|
File sharing File sharing is an option that allows you to share your hard-disk with other users. This may range from two computers connected with each other to the Internet itself, the net "par excellence". Even when a computer is shared, there may still be some access limitations, and different many levels of sharing, sheer users hierarchies set by the computer owner, e.g. necessity of obtaining the password, limitation of access only to one directory, impossibility of modifying the shared files - even if you can copy them - and so on. There are also computers that share part of their hard-disk with - potentially - the whole world, through the telephone lines: those are servers, computers which host the files we can "visit" on the world wide web. They are "particular", indeed, they are considered standard of the web because they are readable with a browser. Those data are usually set in sites, each one with an address of its own, each one reachable from all and sundry. Whoever works with a computer on a daily basis, at least for a few years, will soon realise that his own computer resemble more and more to its owner. You share everything with your computer: your time (often even for 13 hours a day), your space (desktop), your culture (bookmarks), your personal relationships (e-mails), your memories (photos archives), your ideas, your projects etc. To sum up, a computer, with the passing of time, ends up looking like its owner's brain. It does it more and better than other more traditional media, e.g. diaries, notebooks, or, on a more abstract level, paintings and novels. If you accept the assumption of a computer being the thing that gets closer to your brain, you will also assume that sharing your own computer entails way more than sharing a desktop or a book, something we might call life_sharing. Net.art Is time to focus the efforts on contents, instead of "containers": even net.art must begin to talk about the problems and contradictions brought about by the huge spreading of the Internet, contradictions that are getting bigger and bigger. Two topics seem to be particularly controversial, because they cast light over contradictions still far from being solved, which may even never be solved: 1. Public vs private: this is one of the oldest problems on the Internet; must the unstoppable intrusion of the media into our lives be regarded as "more freedom" for citizens, or rather "more control" by the authorities? 2. Open vs close: one of the currently more controversial topics is the huge success, cultural and economical, of such ideas and practices as Open Source software in competition with old and obsolete paradigms as copyright and intellectual property. 0100101110101101.ORG's goal is to create a "work" which will not only identify and underline these contradictions, but even propose a possible practical solution; the result of these efforts is life_sharing. life_sharing life_sharing is an anagram of "file sharing". life_sharing is a computer sharing its hard-disk with the whole world, making all its contents accessible via Internet. "All" does't mean a directory of the hard-disk but the whole content of the computer: programs, system (all the software used will be open source), desktop, archives, tools, ongoing projects, mailboxes and so on. From the moment life_sharing starts, every Internet user will have free access twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year to 0100101110101101.ORG's computer: they could rummage through archives, search for texts or files they're interested in, check the software, watch the "live" evolution of projects and even read 0100101110101101.ORG's private mail. Users will access the contents through their browser, thus no particular technical abilities is required, only the basic notions necessary to surf the web. The computer contents are not going to be periodically uploaded - thing that is usually necessary to update a web site - because 0100101110101101.ORG will work directly on the shared computer - the web server - so that users follow the development of the work in real time, they will be always present and up-todate. By this point of view it's somehow as if an unlimited number of spectators had access to an artist's atelier and assisted him/her during the development of his/her work, being of no troubles at all. The idea is both simple and full of implications that go beyond the concept of a work of art being an object of contemplation, and raises political, sociological, philosophical and informational issues. life_sharing determines and underlines problems and contradictions that are no loner aesthetic, they are ethical. The first of these problems is evidently privacy. life_sharing represents a radical subversion of the concept of privacy, a clear inversion of the perspective from which it has always been considered and discussed. life_sharing is the "empirical" demonstration that on the Internet is possible to experiment new forms of interaction and networking, on the condition that we are willing to leave evidently obsolete practices behind us. It is not a utopia, it is a practice that, once started, is going to become part of our everyday life. Another issue raised by life_sharing is the intellectual property question: the proposal is not a complete abolition of copyright, but its substitution with the GPL (Gnu General Public License - http://www.gnu.org ). Extract from the Gnu General Public License:
"Licenses
for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and
change it. By contrast, the GPL is intended to guarantee your freedom
to share and change free software - to make sure the software is free
for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the
Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors
commit to using it. You can apply to it to your programs too. When we
speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General
Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to
distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you
wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that
you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs;
and that you know you can do this things. To protect your rights, we need
to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to
ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain
responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or
if you modify it."
|