[Reader-list] On the ReaderList

[Monica Narula]

Dear Readers,

It would be great if you all could have a read, and respond.

ABOUT THE READER LIST
If you have been on this list for a while like some of us at Sarai 
have been, then your mailbox will have piled up with a lot of stuff 
by now. Perhaps it exasperates you at times, perhaps you are enraged 
by some of the stuff
that you have read and perhaps sometimes a posting has really made 
your day.  But whatever be the case, we have by now come to have a 
certain feeling for and affinity to this list and we think that it 
makes a lively space to be in
and post to.

It has been six months since the Reader List began, partly to serve 
as a platform for online discussion on the themes that emerged in the 
Sarai Reader 01, and partly to create a lively community that 
discusses and debates key
issue in new & old media  practice and theory and reflects on the 
experience of the everyday, as well as technology, culture and 
politics in city spaces.
The Sarai Reader's concern with the theme of the Public Domain also 
meant that the list was especially open to reflections on what the 
nature of a free public space, in our cities, and in our various 
practices might come to mean. The people who began posting on the 
list included telecommunications engineers, social theorists, 
activists, filmmakers, artists and software programmers.

LOCATING THE LIST
For those who are new to the list, it is administered out of Sarai in 
Delhi, on a server located in Amsterdam,  and we now have now around 
a hundred and sixty members, spread over many parts of the world, 
with strong
concentrations in Delhi, Mumbai, Amsterdam, Bangalore, Lahore, 
Kathmandu, Berlin, Chicago, the eastern Atlantic seaboard (including 
New York), Brisbane, Sydney and London. So you could say that the 
List is beginning to
be truly reflective of the dispersed nature of internet culture. But 
we definitely need a lot more people from places that are nearer (in 
geographic terms) and perhaps more distant (in virtual terms). It 
would be great to get
postings from Calcutta, Dacca or Ahmedabad...

A lot of people have logged on to the list by reading the sticker 
that describes it and gives the url for it on the inside back cover 
of the reader, and a lot of people joined in because they heard about 
it (by word of mouth -
the oldest internet tool known to humanity).

LURKERS AND POSTERS
As in all lists, (and especially new lists) the majority of 
subscribers are also lurkers, (everyone who has ever been on an 
online discussion has lurked for some time - there is nothing wrong 
with lurking as long as it does not
last for ever). I am sure that you would agree with me that we are 
now able to recognise the personalities and quirks of regular 
posters, and that we even look forward to our personal favourite 
correspondent who has been silent for some time.

DIRECTION(S)?
But we at Sarai who have been involved with the list on a day to day 
basis feel that it is time that a directions (or directions) for the 
list began to emerge from the community of subscribers. To this end, 
we propose that we
spend some time discussing the list itself and how best to make it as 
lively and convivial as possible, how best to maintain a provocative 
edge so that there is always room for fresh and new perspectives, and 
how to ensure the
broadest possible participation, so that the list does not become 
subject to anyone's private agenda, but a true digital commons, very 
much in the 'public domain', where everything that is relevant to 
cities, media and the flows of information, culture, knowledge and 
power can be discussed and talked about.

WHAT SHOULD THE LIST DISCUSS
So far, there has been a tendency on the list to have a great deal of 
discussion on computer technology, (especially free software) the 
internet, online surveillance, privacy, even water. Even though these 
strands may look
quite disparate, interestingly enough, a common binding principle has 
been reflecting on public access to resources. Some of these may have 
seemed to speak to and from specialists, but we are sure that most 
people got the
gist/essence of the discussion, although we urge all posters that 
they try and make their postings sufficiently accessible to 
non-technical people. The habit of using metaphors and experiences 
from outside one's immediate
discipline and experience is a good one, it connects people with 
'idea bridges' and the more 'idea bridges' there are the more walking 
across can be done,

Anyway, what we do realize is that it is not necessary for these 
issues to dominate the list to the exclusion of all other issues.

TECHIES AND TALKIES
The reason for all this is not that there are too many postings by 
techies. The enthusiasm of the techie community on this list is 
something that all of us can learn from.The willingness to enter into 
an argument, post something
that is interesting, and take issue with each other, in a frank and 
civilised manner that the techies on this list have demonstrated is 
evidence that we can have a reasonable and interesting online culture 
of debate.

INTER DISCIPLINARY CONVERSATIONS
This list is a platform for inter-disciplinary conversation, and that 
can happen if the techies, artists, activists and the theorists who 
are on the list realize that they are not talking to people of their 
own kind alone.

This list is as much about the last film that you saw that made you 
sit up and think, as much as it is about the last piece of code that 
challenged your humanity. It is also as much about the delight and 
the rage of living in a
city, and it is especially looking for resonances between urban 
experiences located in different places.

To give but one example, there were some postings (mainly forwards) 
on the G8 Protests in Genoa, but no attempt by say, someone in Delhi 
to make sense of how the protests were being covered by the media in 
India. If that had been done, we could for instance have seen how a 
global consensus is shaped by the media, even when the events 
themselves are at a remove.

The list needs to have a sustained take on other issues of 
significance, like the presence of media in urban spaces, the 
politics of information, spaces of autonomy and freedom in 
contemporary culture - the aesthetics, ethics and
politics of representation - all of these are equally important to 
us, and we need to start talking about all these as well.

GLOBAL/LOCAL
What is also important is the ability of the list to have a sustained 
reflection on what goes on around us in the immediate vicinity of our 
lives. There has been a reasonably active discussion thread on online 
surveillance
and the politics of information which at times wove in the realities 
of many places, (esp. Delhi and Amsterdam) onto a complex map of what 
happens when information and power coalesce, but such discussions 
have tended to be
limited to thoughts on the 'Digital Domain' alone.

This skews the list into a mirror of the activity that happens 
everywhere and a silent, mute bystander to what goes on close to our 
own offline realities. We all know how easily our sense of what 
constitutes our reality is defined
by the mainstream media. How the filters that are locked into place 
by the big media also ensure that many things that concern us remain 
unexpressed, unknown and unarticulated. This is particularly true of 
the happenings and
realities in South Asian cities. This list can then be seen as a 
space for the free encounters  for the ideas, reports and reflections 
that either slipped out of, or were suppressed by the 'big' (old & 
new) media.

Over time, we could see a whole cluster of lists emerging around the 
Reader List, with sub-themes, and perhaps with invited moderations, 
or proposals for discussions on specific topics. All this can happen, 
and will depend on how much initiative and energy we all put into the 
list.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE
For starters, we have a few  suggestions. These are not mandatory, 
but we would like you all to give them due consideration, as a 
sketchy roadmap of where we can go from here.

1. That people on the list (veterans and newbies alike) write a 
paragraph about themselves and their interests and and send this to 
me (the list administrator). This will help us all get a sense of who 
we are, and allow many lurkers to have their say. I will prepare 
digests of these postings and put them back into the list.

2. That topics and threads for discussion be proposed for discussion, 
within the broad ambit of the interconnections between old and new 
media practices, city spaces, info-politics and net criticism.

3. That the list spends some time discussing itself, and what 
direction(s) it wants to take.

3, That we try and ensure that as much material that reflects South 
Asian realities gets into the list as do news and views from 
elsewhere.

4. That Original postings constantly keep coming into the list, and 
that the list does not turn into a cooking pot of 'forwards' and 
'announcements' alone.

5. That no one uses the list for spamming, private agendas, 
propaganda, personal aggrandizement , pet hates and advertising.

This has been a long e-mail, but I hope that it can give all of us on 
the list something to chew (and then post) on. I would welcome any 
responses, and urge that they be made on the list itself, and I hope 
that this can spark a
thread of discussions on discussion itself.

Warm regards, and a welcome to all those who are new on the list.

Monica Narula
List Administrator
-- 
Monica Narula
Sarai:The New Media Initiative
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
www.sarai.net