[Reader-list] technological imagination by lanes

[Shveta Sarda]

dear all...

what constitutes knowledge? who determines what information flows, what is 
contained and controlled? does there exist a repertoir of stories, narrations 
outside of technocratic, dominant, expert languages? how do, and how can, 
edges, margins, peripheries, in-between spaces strategically excluded from 
dominant media use, create and develop media tactically? does the present 
technological juncture provide a possibility for displacing dominant 
discourses without reverting to the strategies and techniques used in them?

the following is an introductory note on the technological imagination of the 
cybermohalla. it forms a part of 'galiyon se / by lanes', a first book 
pulished from the media lab (compughar) of cybermohalla at LNJP basti, delhi.

shveta

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technological imagination of the cybermohalla:
briefly, the co-ordinates

The Internet, which is primarily the interconnection of many sub networks, is 
constituted of a community of online users spread across physical spaces. It 
works independent of hardware infrastructure and with multiple protocols. 
These protocols do not implicitly rely on hardware specific addressing for 
transport. Simply put, the Internet then is mechanism that enables 
communication between heterogeneous networks.

One way of connecting via the Internet requires us to dial-up to a local 
Internet Service Provider. This mandates access to resources such as a 
computer and a phone line.

Every machine gets a unique address, called IP (Internet Protocol) address 
which consists of a quartet of a byte. (A byte = 8 bits. Bits are the lowest 
units of information.) A hypothetical address would look like (a.b.c.d), for 
example 192.68.22.56. This address also somewhat indicates where the machine 
exists on the Internet 'map' of the globe.

Users tend to remember names better than numbers, especially if the number set 
is large. That is why translation of IP addresses into names, and vice versa 
becomes important.

A name. For instance www.sarai.net. This is the name of the machine that one 
accesses for information. This name is translated (to the digit form using a 
distributed database of names and IP addresses called DNS, or the Domain Name 
Server.

Access to resources is based on a client/server basis on the Net. This means 
that one machine requests a service from another, which then provides it 
using a pre-mediated protocol.
Machine A -------ISP (A) --------- ISP (B) --------- Machine B

Information, say any message, is organised in blocks for transmission. These 
are units of binary information (1s and 0s), called packets. These travel via 
different routes on the Net before they reach their destination, where they 
are reassembled again. Certain predetermined paramenters ensure that Internet 
resources are used efficiently so that any one machine or network does not 
hog them all.

Any machine on the Net, say Machine A, only knows how to deliver packets to 
the next computer on the route. The router directs the route of the packets. 
The packets then travel from one router to the other till they reach the 
network on which the destined machine exists.
Machine A --- ISP (A) ---- Router 1 ---- Router 2 ---- ISP (B) ---- Machine B

Internet Protocol, also known as TCP/IP is a set of protocols which provides a 
range of services and transport mechanisms. IP layer, which is the lowest in 
the TCP/IP stack, is responsible for addressing and routing of packets. TCP 
(Transport Control Protocol) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) form the 
intermediate layers responsible for safe and reliable packet delivery. 
Various services like HTTP, SMTP form the application layer which is used by 
the user for information retrieval.

If addresses tell us the location of the machine, it is the Uniform Resource 
Locators (URL) that give us the knowledge about where the client machine can 
draw a resource or service. For instance, when we want to access some 
information from yahoo, the URL we type in is http://www.yahoo.com/
Expanded, this becomes http://www.yahoo.com:80/index.htm
or
index.html

Each of these parts of the URL (http, ://, www.yahoo.com, :80, index.htm) has 
a logic to it. For instance, http tells the client the way it can access the 
resource. HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. This is the 
client/server protocol used for exchanging documents on the World Wide Web. 
HTTP defines the protocol to be followed to get the resource.

Resources are also available through FTP, gopher. Telnet apart from http. Each 
of these has a different set of protocols that are followed. 

HTTP is popularly known as the World Wide Web, or www. It is a distributed 
information retreival system that operates over the Internet which makes 
available documents via URLs. Significantly, however, in its 
conceptualisation *which was by Tim Berners-Lee, the Web was not just for 
browsing, but also for browsers to be editors of the content they access.

On the Net, content (be it a movie, a book, music, or software) travels in a 
digital language of 1s and 0s, allowing for the copying, replication, 
reproduction of resources.  This diminishing cost of reproduction and 
delivery allows one to share resources and ideas with those interested, and 
is becoming easier as Internet access becomes increasingly available over 
high-speed, broadband connections. What this also makes possible is for the 
constant regeneration and reworking of ideas and works, for these to be 
organic concepts, not discrete, static and `completed' units.

The contexts - worlds, platforms, forums - it is possible to create through 
the Internet also provide for a paradigm of creativity and communication. 
Peer to peer (P2P), for instance.

Most Internet based applications, work on a client/server model, where the 
difference between a server and a client in a way centralises the mechanism 
of searching and access to a resource. In P2P the client is also the server, 
and vice versa. In P2P, when a machine provides resources, the software acts 
as a server. When it has to access the resource, it starts working as a 
client.

Peer to peer is a class of applications that takes advantages of resources - 
storage, cycles, content, human presence - available at the edges of the 
Internet, or the links between the routers. Because accessing these 
decentralised resources means operating in an environment of unstable 
connectivity and unpredictable IP addresses, P2P nodes have significant or 
total autonomy from central servers.

On a Gnutella network, for instance, you access a central server. This server, 
instead of giving you the resource you seek, gives you IP addresses of a set 
of peers with whom you can interact. You put forth your search query to your 
peers who check if they have the resource and also pass on the query to their 
peers. Similarly, when someone else is looking for a resource through your 
immediate peers, you receive a query about it through them. Different P2P 
networks work in different ways.

Is there a significance in interaction and collaboration with peers? What does 
it mean when edges, margins and in-between spaces become alive, pulsating, 
interacting? When clients are also servers? When users are also producers, 
browsers are also editors? When centres are dislocated and resources are 
dispersed? When diversity and multiplicity thrive? When ideas are not static 
or `owned', but shared and developed collaboratively? When unpredictable 
addresses and routes with unstable connectivity are generators of knowledge, 
sites of narration, and nodes & zones of communication?

Making knowledge collaboratively and in commons means many things to many 
people. For software programmers, it has meant the developing of Free 
Software. 

GNU/Linux is a common Free Software Operating System. Free Software is 
typically developed by self-organised volunteers whose members communicate 
and collaborate via the Internet.

[`Free Software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept 
you should think of `free speech', not `free beer'. Free Software refers to 
users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the 
software. More precisely, it refers to users' freedom to run, copy, 
distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers 
to four kinds of freedom for the user of the software:
freedom 0 - The freedom to run the programme, for any purpose.
freedom 1 - The freedom to study how the programme works,and adapt it to your 
needs. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
freedom 2 - The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
freedom 3 - The freedom to improve the programme, and release your 
improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
From: Free Software Foundation - http://www.gnu.org/philophy/free-sw.html]

If a dissatisfaction with the `traditional' closed method of production of 
software can lead to the creation of free software, an unhappiness with the 
dominant modes of reproduction of knowledge can make us seek newer paradigms, 
then surely as users, as receivers, as peoples who are represented, we can 
also narrate, create, generate and inscribe that which exists with a new, 
an-other meaning.

Tactical media are low-cost media that are hybrid - constantly crossing the 
borders that define the `old' and the `new', the `mainstream' and the 
`alternative'. They include radio, local T.V. channels, cameras, wall 
magazines, posters, street threatre, books, online forums, and more. They are 
about subjective documentation and reporting by peoples who have an 
investment and engagement with that which is being communicated, narrated, 
told; about multiplicity, heterogeneity; about critiquing, questioning; about 
forging alliances; about creating cheap `do-it-yourself'  media and 
exploiting consumer electronics and the expanded forms of distribution. About 
resisting and opposing exclusion, and actively, intuitively and practically 
carving out spaces for interfacing and narrating.

As users then, do we have a responsibility? Perhaps a need, a responsibility 
to be conscious of how we use `technology' as consumers. To be aware of how 
things work. And to participate, perhaps, in the creation of easy, mobile, 
agile, low-tech innovations to access tools of cultural production.

note compiled by shveta
in collaboration with garage at sarai

from
galiyon se / by lanes
http://www.sarai.net/community/cybermohalla/book01/bylanes.htm
(available online)
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(please send comments / responses to cybermohalla at sarai.net)