nettime: Rewired

[dwh@berlin.snafu.de (David Hudson)]

Rewired. <www.rewired.com>

Face the reality of the future as an open question, not a dead certainty.

Because the future is not now. Big names with deep pockets are placing
their bets online, but the race has hardly been won, much less begun. A lot
of those bets are falling on anything Webbed, and some of them are already
being lost. But the Web won't dry up and blow away if all the hot shots
pack up and go back home. It wasn't built for them (or anybody!) in the
first place and was doing fine before they swooped in.

Rewired has come onto the Web to pose questions...Who was it that decided
the Web is the Net's killer app anyway? And if some of the smartest and
richest and most powerful movers and shakers are putting their heads
together on the Web, Why isn't it working?

And to nudge our way to some answers...We'll do our fair share of bitching
about the state of the Web, but that's only half of it. For each of the
Web's wounds our fingers will be probing, we'll do our damnedest to make
that criticism constructive by opening up alternatives, fresh approaches,
while at the same time, providing you with the opportunity to do the same.

The third half is what we'll not be doing. We won't be making any
outrageous claims for utopian futures for all who can afford them. We'll be
making suggestions as to what may lie in store, but we sure as hell won't
be among those claiming that in the future, things will be as they are now,
only more so. Or among the others who latch onto one of the very many
technological innovations going on at present and paint the future in its
color. When we do dream out loud, and we will, we'll have enough respect
for you to keep at least one foot on the ground.

Above all, we'll keep the Web in perspective. We'll encourage you to get
off it occasionally - not just to go walking through the park; you can
worry about your real lives on your own - but to refresh your memory of
some of the other tricks online technology knows, the ones that already had
the Internet growing exponentially in the PreMosaic Era.

Some excellent minds and hands are tinkering right now on solutions to what
ails the Web, and what they come up with may do wonders and radically
change what it is to experience it. If so, we'll be the first to get up on
our feet and put our hands together. To those with solutions that are less
than wonderful, we'll wish better luck next time. But cursed is the fool
who tries to pull a fast one, claiming wonders for duds.

Rewired is net.crit for real people whose budget in terms of both time and
money is a lot like ours. Too tight to squander on hype and too precious to
buy into empty promises.

Reality check. Once a day, every day.

_________________________________________________________

David Hudson                    Rewired <www.rewired.com>
dwh@berlin.snafu.de             Journal of a Strained Net
dwh@sfbayguardian.com
                                Rhizome <www.rhizome.com>
...sponsored by...              New Media Art


        http://Zero.Tolerance.org/Hudson/Hudson.html

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