Re: <nettime> Armin Medosch: The Rise of the Network Commons: A History of Community Infrastructure

[Brian Holmes via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Thanks to all for this wonderful initiative, publishing Armin's last book.

For a time I dialogued with him constantly, and was glad to meet frequently
in Vienna back in the late 2000s-early 2010s.

Armin was fascinated with techno-economic innovation theory, which he had
gotten first-hand by doing an ORF radio interview with one of the original
thinkers on the subject, Carlota Perez. She actually coined Armin's key
historical concept, the techno-economic paradigm shift. But what really
interested him was the entire space of Marxist crisis theory, and the hope
of engaging with a social transformation process materially, through
collective praxis. That's a pretty amazing span of engagements, if you just
pause to think about it.

Armin would have had a fantastic perspective on what is happening today.
Because under the worst of circumstances, we are witnessing an attempt to
launch a new techno-economic paradigm, based on AI and its applications in
automated production, logistics, management, spectacle and war.

Look at the record highs of both Nasdaq and S&P 500 today, completely
driven by the megacap tech stocks, Nvidia uber alles. What that represents
is investor confidence in an innovation pipeline that's suddenly full to
bursting. Yet what today's stock-market peaks also represent is something
like a risk of last resort, an investor appetite born of cynical
desperation. The thing is, this really feels like the last possible boom,
before the civilizational decay that everyone sees coming. Armin, for his
part, would have surely loved to hack a new tech boom as he did with the
Internet. But he would have had some acidly realistic commentary when
confronted with the world today.

Carlota Perez is a bit like Shoshana Zuboff - these people who dress up
their theory to appeal to a variety of interest groups. Perez thought that
a new family of machines, combined with smart industrial policy and
enlightened investment logic, could bring about a lovely paradigm shift
with exciting and lucrative aspects for all. In the wide-ranging
discussions about techno-economic paradigm shifts that Armin and I and
Felix Stalder, Gerald Nestler and many others used to have in Vienna, I
always brought in the sociology of crisis, and the geo-economic process of
hegemonic transition.

Today, just to find out what he'd say, I'd suggest to Armin that these two
things are completely warping the normative narratives of innovation theory
a la Carlota Perez. We've got a techno-economic paradigm shift coinciding
with a hegemonic transition, from the old declining US to China as the new
center of global capital accumulation. The result of both these processes
is a massive human redundancy that fuels a destructive politics of
resentment among the formerly entitled populations of the so-called West.
Yet weirdly, the next last tech boom looks like it will be born despite
everything, under chaotic lights.

May some more network commons be built among all this! Rest in peace, Armin.



On Wed, May 28, 2025 at 6:08 AM Geert Lovink via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

> (dear all, i am proud to present this INC theory on demand #58 publication
> by the late Armin Medosch, who has always been active on nettime till he
> passed away in 2017, now accessible as pdf, epub on print on demand. thanks
> to volker and adam for this amazing, stressfree production. /geert)
>
>
> https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/tod-58-the-rise-of-the-network-commons-a-history-of-community-infrastructure/
>
> The Rise of the Network Commons: A History of Community Infrastructure
> By Armin Medosch
>
> This book is a message in a bottle that washed ashore ten years after it
> was sent. Armin Medosch began documenting self-managed local networking
> initiatives with his book Freie Netze published in the German language in
> 2004. He iteratively developed The Rise of the Network Commons in draft
> chapters published on his website, The Next Layer, from 2013 until 2015,
> before his death in 2017.
>
> The Rise of the Network Commons is a cultural history of ‘the exciting
> world of wireless community network projects’ that spread from its origins
> in London, Berlin, Vienna, Copenhagen to Spain, Greece, North- and South
> America, and Africa. While deploying cutting-edge technology, the movement
> is made up of technical, social, and artistic hackers with a range of
> backgrounds and skills.
>
> This is the twofold thesis that Armin develops in this book: Involving
> ordinary people in building a network commons has a profound emancipatory
> effects on them. At the same time, doing so contributes to the
> democratization of technology: As a community we can begin to shape future
> technologies to serve our local needs rather than benefit commercial
> interests.
>
> As a history of community infrastructure, The Rise of the Network Commons
> is a highly topical narrative for strengthening the resilience of our local
> last mile digital infrastructures and re-enforcing regional digital
> self-sovereignty through direct community participation and knowledge
> sharing. We build the wireless commons by becoming sovereign neighbors of
> practice and expertise.
>
> Armin Medosch (1962 – 2017) was an Austrian media artist, journalist,
> curator, theorist, critic, and a pioneer of internet culture in Europe. As
> art activist, he co-initiated the transformation of the ship MS Stubnitz, a
> former GDR deep-sea fishing vessel, into a floating art space. He is well
> recognized as a journalist and as the co-editor of Telepolis. As an
> academic he earned a Master of Arts in Interactive Digital Media at the
> University of Sussex and a PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London and
> continued to his last days to publish, teach and research.
>
> Author: Armin Medosch
> Edited by: Volker Ralf Grassmuck and Adam Burns
>
> With special thanks to: Ina Zwerger, Elektra Aichele, Panayotis
> Antoniadis, Gregers Baur-Petersen, Andreas Bräu, Sebastian Büttrich, Teresa
> Dillon, André Gaul, Aaron Kaplan, Geert Lovink, Monic Meisel, Mauricio
> Román Miranda, Jürgen Neumann, Ignacio Nieto Larrain, Julian Priest,
> Enrique Rivera, Tim Schütz, Felix Stalder, Thomas Thaler, Ulf Treger, Sven
> (C-ven) Wagner, Simon Worthington, Manuel Orellana Sandoval and everyone at
> Señal 3, TV Piola.
>
> Cover design: Katja van Stiphout
> Book production and design: Ruben Stoffelen
> Published by the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2025.
> ISBN: 978-90-83520-92-6
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org