KTub8

Digital Solidarity
very long time, such as the reorganisation of geopolitics,
resource depletion, or climate change. The consequences
of any of these are not hopeful. It’s hard to see anything
good coming out of climate change, for example, despite
the giddy prospects of opening up the Northwest Passage
for shipping or of better access to natural resources in
the thawing Arctic. The reorganisation of geopolitics
is likely to make it very difficult to create an effective
new framework for international co-operation in the
foreseeable future. The confluence of all of these currents
doesn’t make things any better. At the moment, their
most visible effect is the deep, yet uneven crisis of many
political and economic systems around the globe, both
in terms of their capacity to address urgent problems
and of their legitimacy to represent their citizens. In
what follows, I will focus on western experiences, simply
because my knowledge is limited. Here, in particular,
the crisis is also a cultural crisis because these countries
have traditionally constituted the core of the Gutenberg
Galaxy and are now facing a particularly steep learning
curve as they try to adapt to the world outside of it.
In addition to this complex set of overlapping
dynamics is one that is, indeed, more directly related
to the media. At the core of the most advanced
technological, scientific and cultural processes we
can observe a growing tension between the social
character of production and the private character of
appropriation. Increasingly, productive processes are
no longer contained within traditional economic units,
such as private firms, but are diffused into society
at large, embedded in complex webs of individuals,
loosely organised groups, densely organised volunteer
networks, foundations, firms, corporations, and public
11