I was the only pupil one with a fucking ThinkPad there!
Bros will catch my drift;)
The reason I am writing this second “out-dated” piece about this year’s CEU summer school is fairly simple: I want the points and conclusions to be read and disseminated ^_^
“I will not start the traktor just for one furrow.” – we discussed about this Serbian saying. Apparently it was hard to remember the name of that line one make when plow. I may hold myself off (even faster and less deliberate) the actions, but here I am – slowly but steadily working on several very important issues which are already changed my life irreversibly.
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Now. Turn this shit on and read further:
If we speak about media today and so called new media, respectively and their responsibility/power in today’s society, there is one very important fact. At the beginning of what we perceive to be media today were “noble” corporations (they were not corporations in the form familiar to us today but still on that scale back than they were very corporations) drafting out what the principles of journalism are. Having that giants “finished the job” of putting the basic moral and ethics of journalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards), our society ended up with centralized and monopolized responsibility, along with ethics and moral issues (all of them taken away by various institutions). This is the pre-Internet era I am talking about. So, as the rest of human “achievements” in pre-Internet age such are energetic installations/harvesting, transportation, education, food production, health care, people security – you name it – all of that was entirely monopolized in one way or another by corporations or the state. What Internet age brought to us is functional demonopolization of that responsibility, and resources as well.
Today we have a community driven concepts (more and more solutions come every day) on basic human needs (copyrighted and mystified “achievements” of the pre-Internet age). With open concepts came global awareness as well, so that “achievements” are no longer in untouchable hands of corporations – today we, the citizens, have the opportunity to handle almost every aspect of our basic human needs. That mechanism is not redundant as it should be, but that future is now palpable. Here comes personal responsibility: this will only work if we consciously take that distributed parts of responsibility now!
Look at the open hardware initiatives, http://www.wikispeed.com/ for example. The ridicule of monopolization is fairly obvious, right? We are lucky cosmic bastards when it comes to Internet as well as it was to firearms for example. Eastern part of Euro-Asian continent had knowledge of gunpowder ages before silly Europeans were even aware of firearms capabilities. Back then, we were lucky to have a social and lawful “development” of Europe to handle new unpresented gunpowder power – so Europeans did not destroyed themselves playing with “new basic human rights”. Instead, they invented and legalized the colonialism and slavery:D During the cold war humanity was also “lucky” to have poor Hiroshima burned to the ground just prior the USA – RU cockfight so the whole world knew what is the real scale of the unspoken shit if it hits the fan.
We are lucky with this Internet too – no one could see this implications we have today, also we are a bit more conscious as a society than we were with the gunpowder and A-bombs (yeah, now it’s the two way feedback loop, but sill). Internet is doing a weird stuff today – that stuff is demonopolization and decentralization of responsibility. It’s obvious to me after terabytes and terabytes of Internet-data impregnated in my frontal lobe: No one is more responsible than the other, and/only when no one is more responsible than all of us – this to be sustainable is mutually dependable ofc. That dynamic distribution of resources/responsibility shows to be crucial for balanced development. You can see todays projects raising thousands of dollars in donations per hour and no one is nagging about that mainly because that indiegogo / kicksterter funding system seem to resonate with that neutral affinity of noble peers. It works, no one gets angry, it’s not costy, it’s efficient and it’s fun!
Press, toolkit for media development, CEU summer school – yeah.
The old concepts are gone or dying. If you are that human of the past age and think/live in rules and regulations, well, these are bad times for you. But if you happen to be a fluid and open person these are adequate times for you;) That procedures, in pre-Internet age called “rules” are written and forgotten every second now – old expectations are gone, useless. “Fame“, “celebrities“, “the one and special man who will change everything“, “the most suitable and universal product just for you and your taste” – all that shit has no value no more. You can not trick new kids around the corner with that bullshit – if they can not share the shit with their friends it’s useless. Simple as that. This acts of communication are the very foundation of new age without scarcity (scarcity in information never was an issue, but the scarcity in physical word was/is the cause of almost all problems we know). We can clearly see the formation of a fluent distribution based on balanced affinity.
To wrap this up – media corporations/institutions (as well as other corporations in other fields) did their job – they unintentionally installed this zero (almost redundant) network of communication and resources distribution. This zero network is alienating from its creators every second of its existence. Responsibility is finally demonopolized along with the resources needed for that. BUT! You better not be tricked with this monster network – the real danger could be that we all end up in a endless loop of feeding that “independent” monster network which surely needs resources and maintaining. Moment to act and save integrity is now! You know what you need to do!
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The name and goal of summer school was: >>> Online Free Expression and Communication Policy Advocacy: a Toolkit for Media Development <<<
To be fairly honest I did not see what was the catch with this school aside the great networking which is already working for me. So, the overall goal to my (practical and disputant mind:) was a bit hollow. On top of this, the problem with the group and our lecturers is the same I have these days communicating with my peers on several important issues. No one crypt chats/emails! That seem to be a common practical problem rather then something else.
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I consider myself fairly average person. Physically, intellectually and philosophically – also I look at the world around me as something that should evolve at least slow as I evolve. Apparently that is not the case. I am not a fucking Gandhi nor Stallman but I do step out of my comfort zone. This hacked & laggy linux mint (but damn stable bastard) I am using now is one important step to the wild zones I am talking about. So, do not be afraid to experiment and learn on your mistakes – it’s still the best way to do it. I accept the fact that I am stupid in order to improve myself.
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Aside my personal feeling of the CEU “goal” hollowness, Soros dude actually puts the money for open society initiatives. There is no conspiracy bullshit behind this. Important points and networks are formed and that is added value to society – simply because there was no exact plan for this particular outcome. At least I know that “they” do not have a clue about the sparked weird shit in my head I have after this summer school;)
“If you build it they will come.”
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sources/further reading:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122277438762233.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Bauwens
http://p2pfoundation.net/Shanzhai
http://oowsection.org/2012/02/22/they-are-exploiting-us-why-we-all-work-for-facebook-for-free/
blaeks.wordpress.com 
Excellent!