Re: <nettime> nottime: the end of nettime

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

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On 2015-04-02 12:05, Alex Foti wrote:
> i mean let's not commit suicide,

Yeah, let's not do that, not the least because, as Bifo pointed out,
that would be a response entirely in line with how systems works.

The initial post was neither entirely serious, nor simply a gotcha
joke that exhausts itself through revelation. Rather, it was meant as
way to break our own unwritten rules, as a way to open a discussion
about the list, on the list (as David Garcia immediately recognized).
And not because there is an urgent crisis to be addressed, innovation
to be implemented, or any other managerial goal to be reached. Nor did
Ted and I need a collected pat on the back to fight off the impending
burn-out.

No, it was meant provoke a moment to think about something that for
many of us has become part of daily life. Those things tend to
disappear into the background, we take them for granted, assume that
some form of impersonal institution is taking care of it without much
of our involvement.

And, really, nettime is the opposite. It's fragile, has no back-up,
and, most of all, relies nothing but good will, many criss-crossing
friendships, some dislikes and, beyond that, and a strange kind of
communion of people who, as I far as I can tell, do not easily take to
communions.

So, for me, the question is what do we want to do with this? Which
does explicitly not mean, how do we want to change that? Perhaps there
are things to chance, perhaps we do not want to chance much. The
latter might be a good thing, since many of the structural features
that are now setting nettime apart stem from the fact that we missed
out on a lot of innovations that lead others and net culture, which is
mainstream culture today, down the rabbit hole of frenzied, quantified
narcissism.

If anything this thread shows that while we are all more than aware of
the shortcomings, we still see value in the effort of collective
thinking that does not lend itself to being measured, put on CVs or
otherwise made direct use of. To create and maintain something like
this is a real collective achievement by all of us, past and present,
and perhaps, even future. Even if whole is perhaps more than the sum
of its parts, it's the parts, that is the time and energy everyone is
contributing, both through writing and reading (which is falsely
called lurking) where all of this comes from. We are encouraging you,
that is, us, to think of how might bend this collective effort in
shapes more congenial to you/us. David Garcia suggested a few ways
that this might be done and I'm sure he missed a few too. This is not
a task that needs to be a addressed today, there is no deadline, but a
next week, a next month, and a next year.

Felix






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