Digitality is imposed upon us! To change this, we should not turn away from it, but look carefully into its transformative power and make operable alternatives such as counter-algorhythms and solidarity-oriented commoning. The aim is a world where profit and property no longer exist, but instead where a cooperative dance – between all the needs posed by our ecosystems, and all the needs of people – becomes practicable. This book is a critical media theory of future-building, modulated by a focus on the potentials of counter-dancing as providing ways to unfold fugitive practices.
AbstractMarket-driven, profit-oriented, mainstream neoclassical economics is increasingly being challenged by alternative approaches such as heterodox economics. This article contributes to broader discussions in this field, especially of social provisioning, and suggests that integrating perspectives from the overlapping fields of media history and history of economy could not only provide valuable insights and attract more supporters, but even initiate a bottom-up transformation process. Historical knowledge regarding how neoclassical economics gained mainstream status in the early postwar decades provides hints on how to popularize non-profit-driven, well-designed approaches to social provisioning, often referred to as commoning. More specifically, the article firstly addresses the necessity of a large-scale appropriation of computational methods, procedures, tools, media, and models to experiment with economic issues, which are usually applied mostly by mainstream profit-driven approaches. Secondly, it presents the implications of such a practice, which I tentatively refer to as heterodox modeling, while remembering the 1960s North American context of business simulation games and their role within the large-scale effort to educate and train the newly-defined class of "business managers." The article, thirdly, theorizes heterodox modeling as being based on a still imaginary, not-yet implemented, networked multi-agent online environment, which would integrate the modular programming of agent-based models, group exercises, role-playing, gaming, and testing of operations and processes within large-scale socio-ecological networks of commoning. Finally, the article argues not only to model heterodox economic theories, but at the same time to model in heterodox ways and highlight associated implications.
Vilém Flusser has been most influential with his seminal work on the techno-imaginary. However, several of his essays on composition, sound and listening show the significance that music had for his thinking. Thanks to Annie Goh, one of the editors of Flusser Studies 17, two of Flusser's important early manuscripts on music and sound have recently been translated and published. Flusser wrote these lectures, entitled On Music and On Modern Music, in 1965, at a time when the very concept of western music had been seriously challenged by the post-WWII avant-gardes. Today, in the aftermath of the massive digitization, algorithmization and cybernetization of almost all aspects of western society, culture and politics, Flusser's gesture of listening, as we argue in this article, might be more relevant than ever.
Der Beitrag diskutiert die Data-Literacy-Charta des Stifterverbandes aus einer medienwissenschaftlichen Perspektive. Er formuliert eine Sichtweise, in der Daten nicht nur individuellen, sondern auch kollektiven Verantwortlichkeiten unterliegen. Daten lassen sich als ein gemeinschaftliches, sozial zu verhandelndes Gut lesen. In ihnen sind historische und sozio-politische Umstände eingeschrieben. Die Frage lautet: Was bedeutet esin, als und durch Daten zu sein? Der Beitrag wurde im Open-Media-Studies-Blog der Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft erstveröffentlicht: https://zfmedienwissenschaft.de/online/open-media-studies-blog
AbstractThis article explores the use of agent-based modelling as a critical and playful form of engagement with cooperative housing organizations. Because of its inherent complexities vis-à-vis decision-making, commoning is a well-suited field of study to explore the potential of humanities-driven experimental design (media) research to provoke critical reflection, problem-finding and productive complication. By introducing two different agent-based models, the interdisciplinary research team discusses their experience with setting up parameters for modelling, their implications, and the possibilities and limits of employing modelling techniques as a basis for decision-making. While it shows that modelling can be helpful in detecting long-term results of decisions or testing out effects of unlikely yet challenging events, modelling might act as a discursive practice uncovering hidden assumptions inherent in the model setup and generating an increase of scientific uncertainty. The project "ThinkingToys for Commoning" thus argues for a critical modelling practice and culture, in which models act as toys for probing alternative modes of living together and exploring the constructedness of methods. In countering late forms of capitalism, the resulting situated and critical practice provides avenues for enabling more self-determined forms of governance.
