Today I, however, decided to join you tomorrow for the rest of the
happening and was glad to notice that Steve is involved with the PGO part,
remembering him from Inet'98 and reporting our youth session there
insightfully. Looking forward to meeting you in A'dam!
If you only have time here's some information about one start of a project
that has been evolving also with the PGO questions in mind:
Earlier, in January I think it was, we exhanged some emails with Andreas
about one idea I'd been sketching for an.org - the site / net engine that
I used to create the Geneva session (http://an.org/inet98/). There were
actually two separate - or even opposite - ways of org.anization related
use in mind:
- Developing a platform for people, groups, clubs,
associations to use for their own purposes,
such as internal and external communication and
other information needs. One that would support
organisational activies better than just any
html-written bunch of pages and would be easy
to author for even technofobic people who
couldn't afford to buy or handle by themselves
a decent Web Information System.
- Creating a service that would allow web/net users
to check background information on the service
providers, ie. having a database of domains/sites
with e.g. the names of the companies that are
responsible for the service, their business model
and other comments that the user community could
and would like to have public for all users to know.
In a bit schitzophrenic way I see these two being in a way the same thing
- that's why I've been considering developing the system(s) for them at
least partly the same way. Wonder if you see a connection there?
The an.org-site has actually been used for both purposes already.
For example, thean-site provides a home for the dance group and an-inet
presentation mentioned already plus our group of international exhange
students in Amsterdam last year, http://an.org/hospitium/ that is.
Especially the Hospitium-case has been somewhat a failure, 'cause I didn't
set up proper communication channels there in time, so all we got now is
flat pages and pictures and all too separately some mail discussions going
on.
Oops, my flatmate just informed me that we've 15 minutes late from Sauna
already. I'm getting so tired that I perhaps don't come back on-line
anymore before travelling,
the other part - the tool for "contextualizing the web/net", is explained
a bit in the following interpretation Andreas drew out of my earlier text.
If you guys know the annotations from hypermedia theory it might be an
interesting way of implementing that part - more about that later if you
only have time & further interest!
In about 12 hours I should be in A'dam if all goes well *knocked_on_wood*
Oh still a quick comment to the "is this (post-)governmental" question
Andreas raised: here in the Nordic countries everything is / used to be
governmental so to me this clearly is ;)
+ an + ~ ~ : (t . !
On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, andreas broeckmann wrote:
> dear ,
>
> >This part:
> >
> >"Focus:
> >
> >org.an-izations behind the web. It is considered important for net/web
> >users to understand a little bit about what they are doing. One essential
> >thing would be to know with *what* you're
> >operating/interacting/doing_whatever. Governments won't help, so a PGO
> >might come in hand."
> >
> >was where the PGO connection was mentioned.
>
> i see what you mean, and i guess that the an-tool could be useful for
> mapping the techno-political power structure underlying the network ... you
> put it so carefully in your text (to understand a little bit about) that i
> must have missed it. also, the question is whether this tool would affect
> things on a governmental level, or whether it is rather a generic tactical
> tool that could be used in many contexts. the pgo debate is trying to look
> specifically at new forms of governance and shifting power relations.
>
> we are trying to get material up onto the n5m3 website in the coming days.
>
> greetings,
>
> -a
>
>