<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body text="#333333" bgcolor="#ffffff"> Dear All The questions that Christian posits are the broadest and the most relevant in the present context, and as we all know not at all easy to answer. But let me try to briefly put out how my organisation, IT for Change, based in India, is trying to grapple with them, both at the theoretical and practical levels (and we believe in working simultaneously on both levels, maintaining a close connection between them). The most important dilemma is the one presented in the following question <blockquote>Are alternative media and alternative projects that struggle for autonomy from capitalism trapped in an antagonism, in which they either create and reproduce precarious voluntary labour (if they lack resources, but maintain an autonomous character) or loose their autonomy (if they get commodified in order to increase their resource base)? How can alternative digital media project best be organized? </blockquote> The broad and short answer to this, that shapes our strategy, is to try to link these alternative projects to centres of non-capitalistic norms and energy within the existing mainstream system. Our work on promoting peer-to-peer communities of teachers in government schools using ICTs, but also offline interactions, plugs into the non-capitalistic norms and energies within the public education system related to objectives of teacher professional development, increasing teacher motivation and involvement, looking at possible p2p systems of evaluation and incentivisation, producing dynamic and creative digital content (that these p2p systems have begun to do) etc. Similarly; India has a very vibrant local governance movement with 50 percent quota for women. Building capacity of women political leaders at the grassroot is a huge national priority with lots of money earmarked for this purpose. We are also associated with an attempt to develop p2p networks or women elected representative, many of them barely literate, and also being exposed to digital technologies for the first time. Another project idea in the offing is to develop district 'development networks' as p2p (and new local 'digital public') spaces among various development agencies, including NGOs, working in a district, the key unit of development administration. At present such horizontal connections are very weak and most agencies interact vertically within their specific sector of working. I wont go into details of these projects here. But the idea is to situate the use of ICTs, employing a non proprietary, sharing paradigm, into real life, relatively, non-capitalistic situations. While obviously, the primary purpose, at least outwardly, is to enable such use of ICTs to benefit the involved activities and sectors, the non-capitalistic non-proprietary ethics of the concerned activities/ sectors are hoped to also strongly influence the further development of the ICTs, and the techno-social systems around them. It should however be noted that such attempts are much against the tide even in these sectors. Even here, when it is about ICTs, the default thinking seems to involve business sector, revenue models, individual users etc. Therefore, in India's public education system, while all other subjects are taught in the regular 'public institutional' way, for ICTs the same schools typically outsource teaching to private companies. In relation to community based governance systems, somehow use of ICT in service delivery seem to 'naturally' involve private sector and revenue models. For elected women representatives, mobiles is the much touted way to do, which is almost essentially a proprietary platform ... Even so, it is a contextual and situated use of ICTs in these sectors that we think provides some hope to developing alternative ICT models for the whole society. Pulling together these ideas, and some others at macro and meso level social systems, we are seeking to develop a theoretical framework of 'network publics' ( a paper to be published in a forthcoming book by IDRC on 'open development'). This concept seeks to fill in the serious gap in network society theorisation and practice whereby the ideas and institutions of 'public' (I do not want to get into the distinction and commonality between how we see 'public' and 'community', in this context) seem to be largely missing, and the new social fabric is often sought to be exclusively weaved out of private contracts. parminder On Friday 20 January 2012 12:58 PM, Christian Fuchs wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:4F1917AA.5020400@uti.at" type="cite">Dear Louis and Gilson Dear all, Thank you for the contributions. This list indeed welcomes discussions, especially as preparation for the Uppsala conference in May. I am one of the conference organisers and administrator of this list. I think the question Louis brought up and upon which Gilson has followed up is a very profound one: How can one establish sustainable Internet communities and sustainable ICT? How can one establish alternatives to the corporate control of the Internet? What is the way forward and which actions should best be taken and supported? How does the crisis of contemporary capitalism bring about (or does not bring about) a legitimacy crisis of capitalism in general and therefore also a legitimacy crisis of the capitalist Internet and capitalist ICTs? Or formulated in other terms: How can struggles create such a legitimacy crisis? I think one can envision alternatives as the struggle for autonomous spaces, spaces that are autonomous from the colonization of digital media from capital and power. The question is then how it is possible to fight the powers that exist without having the same access to the resources (money, power, visibility, reputation, personnel, labour, etc) they control? What are experiences with working in alternative digital media projects that aim to have a non-capitalist character? As long as we live in capitalism, we have to get hold of money in order to survive. So how to commit a lot of time for alternative projects if these projects are non-profit and do not finance a living? Are alternative media and alternative projects that struggle for autonomy from capitalism trapped in an antagonism, in which they either create and reproduce precarious voluntary labour (if they lack resources, but maintain an autonomous character) or loose their autonomy (if they get commodified in order to increase their resource base)? How can alternative digital media project best be organized? How can economic, political and ideological autonomy from existing powers be established? And how do these powers constrain struggles for alternatives? ICTs and society in times of capitalism and capitalist crisis pose a lot of interest questions. Best, Christian </blockquote> </body> </html>