free networks

Cities of the Sun: Urban Revolutions and the Network Commons

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Antenna Installation, Valparaiso Mesh

In this talk, I want to bring together two notions: the city as utopia and project; and the recent developments, over the past 10 to 15 years, with regard to the development of a network commons. The network commons is one among a number of other initiatives that propose alternative future developments, from alternative and creative uses of technology, to alternative energies to alternative economies and ecologies. Those propositions, however, have remained separate.

The Social Technologies of the Network Commons (Freifunk 2, draft)

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The social technologies of the wireless community network are technologies specifically developed to support social goals, such as community networking. Typically, new technologes are developed by large firms or the state. The achievements of wireless community networks demonstrate that there is an alternative, community based innovations. This chapter presents the genealogy of some of the key technologies needed for wireless community networking and discusses their social content.

Consume the Net: The Internationalisation of an Idea (chapter 2, part 1, draft)

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Wireless Community Networkers

This chapter starts out with a summary of the achievements of Consume.net, London and then traces the development of this idea, how it was spread, picked up, transformed by communities in Germany, Denmark and Austria. The internationalisation of the free network project also saw significant innovations and contributions, developing a richer and more sustainable version of the network commons through groups such as Freifunk.

The Rise of the Network Commons, Chapter 1 (draft)

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The Rise of the Network Commons is the working title of a new book which I am currently writing. It returns to the topos of the wireless commons on which I worked during the early 2000s. In this new version, combining original research from my German book Freie Netze (2004) and new research conducted in the context of the EU funded project Confine, the exciting world of wireless community network projects such as Guifi.net and Freifunk, Berlin, gets interspersed with philosophical reflections on the relationship between technology, art, politics and history. This is the first draft of the first chapter. In the final version, texts may significantly change. Critique and comments are welcome. You can send your opinion either to me in email or ask me for an account to post comments here armin (a) easynet dot co dot uk.

Greening the Network Commons

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In 2001, Shu Lea Cheang created Steam the green, Stream the field (Cheang, 2001-02), a work which anticipated a major shift in the discourse and practice of post-media art by 10 years. Shu Lea Cheang insists on calling herself a 'self-styled' artist, emphasising her autonomy to define her activities as art. Her projects highlight the potential of the coming together of social self-organisation with a social and trans-media art practice that combines landscapes and datascapes, the natural and the digital commons.

/tmp/lab announces the second Hacker Space Festival

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Hacker Space Festival 2009 | Call For Proposals | HSF2009

In 2008, we organized HSF[1] on the spot, as an ad-hoc meeting for
hackerspaces-related networks, technical and artistic research emerging
from them and social questionning arising from them. This sudden
experiment proved to be a huge success, as much as on the
self-organizing level as on the participants and meetings quality, as
well as the emotionally-charged ambient, the kind of which you make
fond memories.

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