A conceptual framework for considering the common wealth of intellectual goods, knowledge products, creative works, free software tools, shared ideas, information, and so on which are freely and democratically shared, and possibly further developed, via the Internet
Published in Chapter:
Social Technologies and the Digital Commons
Francesca da Rimini (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)
Copyright: © 2010
|Pages: 22
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch052
Abstract
This chapter investigates the premise that software is culture. It explores this proposition through the lens of peer production, of knowledge-based goods circulating in the electronic space of a digital commons, and the material space of free media labs. Computing history reveals that technological development has typically been influenced by external sociopolitical forces. However, with the advent of the Internet and the free software movement, such development is no longer solely shaped by an elite class. Dyne; bolic, Streamtime and the Container Project are three autonomously-managed projects that combine social technologies and cooperative labour with cultural activism. Innovative digital staging platforms enable creative expression by marginalised communities, and assist movements for social change. The author flags new social relations and shared social imaginaries generated in the nexus between open code and democratic media. In so doing the author aims to contribute tangible, inspiring examples to the emerging interdisciplinary field of software studies.