Geert Lovink on Mon, 11 Aug 1997 17:50:16 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> HIP: interview with marta (european counter network-rome) |
note: this article is one of the results of the on-line journal which was produced during the Hacking In Progress event, last weekend. The live net reporting marked the start of the magazine of the digital city Amsterdam. You can find the text, audio and video reports at: http://magazine.dds.nl/ For the first time, a number of political providers from europe held an informal meeting to get to know each other. After the presentation of contrast.org (nl) groups from Paris, Italy (ecn), Hamburg (nadir.org) etc. discussed about forms of collaborations like the newly created international federation of independant media and the tactical media network, which is currently based at Hybrid Workspace in Kassel. (geert) -------- Interview with Marta from Rome about ecn (european counter network) and islands in the net. by bas r. Can you explain what ecn is and does? Ecn is something like a political provider: we offer space, e-mail, knowledge, network services (of course without asking money) to groups and individuals of the underground scene in Italy and outside. Groups and individuals must have a few characteristics: they must be self organizing, anti-fascist, anti-sexist and anti-racist. How did this initiative start? Ecn is now an open political provider, but its roots are from autonomia operaia, a political movement that started in the 70s in Italy. We started very early with communication technology for the Italian underground and computer scene. In 1989 we created a network of BBS to exchange information between movement radios, social centers and squats in Italy. After three years we joined another new-made network, called Cybernet, and passed into Fido technology. These two networks, ECN and Cybernet found somehow the space to share two souls: a political one from ecn and a cyberpunk, techno-political one from Cybernet. We shared (and still share!) different discussion areas: the main one is the cyberpunk area, where we speak about every argument concerning the use of new technology, politics, transgender, drugs, counter-information and much more. Other areas are about social centers, cyber rights and more. The network of Fido BBS's still survives, and just last year we decided to add an internet service to our efforts, called Isole Nella Rete (islands in the net, go http:// www.ecn.org). This is a new project, that involves new people and new experiences from both original networks, ecn and cybernet. Did this 'opening up' towards the internet have consequences for the contents of the network? The explosion of the internet arrived in Italy in 1994. Before this, the internet was accessible only for universities and for research purposes. So, when it went public and became commercialized, the interest of the general public in life on the net grew. More people became aware of the possibility to get or to share information on the net - and more people learned about ecn and got progressively involved in it. Isole nella Rete chose to open its services to every group in need of a place to organise themselves on the net. The conditions of access are the ones mentioned above. Opening up to the internet also brought discussions on cyberrights and related issues to a larger public. New interests have risen amongst the larger public because of the internet explosion and our islands on the net initiative, like the importance of anonymity in the digital age. Anonymity was considered a bourgeois desire at first, but after people learned more about the importance of this issue in the digital world, where you must defend yourself in a different way compared to the analogical world, they got involved in this discussion. Anarchists used the islands for informing people on the legal actions of the state against them. This made the anarchist movement more sensitive for communication technology; before that they only saw the negative sides of it. What about the sense of community? Is it different on the islands as compared to the BBS? With the Fido BBS technology there was (and still is) a clear sense of community, as compared to the islands in the net website. On the islands are now 4 mailing lists: about social centers, cyberrights, zapatistas and 'movement', a more general area. But these mailing lists are not so 'immediate' as the Fido bulletin boards are. People feel somehow less involved. They see the website (the islands in the net) as an instrument to publish stuff (you read it and maybe answer sometimes) and not as a place to socialise. On the Fido boards people really feel present in a place they share with other people. This sense of community is much lower on the islands. For the cyberrights discussion, there is a gateway between Fido and the web, the messages are the same (if it works). Now the other areas of Fido are being gatewayed to newsgroups (instead of the web) because we think these give a better sense of community. What happens on the islands today? First, there is a project on the islands on political prisoners who have published their diary (in print). We have put that diary on the net with the possibility for everyone to add their own appointments and ideas. It has become a kind of guestbook connecting political stories to all kinds of personal and public events in daily life. Another project of the islands: we offer a real audio service to movement radios by publishing audio info points - this could turn into daily radio news bulletins over the net. We also mirror other sites like the German magazine Radikal. And we offer space to political groups from outside Italy, like ecn France and a Spanish political action group. Apart from discussing issues like anonymity we also build the tools necessary for getting it! Like an anonymous remailer, the 4th in Europe. And we offer a collection of software like PGP for encrypting your messages. This includes software from the US for instance, that should not have been exported ;-). These are all the things that the islands in the net are doing themselves. Beside these projects a lot of other initiatives are guests on the islands. Sometimes we have to teach them how to work with the net. We believe in having as many participants fitting the profile as possible, even if they are sometimes 'politically incompatible', like Italia Cuba and the anarchists pages. Everyone should be able to join, this makes the islands richer we think. Now there is a structure (websites, newsgroups, e-mail, anonymous remailers, etc.) and a place where all info is gathered. For the future we are looking at ways to re-create the web more as a tool to share information, we want to bring more interactivity into it, and show how everyone can organise their initiatives on the net. This we show to both the general public and the underground. Finally we want to extend our international contacts. If you are interested, go http://www.ecn.org and write to info@ecn.org! --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de