps too difficult to even imagine.  The
> technical problems of building an open, stable, and user-run communication

Hei August!

I think one of the reasons that the focus on directly 'opposing' a large 
dominant techno-social infrastructure deployment with a small techno-social 
infrastructure deployment is problematic lies in its basic incomplete premise: 
it doesn't address the de-evolution of human encounter and relation in general.

Also, a 'technical' solution, while it pleases the hacker aesthetic locally, 
does not address at all the effects that the technical 'box' applies globally 
(i.e., the misery spread via the extractive minerals industry, for example, 
necessary to prop up *any* kind of server *anywhere*).

Much effort in my teaching and facilitation is to reset the conditions in a 
grouping of people so that -- on a sliding scale from highly-mediated human 
connection to less-mediated human connection -- people value less mediation 
more.  This rather than valuing the latest technological implementation of a 
mediated communications tool as more valuable.  I firmly believe that if we gave 
more attention to the humans who are in most proximal to us instead of the 
remote 'tele'Other the world would be a better place. (this suggests that, 
practicing what I preach, I leave nettime altogether, eh!?) But it is not an 
all-or-nothing game, it can be implemented at any level at any point in time. 
Indeed the dynamic of choice, when choosing where to give our attentions, is a 
crucial awareness to learn -- because it is the *where* we focus those immediate 
attentions on that becomes *empowered*.

etc...

jh


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