Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks

Felix Stalder

kuda.read / The Notebook, ISBN 3865882110
The data and their free flux through the network nodes are the core of the Stalder’s research, that during almost a decade has analyzed the forms of organization and production through the net, exploring much further than the basic digitalitazion’s repercussions. What indeed emerges from his writes is not limited to the possibilities of using a distributed infrastructure, nor to the already experimented collaborative forms of intellectual production (as the FLOSS – Free/Libre and Open Source Software). His investigation succeeds in connecting the materiality of the cultural processes (from the oral tradition to the printed objects and then back again to the immateriality of the networks) with the characteristics of the contents independent distribution working models on the net (from p2p to Wikipedia). What is defined as a rare and essential temporal break produced by the net in the second half of the nineties (similar to what dada at the beginning of the previous century and the punk during the late seventies did) has really produced a rewriting of the development and relationship models, i.e. of the rules that till then has determined the evolution. The elapsed time is evident for some of the texts, but at the same time this is a chance for finding connections with the present times, like the concept of the ‘gatekeepers’ that seem to be very similar to the actual Google status.