Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture

According to media critic Geert Lovink, the Internet is being closed offby corporations and governments intent on creating a business and informationenvironment free of dissent. Calling himself a radical media pragmatist, Lovinkenvisions an Internet culture that goes beyond the engineering culture that spawnedit to bring humanities, user groups, social movements, nongovern

According to media critic Geert Lovink, the Internet is being closed offby corporations and governments intent on creating a business and informationenvironment free of dissent. Calling himself a radical media pragmatist, Lovinkenvisions an Internet culture that goes beyond the engineering culture that spawnedit to bring humanities, user groups, social movements, nongovernmental organizations(NGOs), artists, and cultural critics into the core of Internet development.In DarkFiber, Lovink combines aesthetic and ethical concerns and issues of navigation andusability without ever losing sight of the cultural and economic agendas of thosewho control hardware, software, content, design, and delivery. He examines theunwarranted faith of the cyber-libertarians in the ability of market forces tocreate a decentralized, accessible communication system. He studies the innerdynamics of hackers' groups, Internet activists, and artists, seeking to understandthe social laws of online life. Finally, he calls for the injection of political andeconomic competence into the community of freedom-loving cyber-citizens, to wrestthe Internet from corporate and state control.The topics include the erosion ofemail, bandwidth for all, the rise and fall of dot-com mania, techno-mysticism, sustainable social networks, the fight for a public Internet time standard, thestrategies of Internet activists, mailing list culture, and collaborative textfiltering. Stressing the importance of intercultural collaboration, Lovink includesreports from Albania, where NGOs and artists use new media to combat the country'spoverty and isolation; from Taiwan, where the September 1999 earthquake highlightedthe cultural politics of the Internet; and from Delhi, where a new media centerexplores free software, public access, and Hindi interfaces.