Transidiomen
di Marco Jacquemet

Dopo due secoli di sovranità delle nazioni, ora la supremazia politica, sociale e culturale passa nelle mani degli organismi internazionali [...], delle corporazioni multinazionali, delle holdings di aiuti umanitari, delle varie forze di pronto intervento militare. In questo contesto cambia il regime di appartenenza, non più - o non solo - legato ad una terra, una lingua, un popolo, bensì ad un'area cosmopolita [...], ad un linguaggio globale, ad una comunità diasporica, corporation o organismo internazionale [...]. In quest'ottica il transidioma è il risultato dell'intrecciarsi dei due processi sociali che stanno configurando questa tarda modernità: la mobilità delle persone e la comunicazione elettronica.

Social Software
by Joel Slayton

It is, of course, possible to consider the ontological evolution of software from a perspective of complex social structure. It can be argued that any given software is a dynamic of data relations that combine in interesting ways to emerge increasingly complex strata of information interactions. And although these interactions are computationally discrete, they are never completely predictive, for algorithms operate as perturbations within the consensual domain of software's interactions with itself and other software. Of critical importance is the realization that each stratum must have an independent tendency for self-organization, adaptation and movement.

MP3, la battaglia continua
di Francesco Cisternino

Otto delle quindici tracce presenti nel nuovo album "A tribute to Jim Reeves" del cantante country americano Charles Pride sono apparse la scorsa settimana su una pagina Web "privata" di Yahoo!. La cosa sembrerebbe del tutto comune visti i tempi che corrono, se non fosse per due ragioni. La prima è che i brani erano già disponibili online prima dell'uscita del cd, previsto per venerdì scorso; secondariamente, le copie risultavano protette da un sistema antipirateria fresco fresco, messo a punto dalla SunnComm di Phoenix.

Conversions
by Alex Galloway

Net art is about *conversions*. Why conversions? Perhaps because net art needs data like paintings need pigment, and converting data from one form to another gives net artists the basic materials they need for artmaking. The conversions stem also from our fascination with transformation, a type of digital alchemy where the use of an intermediary substrate (ones and zeros) lets artists convert IP addresses to colors, video to ASCII text, HTML to animation, and so on. In recent months net art has become more and more focused on this "phase shift" process whereby one data mode is translated into another. Let's have a look.

<no more tv>
(audiences, online communities and radical democracy)
by José Luis Brea

No more TV. I am not suggesting the negation of the attributes of the device as an instrument of communication, of social interaction, of *democratization* of the cultural experience: instead, I propose a radical discussion about the mechanisms that regulate its *real* existence in a "*free* market" context (the existing one, to be precise), seeing that the possibility of its effective social existence ever being contemplated again is virtually nil, except perhaps occasionally (in isolated circles such as festivals, ok), in terms of *public service*, as a territory generically protected by some *welfare state* revised project, I mean.