Re: <eyebeam><blast> territory

[Saskia Sassen <sassen@columbia.edu>]

There are several issues I'd like to discuss and hopefully hear the most 
unexpected comments about:

1) One of the main concerns right now in my research on digital space is 
the difference between public and private digital space --in my reading 
they are two different topographies.

2) Not unrelated to 1), the impact that incipient privatisation on the 
Net (firewalled corporate web sites, for example) and the truly epic 
effort to make commercialization viable on the Net (we are dealing with 
, as they say, "titans of business")  can have on public digital space. 
Can we really be sure that this will not alter the Net in a radical 
fashion?

3)Are "net practices" enough to counteract the fact that more and more 
software design for the Net is aimed at firewalling and at making 
electronic commerce viable. This is really different from the 1980s when 
most software for the Net was aimed at strengthening its public 
features. But again, could it be that practices can resist/counteract 
the effect of software design?

4) It seems to me that in this current phase of the history of the Net 
--I think of it as the third phase, beginning after 1993, really in 
1995)--it beomes extremely important to multiply the diversity of net 
subcultures and practices and to intensify their presence and 
engagement. I think of net criticism (see Nettime) and of artistic 
practices as crucial to secure the public dimension of the Net. But we 
also need to get poor organizations, those with few resources, such as 
poor women's organizations from aournd the world, those fighting 
homelessness, those engaged in struggles against their own government 
that don't fall under a big  established NGO, etc. etc., to  move their 
struggles onto the Net. This is not just good for them, but good for the 
Net. We need a diversity of cultures, of languages, of optics to be 
intensively there.

5) here lie the beginnings of new notions of membership/citizenship. A 
shift to presence/citizenship. Being present is a form of citizenship 
--you do not need to be made a member by some superior entity, such as 
the state. The beginning of a new form of trnsnational politics.

6) more to come.
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