ecopolis

The Open Web can aspire to continue the peer-to-peer legacy of the classic internet applications.

Decentralized platforms such as Usenet, email and IRC were not controlled by any one organization, and do not directly capture profit. The web has been the focus of the commercialization of the internet due to it’s client-server architecture that gives full control to the website operator. This control is required by the logic of Capitalist finance in order to capture value. Without such control profit-seeking investors do not provide funds.

However, this control comes at a cost. Centralized systems are far less efficient at managing online communications than decentralized systems. The corporate, web-based communication-platforms that emerged under the Web 2.0 monicker are hungry for more than just Capital. The huge datacenters required to run them also consume massive natural resources and energy, and cause massive amounts of pollution. Yet, desipite all, these platforms still commonly experience scaling issues and frequent outages, straining under the profit-imposed need to centralize control. And this in a world where the majority of the global population does in practical terms not have access to the internet. Of course, environmental concerns are not the only issue with overly centralized systems. Perhaps even of greater concern are the implications for privacy and freedom of speech and association when control of our social technology is held by only a few private corporations.

Lost in the hype of the Social Web is the fact that the Internet has always been about sharing: Usenet, email and IRC have for a long time enabled social connections, including citizen journalism, photo sharing, and other features of recent web-based systems.

Thimbl demonstrates the potential for integrating classic internet technologies into the Open Web. On the surface, Thimbl appears to be yet another microblogging service, similar to Twitter or identi.ca. However, Thimbl is a specialized web-based client for a User Information protocol called Finger. The Finger Protocol was orginally developed in the 1970s, and as such, is already supported by all existing server platforms.

Thimbl offers no way to sign up. It is up to your own webhost, internet service-provider or system administrator to provide accounts. Virtually every server on the intenret already has Finger server software available in its software repository. All that is required for any organisation to provide Thimbl accounts is to simply turn their Finger service on. In most cases, this would take the server administator no more than a few minutes, after which all of their users could log in to thimbl.net and participate. So Thimbl is a call to arms for users to demand this option.

Most importantly, Thimbl has embedded within it a vision for the Open Web that goes beyond the web. For the web to be truly open it must integrate pervasivaly in to the internet as a whole. The internet has always has been much more than the web.

via Thimbl

Each year, Memefest singles out a text and/or image that serves as a focal point for a critical take on the current media and communication environment. In order to enable a creative approach based on interdisciplinary, practical and theoretical perspective, you are able to participate in different categories.

The friendly competition has three main divisions: Visual communication practice, Critical writing and Beyond. It is open to anyone who wants to participate. Any artist, activist, writer, designer, malcontent, educator or media manipulator can enter. There is no age restriction. The only limit is your creativity and imagination.

In order to get the best possible in-depth understanding of your work, we will categorize all submissions in two fields: Student/Academic and Non-academic.

You can register your works in one or more categories. However, a particular work can compete in one category only.

Check bellow for more info about the category that is most interesting for you.

Deadline for your submissions is January 20th 2011.

This project proposes an alternative economy based on Peer-to-Peer architecture for a more equal sharing of wealth in society. It offers an innovative participative system using counterfeit virtual money.

Promotional AD:
Go on http://P2PGiftCredit.com and get your P2P Gift Credit Card instantly, just by typing your email or cell phone number. When you activate the card you get your first £100 of gift credit! Other rewards come every time you introduce a new friend!

About the P2P Gift Credit Cards:
By issuing a visionary type of credit card, the project introduces the P2P Gift Finance system based on Peer-to-Peer free credit shared across digital networks. The P2P Gift Finance is a democratic creation of money directly regulated by ordinary people in order to redistribute wealth in society. Power to create virtual money with a multiplier effect should be restored to the people, and regulated by democratic participation. It is recognised that the perpetual creation of money is necessary, however, since there is a private monopoly on the monetary system, it is proven to be unfair and is unlikely to ever change without intervention. Indeed many theorists have pointed out that allowing banks to create money is fundamentally unjust, unethical and immoral.
Find out more about it:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/about.php

More details:
The website P2PGiftCredit.com allows people to generate unique virtual card numbers to send to others via digital devices and platforms. In order to activate and use the P2P Gift Credit Cards users must generate new virtual credit card numbers for friends. Rules like this underline the idea of ‘Sharing’ a concept which defines the basis of P2P Gift Finance and enables a viral spread of free credit among people, generating a real alternative virtual credit that anyone can own. This approach also simulates the distribution of free credit by people as a form of “Basic Income”, which may help to stimulate the entire economy.
Find out more how it works:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/how.php

A limited edition of physical plastic P2P Gift Credit Cards are available by request on the P2PGiftCredit.com, and they will also be distributed through public actions in London during the month of January 2011.
You can see a preview of the printed card and its holder in this picture:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/press/P2PCC_carrier_HD.jpg

Purpose of the project:
- Researching alternative virtual currencies, peer-to-peer lending platforms and electronic payments as a positive step in reshaping the future of sustainable finance in the contemporary digital networked scenario.
- Underlining the consequences of private speculative lending institutions and explaining how they often determine economic crises due to the deregulated creation of credit.
- Calling people to sign petitions to shut down tax havens, and to investigate the bailout money that taxpayers recently paid to major banks by supporting ongoing campaigns on this issue.
- Bringing “Basic Income” (as a form of universal, guaranteed, minimum income) to public attention and the inequities of current patterns of the redistribution of wealth into question.
- Targeting social classes vulnerable to the deceptive marketing of the credit card industry (such as university students, artists, the unemployed and people with low incomes) in order to highlight the inherent dangers.
- Increasing awareness about global credit and debit owned by people and banks during the recent so-called global recession, as well as issues related to the creation of money.

If you would like to have more information about the recent so-called “economic recession”, the victims of global fraud, the artificial scarcity of money, or, if you would like to know more about the credit card industries, their criminal interest rates (which cause depression and suicides), and more besides, you should have a look at the Infoshop section which is a real treasure trove of information:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/infoshop.php

A project by Paolo Cirio.
http://www.paolocirio.net
(This project is commissioned by an anonymous arts organisation in the UK)

www.Drowning-NYC.net
a Recombinant Fiction piece by Paolo Cirio.
Press material: http://www.drowning-nyc.net/press.php

This is an attempt to weave a fictional story into the daily reality of the residents of Lower East Side Waterfront in Manhattan. They found themselves surrounded by an over-layering of mediated narrative information. Drowning NYC is a cross-media story; an experimental pilot that is told by actors and through narrative devices that are staged over the Internet and in the public spaces of a few chosen New York City neighborhoods. The genre and the art type are theorized by the artist as being “Recombinant Fiction”, a political and pervasive form of cross-media fiction.

- This project proposes new pedagogical instruments, innovative activist strategies, elaborate media experiments, cutting-edge forms of theatre and cinema, questions about reality perception/construction and, above all, a new form of conceptual art. -

Synopsis:
The CEO of “Future Water Proof Corporation” plans to economically exploit the rising sea level around New York City. A young man, Jason Gompers, thinks that the people of his neighborhood will be forced to leave because of gentrification caused by the corporation’s new developments to adapt to rising sea levels. He starts to investigate the corporation and decides to form “Future Climate Change Fighters” cells that oppose the CEO’s plans.
The drama inquires into how adapting and/or stopping global warming effects may affect the future of the city, especially in the gentrified and poor neighborhoods. The end of the story is open and intentionally unfinished, allowing audiences to think through and tackle the drama themselves.
Future Water Proof Corporation:
http://www.futurewaterproofcorp.com
Future Climate Change Fighters:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Climate-Change-Fighters-NYC/116705608386337

How it has been developed:
The fiction brings into existence two fictional NYC characters. Characters speak directly to the audience in first person through media that fit their own personality. The fiction is staged in some of the poorest neighborhoods of Manhattan (Lower East Side Waterfront) and one of the most controversially gentrified (Stuyvesant Town). These areas of Manhattan will be some of the first to be flooded as sea levels rise. The fiction informs the audiences about potential sea level rising in NYC with factual data from official documents released by the city’s administration and scientific research (Section ‘What’ of the Future Water Proof Corp’s website). Most of the project has been developed in Europe where the artist could infiltrate the Infosphere of the concerned region of NYC by using his laptop to orchestrate all of the media and crew involved in this project.

Engagement:
The characters of the fiction encourage the people of the neighborhoods to react and participate in the story through public interventions, local media advertising and in the social network groups of the local population. In particular, students of a local high school have become integrated subjects in the fiction by communicating with the characters. Jason Gompers (the hero) entered the school’s network on Facebook as a fictional classmate asking their help to save the school from flooding and from Michael Meyer’s plans.
Jason’s plea to the students of the high school:
http://www.drowning-nyc.net/pdf/Drowning-NYC_msg_help_Jason.pdf
Manifesto of Future Climate Change Fighters with suggestions about stopping Global Warming:
http://www.drowning-nyc.net/pdf/Drowning-NYC-FCCF_flyers.pdf

Meanwhile, Future Water Proof Corp. engaged the relevant communities by interviewing people about their feelings concerning the sea level rise, informing them that the district will be the first to be submerged and the company is taking care of the situation. Furthermore, Michael Meyer’s company has been promoted through posters and postcards left all over the area and in advertisements in local newspapers such as Town & Village and The Villager.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/futurewaterproofcorp
News about redevelopment exploitations to adapt to rising sea levels:
http://twitter.com/fwpcorp

Shows:
The project’s official website and the keyword/tags on the Internet weld together the episodes and pieces of the fiction, presenting a whole that can be enjoyed by audiences all over the world.
The art installation in the exhibitions is the materialization of the narrative devices, which are displayed using printed pictures, texts, screenings and objects, bringing into the art show the paradigm of the nonlinear and actively unfolding story by the audience, who can enjoy the story, through physical stable mediums.
Mixed media installation of Drowning NYC at Laboral (Spain):
http://www.paolocirio.net/work/drowning_nyc/drowning-nyc.php

SHARE FESTIVAL 2010 – SMART MISTAKES
FRIDAY, 5th NOVEMBER
Regional Museum of Natural Science, Torino
>>>6 PM Lecture by Edoardo Boncinelli – Creative Mistakes
A leading geneticist talks about genetic mutations, that is DNA errors that today are almost always harmful. Today, all species have reached an equilibrium point in their evolution. If mutations had never occurred though, life would still be where it was at its beginnings, almost four billion years ago.