Social Technologies and the Digital Commons

doll_yoko — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:26:38 +0200

Last year I drew on some of my Masters research* to write a chapter for a book on Open Source Software.

My text is titled 'Social Technologies and the Digital Commons' and the book is Handbook of Research on Open Source Software: Technological, Economic, and Social Perspectives, edited by Kirk St. Amant and Brian Still.

You can read the contents here:

http://www.igi-pub.com/reference/details.asp?ID=6717&v=tableOfContents

The book is very expensive so I haven't been able to buy a copy myself.

But I have uploaded my text here:

http://dollyoko.thing.net/g8/daRimini-social-technologies.pdf

* My Masters thesis is online as a 17Mb zip file here:

http://dollyoko.thing.net/atmos/darimini-masters-thesis.zip

It covers selected examples of the politics of computing development from French automata to IBM punch cards; social software as it was first conceived; ideas around FLOSS and the digital commons; and a big chapter examining (and documenting our collaborative use of) the Netmonster software (for network visualisation) made by Graham Harwood (from Mongrel & the Media Shed).

My PhD Synopsis as of April 2007

doll_yoko — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:11:11 +0200

Well, my original proposal for my PhD was very big and completely unrealistic. And the first 18 months have been spent either ignoring it or trying to shape it into something do-able. So now I have a skinny synopsis, and some tendrils of questions...

Working title: Small Media, Soft Ecologies: exploring digital-social interventions

Running Synopsis:

A study of three innovative digital-social interventions built by small groups and networks of cultural activists, writers, programmers and members of local or interest-based communities. Are these and other similar “small media” projects employing/creating new opportunities and methods for generating lasting social change, change both within their constituent communities, and as linked to larger networked social movements? Can we think of these projects in terms of a “participatory globalisation”. Are they connected, philosophically and practically, to historical emancipatory movements? How does the digital element inflect and help the social relations around new forms of production and exchange? What is the relationship/s with social change movements and networks?

Adelaide

Social Technologies and the Digital Commons

My PhD Synopsis as of April 2007