[iDC] THE ANTI WEB 2.0 MANIFESTO

[Tania Goryucheva]

I do agree with the most of critique here and would like to question  
the grounding  opposition of this manifesto which troubles me a lot:
Amateurs vs. professionals. The massive prolifiration of amateur  
culture in media space as a threat to the quality of overall cultural  
production guarded by professional communities. It sounds almost like  
a self-indulged gloomy prophecy, informed by retro-neo-marxist  
ideology, though contextually disengaged. I personally see the  
expansion of individual self-publishing, self-mediation and social  
activities around it on the internet as a form of folk culture, a  
sort of new media folklore if you like, i.e. common peoples' culture  
accommodating itself within the context of the internet, - rather  
than a radical shift of overall cultural paradigm. Peoples'  
expression of themselves on the web is not much different from that  
in off-line reality. Most of these activities are meant to be for fun  
or communication as a process, for the sake of social communication  
by means of which people are coming in terms with the reality around  
them, engaging into situational  inter-subjective manifestations. It  
does not concern itself with the production of content, messages,  
values. Troubles come when "professionals" start to mythologize it  
and capitalize on it. Nevertheless, I find this micro-level culture,  
which is free of strategic pragmatism, not concerned with values  
hierarchies, of high value in itself.
How did professional cultures occur in the first place?  Here Marxist  
theory can be helpful with its analysis of the material conditions of  
societies' development. Then an important question pops up:  whose  
are those professional culture/s? Which group intended interests and  
implicit values are manifested through those cultures? We should keep  
in mind this important distinction between the peoples culture,  
mostly spontaneous and all-inclusive, on the one hand, and  
institutionalised politically affiliated expert cultures, driven by  
social and economical pragmatism on the other, as essentially  
different in their dynamics and ratios. Though I don't see a  
dialectical conflict between them unless somebody starts to build up  
mythological superstructures aimed at creating one.
Still the core issue is the role of media within these different  
forms of cultural production. Here I think, it is important to  
differentiate contexts and pragmatics of each practice situationally.  
Blogging, flogging, content sharing as such is one thing, while  
making e-bubbles on it is another. I am personally, as many others,  
less concerned with the quality of content on Web 2.0 (whatever label  
one puts on it) and more with the political and economical obstacles  
undermining its true democratisation.

On Apr 26, 2007, at 6:24 PM, sergio basbaum wrote:

> Thanks for this Craig. I absolutely agree. All that maniphesto is so
> presumtuous and thinks itself as too important, but is truly naive.
>
> This idea of the web "killing" culture makes no sense. The web is not
> killing culture: it is culture. Contemporary culture, indeed, in which
> new cultural forms are emerging. All this Adorno thing makes no sense
> since a long time ago... If it was for us to take Adorno that far,
> what would we make with all non-European cultural forms like Brazilian
> popular music -- to say the least? Is it a decadence of true high -art
> cultural expressions? It cannot be tought this way.
>
> I`m myself taken for some as a technophobic -- which of course I'm not
> --, and I've been working on a lot of critical insights concerning
> technological culture.  But someone who cannot understand that
> technological culture is contemporary culture has a very narrow vision
> of what the word "culture" means...
>
> best for all
>
> S.
>
> On 4/25/07, Craig Bellamy <txt at craigbellamy.net> wrote:
>> Some of these ideas are silly. What about the telephone; a lot of  
>> people
>> talk about insignificant things on the telephone?
>>
>> What is a 'professional' phone conversation and what is a 'amatuer'
>> conversation? If a European intellactual talks to another person  
>> on the
>> telephone is this better that my mother talking to her best friend  
>> Beth
>> about startegies for growing Tomatoes?
>>
>> An anti Web 2.0 manifesto is intellectually narrow. People will  
>> talk to
>> other people about what ever they want to using what ever tools that
>> they have at their disposal. There is nothing new about that.
>>
>> best,
>>
>> Craig
>>
>>
>>
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