Abstract

“Over the past twenty years theorizing about the intellectual commons has undeniably become a popular activity not only among scholars that deal with the dialectics between information/communication technologies and society but also among the wider scientific community. Yet, the discourse over intellectual commons and their contested relationship with contemporary laws and institutions has not been confined only within the academia but has rather become a more general social issue. Social democratic and critical theories of the intellectual commons are re-conceptualizations of the social intellect as the productive force of our intellectual commonwealth. As emerging theoretical paradigms, they eventually come in contrast with the dominant notions of the social intellect, which basically advocate the establishment of private monopolies over intellectual works. By deciphering contemporary shifts and dynamics in the ways we produce and distribute information, knowledge and culture, such theories are thus better placed to inspire and orientate social movements, recast agendas of policy – making and construct alternative narratives to existing socio-legal arrangements, which are capable of accommodating the potential of the intellectual commons.”

The full article is available here.

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URL = http://offthenetwork.info free e-copy

“Off the Network is a fresh and authoritative examination of how the hidden logic of the Internet, social media, and the digital network is changing users’ understanding of the world—and why that should worry us. Ulises Ali Mejias suggests how we might begin to rethink the logic of the network and question its ascendancy.”

• “This is an extraordinary book. The ‘paranodal’ critique made in Off the Network demands that we look at the social spaces that lie between, and are ignored by, network nodes; at the material basis on top of which supposedly immaterial networks rest; and at the vertical structures of political economic power that control the apparent horizontality of networks. In doing so, Ulises Ali Mejias delivers a devastating intellectual slam against conventional thinking about the Internet from both the left and the right.”

— Nick Dyer-Witheford, coauthor of Games of Empire

• “Off the Network shows us that centralization of online services is not accidental. Take a look behind the social media noise and read how algorithms condition us. Ulises All Mejias carves out a postaffirmative theory of networks. No more debates about whether you are a dog or not; identity is over. Power returns to the center of Internet debates. Off the Network disrupts the illusion of seamless participation–it sides with the resisters and rejecters and teaches us to unthink the network logic. Its message: don’t take the network paradigm for granted.”

— Geert Lovink, author of Networks Without a Cause.

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