Open Source, Open Borders
Issues in Global Internet Culture

By Geert Lovink

General Outline
As I have already described in Dark Fiber (MIT Press, 2002) and My First Recession (V2, 2003), we have moved away from the 90s dotcom dreams of disembodiment towards a climate of information warfare and online conflicts. The Internet has developed from a future laboratory to an uncertain even paranoid environment, full of virusses, spam and invisible control. Rather then fostering world peace through dialogue and collaboration, the medium has become a battlefield for hackers, spammers and stalkers.

Open Source, Open Borders revolves around the presumably ‘global’ aspect of Internet culture. In Western cyberculture, the ‘global’ nature of information technologies is often taken for granted. There is an obvious lack of reflection on what it exactly means when different cultures and highly unequal societies and regions get together online. Global often means little more than the exchange between a limited number of ‘cool’ global cities where the Western ‘creative class’ is located, such as Berlin, Melbourne, San Francisco or Barcelona. The Internet is being reduced to what monolingual Anglo-American scholars can read. The fact that already for a number of years English is a minority language has had little or no impact on the dominant Internet discourse. As of mid-2003 the user numbers in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region are roughly the same. Hyper growth in the uptake of mobile phones and Web use has shifted from the tired and saturated West to ‘emerging markets’ such as India, Brazil and China. However, academic literature is often five or more years behind and such shifts remain unnoticed, also because prominent scholars lack foreign language skills. A famous example of this is South Korea where the highest uptake of broadband worldwide has resulted in a mass culture of online games in which millions participate. It’s also South Korea where the labour movement is making optimal use of new media.
The Internet may be global, technologically speaking, but we are nowhere near a global perspective—if that’s possible in the first place. Dominant Internet culture still has to go through its post-colonial phase (or at least skip it in an intelligent manner). Perhaps ‘post colonialism’ is not even an appropriate term to describe the particular mix of old dependencies and new degrees of freedom that ICTs bring. Apart from a few ethnographic studies, often the moralistic statement is made that new media is a luxury of the white affluent class, whereas the Poor have more urgent issues to deal with and do not to communicate electronically. There is no doubt that in highly unequal societies of the former Third World the true effect of ICTs, beyond good and evil, has yet to be unveiled—and researched. There is no convergence, only emergence and becoming.

There is a general discontent with the Digital Divide rhetoric. The use of information technology worldwide is causing paradoxical, sometimes contradictory and confusing effects, with occasional miracles and widely spread new forms of exclusion. Still, the overall sense is one of empowerment—and surprise. The primal drive to discover, adapt, and further develop technologies is a truly global phenomenon, one that cannot be overrun by a culture of complaint or the desire of corporate interests to create and capture markets.

The question whether technology will bring redemption or misery isn’t mine. The issue that I would like to look into is how critical and artistic practices network on regional and global levels, without buying into either corporate techno-dreams or being restrained by national dreams of surveillance and control, lured by the pseudo-safety of ‘intellectual property rights.’ The Internet has by no means eliminated national sovereignty. The importance of ‘place’ and locality is a given here. It is obvious that local new media culture can only operate within a global context if there is a strong and diverse cultural practice on the ground. Internet culture is always ‘embedded.’ The dream of a global disembodied cyberspace can only be seen as an escape fantasy by bored and alienated consumers whose interaction with the network often does not transcend the limited parameters of corporate applications.

The core of this study will be an investigation into ‘ICT & Development’ discourses. So far this field has been closely tied to funding bodies, Not for Profits, international institutions or governmental agencies with their own world encompassing assumptions to promote. It is an easy job to deconstruct the ‘Digital Divide’ ideology, but all too often such politically correct criticisms refuse to look into practical, often contradictory developments on the ground. Criticism of NGO-agendas isn’t an easy thing. Do-good cultures are often weary of self-analysis and see reflection on their efforts as an implicit attack from ‘the other side.’ In my view a critical discourse that comes from ‘within’ should not end in techno-cultural pessimism or political disengagement. A reflexive analysis approach that looks into accountability and governmentality issues will eventually benefit all.

The last thing we need is a moralistic analysis of the Internet as a ‘US-American imperialist tool.’ An engaged form of research is necessary, which overcomes dry economism and its spiritual counterpart, techno-determinism, the all too often heard notion that technology will automatically bring salvation and result in prosperity for all. I approach ICT & Development from a critical arts and culture perspective. I will not try to position my contribution within International Relations. There is enough of that literature. I won’t do this either within multi-culturalism and post-colonial studies and their impact on contemporary arts as seen for instance in Documenta X and XI. It is important to be informed about neighbouring debates and disciplines, but my main aim is to open up the field of new media culture. The last thing I want to do is isolate the so-called Digital Divide topic in a separate study. Instead I would like to integrate these issues in my ongoing effort to reflect on—and shape—critical Internet culture.


So far hotly debated ‘globalisation ’ issues and new media theory have run parallel. There is philosophical discontent but postmodern media theory operates largely outside of the larger cultural context. However, lately we can see changes occurring. Internet art, interface design and free software are slowly opening up and becoming aware what it means to operate on a truly global scale. The statistical fact that there are twice as many mobile phones than Internet users should be a wake-up call for many. The moral stand that new media culture is white and male-dominated, racist and neo-colonial may be true but such judgment easily empties itself out, as they do not formulate alternatives. Political correctness, detached from actual practices, often expresses an implicit anti-technology resentment, longing for a nostalgic non-mediated form of political struggle, where as in hyper reality turbulent user cultures rapidly override Western values, once developed by worthy developers. NGOs that made a technical leap in the late eighties (through their uptake of email) have long fallen behind. Today’s global protest movements are light years ahead in their ‘tactical’ use of communication tools compared to the state officials and the official NGOs that still think in terms of rights, regulation and control. The demand to, both analytically and politically, bring together the freedom of movement (“no borders”) and the freedom of communication (“open source”) is becoming more obvious by the day.

I have chosen not to reduce the topic of the research to development issues and the ‘global civil society’ agenda. I have done this for strategic reasons. Over the past years debates around ‘Internet governance’ have been confined to a small circle of technologists and government officials   (with a few exceptions such as ICANN Watch). The same pattern is occurring within the ‘ICT & Development’ field. The World Summit on the Information Society is in great danger of producing irrelevant UN documents. There is a widespread feeling that the ever-growing global inequality in terms of access and resources will not be alleviated by technology alone. Issues of global governance and ‘development’ are discussed within broad cultural and political frameworks and should be not delegated to large transnational bodies and their experts. The general topics that I want to discuss concern everyone, from the architecture of web journals to usability and ‘smart mobbing’ of email and mobile phone users. It is no longer appropriate to deal with the so-called ‘Third World’ as a separate topic.

I would like to present this research project as part three of my book series on critical Internet culture. After the overview of my ‘journalistic’ and essay work as a Net critic in Dark Fiber, in My First Recession (V2, 2003) I conducted more lengthy academic case studies. Whereas Dark Fiber provided a general perspective, My First Recession specifically focused on the internal dynamics of virtual communities and the question of moderation and ‘collaborative filtering’ within mailing lists and weblogs. Open Source, Open Borders should balance the broad approach with detailed case studies and bring back the more speculative, conceptual style of writing. I have not included the short pieces in this proposal. They will mainly deal with new media culture and the rapidly changing techno Zeitgeist. In this book I intend to bring together art, activism and theory and write as much about ‘digital aesthetics’ as discuss strategy issues of the ‘other globalisation’ movements.

Chapter proposals:

Introduction: WSIS and Beyond

In the introductory essay I would like to give an overview of my critical investigations into the ‘ICT & Development’ field. The aim of the study is not so much to give an overview of academic literature but to question and go beyond the Digital Divide rhetoric by promoting diverse IT practices which are situated outside of the corporate globalization paradigms and state control. I will look into the Digital Divide rhetoric and the IT policies of NGOs, funding bodies, so-called ‘transnational civil society organizations,’ governments and other players such as the UN and the Worldbank. The core of this chapter consists of a report and analysis of my visit to the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva (WSIS) in December 2003. As in previous publications I will map issues of critical Internet culture, but this time I will frame my efforts explicitly within the broader ‘globalization’ debate—also to open up the ‘cyber’ ghetto of electronic arts. Despite the changes of the overall political and economic climate after 911 and the economic recession, it remains important to re-assess the classic values of cyberculture. The roaring nineties will cast a long shadow. I am not ready to leave behind the dotcommania topic, as only now well-researched publications become available that investigate the late nineties bubble—a constitutional period for new media that cannot be overestimated, and is still being under theorized in cultural theory. A review of recent dotcom research could be turned into a separate chapter.

ICT & Development Discourses in India

Building on the introduction (and a chapter in Dark Fiber) I will critically look into the progress that the Sarai Centre for New Media in Delhi (India) is making ever since it opened its premises in 2000. This essay builds on a report I wrote in October 2002, my recent three visits to Delhi and current efforts to open a similar centre in Bangalore, the IT capital of India. As a background material I will look into the enormous amount of material that the Reader list (coordinated by Sarai), the BytesforAll website and mailing list and others have generated over recent years in respect to ITC and development in South Asia. This is clearly a rich and rapidly expanding field in which I have some sort of overview. I am happy to provide the reader with personal and critical insights.

OneWorld, a Corporate NGO-Dotcom?

This case study, to be written together with OneWorld’s former PR spokes person Glen Tarman, will provide a history of the biggest NGO portal (coordinated out of the UK) that is concerned with development issues. The site went live relatively early, in January 1995. In the late nineties OneWorld management adopted many of the dotcom strategies and rhetoric in order to foster partnerships in terms of content syndication and sponsorship. There was an enormous push towards professionalisation of NGO newsgathering. So far little has been written about the internal choices and debates within OneWorld. Through Tarman we will have access to the founders, senior staff and driving members of OneWorld offices all over the world.

The ABC of Webjournals

Besides lists, portals and weblogs there is the format of ‘web journals.’ There is not much known of this medium that is becoming the major form of (academic) content dissemination. We’re not talking here about online versions of paper magazines. The real challenge is to found a journal online and build up its audience and credibility from scratch. What is the advantage of peer-reviewed journals over mailing lists? What problems do web journals encounter if they are ‘out there’ in cyberspace and no longer attached to established publishing houses or academic institutions? In this down to earth case study I will look into the Brisbane-based M/C magazine that was established in 1998. M/C is a student initiative coming out of media & communication and cultural studies area. Other online journals that I would like to look into are the Adelaide-based Borderlands and one of the oldest web journals, the Internet peer review journal First Monday. Is there anything to learned from the pioneers? What are the pitfalls? What is gained in an academic peer review process? To what extend is the online production of knowledge all that different and are the possibilities that networks offer really utilized?

Web Design, the first Decade

What is web design, ten years after the introduction of web browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape? Web design is taught in thousands of courses, worldwide, but what exactly is its core ideology? How can we re-examine critical practices in this field? Take for instance ‘browserday’ (www.browserday.com), a series of international competitions for design students, which I started in 1998 with the Dutch designer Mieke Gerritzen (www.nl-design.net). Browserday can be seen as an attempt to intervene in the ongoing battle to set the standards for tomorrow’s communication. The public events, held six times in Amsterdam, New York and Berlin (which include a publication and website) aimed to network new media design schools to increase their public interface and raise awareness of the importance of technological standards for future artistic practice. Closely connected is a critical analysis of the ‘usability’ discourse as promoted by Jakob Nielsen. Seen by many as a necessary scientific next step in order to make new media products and services more accessible to a still-expanding audience, I would like to look into the ideological and business agenda of this fashionable consultancy and research practice. I would do more research about the role of design and the politics of new media standards. Late 2004 an international two day conference will be organized, in Amsterdam, where related issues will be discussed. This chapter will be written in preparation--and as a reflection--of that event.

Cellspace Explorations

Mobile phones and SMS-messages are relatively unexplored tactical tools, even though their use is so wide spread. So-called ‘flash mobs’ pop up all over the place, yet new media theorists are no where to be seen. Why do ‘screen theorists’ prefer pompous multi-media work and have such difficulty with ‘cell space’? ‘Mobile Minded’ was the topic of the fifth International Browserday for which I did the research and compiled a reader on the latest mobile theory and practice. I would like to extend this work in the form of a free essay that explores this field further, like Sadie Plant’s Motorola study, emphasizing the wildly different uses of these communication tools in different cultures and continents. Many millions of SMS messages are sent each day—it is time for media theory to keep up and reflect on this rapidly growing medium and its particular poetry.

What is to be done? Strategies for ‘the movement’

Over the past years I have written three strategy essays together with the German film documentary maker and activist Florian Schneider. All of them have been widely circulated and translated in a number of languages. For this book I would like to bring together these thoughts and re-edit the material. All three pieces circle around the relationship between contemporary (post 1999) movements and the use of technology. At the moment I’d like to see this piece at the very end of the book, as a conclusion. Taking George Monbiot’s manifesto The Age of Consent as a point of reference, I am searching for alternative global governance models of the ‘network commons,’ either for the Internet, wireless or mobile phone space. It could be that I will turn my investigation into Internet governance into a separate chapter.