A complete overhaul of the way in which people navigate the internet has been given the go-ahead in Paris.

The net’s regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called “top-level” domain names, such as .com or .uk.

The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names.

I can think of a few consequences. First, companies like del.icio.us will be pounding their fists for having wasted all that energy on being clever. Second, Tuvalu will be piqued. Third - and this is only speculation - I’m guessing the decision was made to ensure we no longer have to suffer through ugly web 2.0 names (who in their right mind will call themselves Twitku or digisynd when we’re no longer dependent on .com). Finally: who’s ready to go phishing?

So is FriendFeed the future, or merely pointing the way to the future?

Trots op Nederland (Proud of the Netherlands) is a new political party, which has gone ‘2.0′ for government. There’s a wiki for deciding what the party platform will be. Anyways, one 2.0 theme they have mastered already: 95% support “change”.

Certified Data Care Specialist

Certified Data Care Specialist (back)

And, of course, the Official Whatever Button T-shirt!

And since the best presents are those you can share, it is likely that these shirts and other great geek gifts will be available soon from our collaborative blog, Masters of Media. Thanks again guys and girls, I don’t know what to say, other than that you’re more lovable, adorable and well-spoken than a bunch of ridiculously cute penguins.

(photos: Anne Helmond)

Q Do you have any idea how soon there will be one blog for every person on Earth with Internet access?

A I don’t. Remember that most blogs are only marginally active (that is, about one blog post a month), and most are used for personal journaling purposes.

[...]

Q Any idea how many of the 109.2 million blogs you track get no hits in the course of a year?

A Just over 99 percent. The vast majority of blogs exist in a state of total or near-total obscurity.

That’s right, blogs have an obvious advantage over the large centers of consumer surveillance that we call social networking sites: nobody is watching.

I’ve only just started looking through the archive, but some interesting things are popping up. Carolyn Burke, who has republished her diary in full, describes her motivation for making the private self something public (and of course the usually neglected converse, turning the public Internet into something personal):

I believed strongly in the power of good that results from free expression, free information exchange, and open and honest communication between people. I’d been studying Popper and Fyerabend in university, about creating an open society as one aspect in the pursuit of better quality knowledge.

An online diary, a place that exposed private mental spaces to everyones’ scrutiny seemed like a social obligation to me. (source)

I won’t go into why I think this is so important - these are ideas I’m still working out - but the kind of resource the Diary History project provides is really helpful. So if anyone is aware of comparable work being done, i.e. exceptional efforts to document the practices of pre-1999 online diarists, please let me know!

Antagonism as algorithm
Before showing the work in progress, Galloway spoke some about his interest in games research, as this relates especially to the ways games model antagonism. He asks whether these can help us think about social and political forms of conflict and struggle. Traditional games assume symmetrical forms of conflict, with two opposing sides of equal ability, but is it possible to model different forms?

Here, Galloway is thinking specifically about the distributed networks he theorized at length in his book Protocol. Such networks recall the rhizome and the radical politics of French Post-structuralism, but also describe the material organization of the Internet. If there are games that simulate the swarm-like behavior of the distributed network, do these provide any clues as to how progressive this organizational form is, or can be?

Modeling the network economy: Starcraft and World of Warcraft
Real time strategy games can be distinguished by a couple of traits: they are continuous and not turn-based, they are often played with a bird’s eye view of the action and they tend to be about resource-gathering in some form or another. For Galloway, the best example is Starcraft (image), which he discussed alongside World of Warcraft. Both of these games clearly display some of the swarm characteristics he mentions, but the key is how and why they do so. Galloway argues that simulation of the distributed network goes hand in hand with that of a different kind of economy.

As Fleur noted, cooperation on World of Warcraft depends on an engineered scarcity. It makes certain types of collaboration possible and necessary. And one can draw comparisons between, for instance, the strategies the games facilitate and the project-based work of ‘Tiger Teams’ and other post-industrial forms of labor. What the games suggest is that such distributed behavior is not an abstract, ideal form superimposed on reality, but something that emerges from specific material and economic conditions.

Galloway points out that the relationship between contemporary gaming and the network economy goes deeper than this level of ‘play’. It is no coincidence that the machines we work on also house our games: informatic labor and informatic play are continuous, meaning each can seamlessly transform into the other. And while this echoes theories about the dissolving boundaries of ‘private’ and ‘public’, Galloway’s argument stresses the materiality of this shift.

What is the effect of having such a strong connection between a medium (the Internet and gaming) and a means of production (post-Fordism)? Isn’t the multi-tasking, team-working World of Warcraft player ‘training’ to be a better ‘knowledge worker’? Maybe so, Galloway says, but this would be very different to training in a disciplinary sense. Rather, these games are about liberation and desire. They promote autonomy, even if this must be achieved paradoxically through cooperation. So instead of thinking of games as making us better workers, Galloway argues we should look at how they make us better bosses.

Guy Debord and the Game of War
In the last part of the presentation Galloway talked about Debord’s Game of War, its history and about the project to remake the game in online form (what Galloway calls “a massively two-player online game”).

Here is the original version of the game, which Debord brought out in limited edition, fine silver:

Game of War is strangely traditional: it resembles chess in that the board is square and there are two evenly matched opponents, each with the same set of class-based pieces. However, there are also some twists. On the one hand, the board has an uneven topology, with mountain ranges and immobile defensive forts, and on the other there is a strong emphasis on keeping pieces within lines of communication with command centers, or ‘arsenals’ (the communication lines are visible in the online version). In short, not all squares are created equally, and the degree to which a particular area of the board is strategic changes throughout the game.

Alexander Galloway’s java version of the Game of War, which is not finished quite yet:

Debord wrote that he first came up with the idea for the game in the 1950s, and that it “embodied the dialectic of all conflict”. He was fascinated by it, and saw it as an abstraction and perfection of war. Some now go so far as to say it was his most autobiographical work, though it has received considerably less attention than his films and writings. But Galloway says this is changing, and Debord’s game is especially interesting from the perspective of New Media and Game studies.

Game of War leaves behind some questions. Why would a filmmaker like Debord turn to the politics of the algorithm? Given his involvement in the radical politics of the 1960s, what sense did it make to privilege the strategic and logistical aspects of such a game, when he could have developed something more along the lines of the rhizome? In an age of asymmetric warfare, why the fascination with something so symmetrical? Perhaps the Game of War has a surprising move or two waiting to be discovered.

(Photographs courtesy of Anne, see also her summary of Galloway’s presentation)

While she is most well-known for her spychips work, Albrecht also has a history of activism against supermarket loyalty cards, so I could not resist asking her to sign my Albert Heijn Bonus Card. The best part is that, by signing it, she also disabled it:

Excellent photograph courtesy of Anne Helmond.

Here at Masters of Media we’ve done our share of Google criticism, but I think The Last Psychatrist has one up on us. What Hath Google Wrought is a giant-sized portion of skepticism about the ‘accidental monopoly’, which focuses not just on current problems of data retention but some of the long term (cultural) consequences as well. I’ve posted a few choice quotes below.

First, here’s what is meant by ‘accidental monopoly’:

Consider email: you can choose to use Yahoo! Mail and not GMail because you are worried that Google keeps all Gmails. Fine; but if you email to someone with GMail, Google stores a copy and knows what you wrote, but now also knows your IP and email address; consequently, it knows other sites you’ve visited. Etc.

The data retention issue seems manageable with promises like ‘Don’t be evil, but eventually there will be the problem of ‘liquidation’.

Everyone worries about Google’s growth, but who is worrying about its demise? Google has so much data that it actually takes up real estate all over the world. Let’s say Google goes out of business. Who gets all those servers? All that data? Who gets a copy of the world, on the cheap? Whoever it is doesn’t have to give us satellite photos anymore. What can you do with satellite photos that no one else has? Who gets to decide how to control all that data?

My favorite bit, however, is on what else to expect from the narcissistic culture that surrounds, supports and benefits from Google. For instance on parenting:

The focus is on who is monitoring our children. What are they up to?

Well, think about this: your kids are investigating you.

Remember that time when your mom was 19 and she was in that wet t-shirt contest? No? Well, your kids will get to remember yours in AVI format. Oh, and that DUI conviction? Remember that vapid comment you posted on the Daily Kos? (Hint: ten years from now a high school freshman will cringe at its inanity.) And, lo, the IP address search. How did your IP end up on pornotron.org? (Yes, the non-profit.)

Did you realize that your future daughter in law will be checking you out? “Billy, did you know eight years ago your Dad…?” This didn’t occur to you? Then I guess it didn’t occur to you that your son’s reply will be, “Sigh. Yeah. I knew.”

Obviously, the problem with dystopias (and their opposites) is that they’re reductive. But when written well, like good science fiction, they’re an index of possibility at any given moment. And if our current moment is defined by its Cartographic Fever, then the dedication to mapping the future seems as useful (and as inevitable) as anything else.