Comments on: Social media: re-introducing centralization through the backdoor

By: Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:36:25 +0000

Armin send the following update:

I would also like to acknowledge belatedly that Braverman was the source of inspiration for the second part of my last posting here about the deskilling in the transition from web 1.0 to 2.0

I happened to have just typed up a summary of his book Labour and Monopoly Capital

http://www.thenextlayer.org/node/1208

By: M. Fioretti

M. Fioretti — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:31:44 +0000

“What social media would be are systems that are collectively owned and maintained by their users, that are built and developed according to their needs and not according to the needs of advertisers.”

Excellent argument against (among other things) Gmail, isn’t it?

By: Sepp

Sepp — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:39:12 +0000

Agreed, and I would go a bit further, even.

To really transform our interactions, to create a p2p social platform, we need to include control by users of not only the software but also the hardware.

Using free software, the data we share with others should be sitting both on our own computer as well as being redundantly duplicated in a cloud of similarly independent personal computers of our peers. We would thus be able to develop a network of peers serving as a social meeting place, a redundant storage of important data, a marketplace and a space where to share art and knowledge, under our complete control. Anyone would be free to participate in this social space and to choose their degree of participation.

This should be extended into the realm of the hardware of connectivity. Ideally, to form an optimally resistant network of networks, we should be – each one of us – responsible for the connections needed to form this neworked cloud of our personal computing devices. Municipal WiFi flopped as there was no value exchange. But putting the WiFi or other proper tools of connectivity into users’ hands, we could form networks that are self repairing and extremely resilient to outside threats, be they planned, calculated attempts to shut down or control the internet or be they violent upheavals as in the case of war and environmental catastrophes.

We owe it to ourselves to build such a network.