The Guardian published an article online by Eli Pariser relaying confirmation of many of the worst fears one might have about the way the Internet is being shaped by corporations.
You can read it here, but the gist of it is that as the Internet experience is shaped into a more “personalized” experience, the more the filters for what we as users experience online is filtered out for us in decisions made by third parties, whose stake in making these decisions for us is their own financial gain. I think I’ve already mentioned on here my feelings about how people have been shepherded into arenas where the scope of activity is delimited by boundaries that re-affirm those we are accustomed to in everyday life, ie the way that Facebook’s model forced the hand of privatization of social networking to primarily only being in contact with one’s group of friends. The insidiousness of what this article points to is how increasingly these limit-decisions are made for us, and even more disturbing, they are being made invisibly and, probably irrevocably.
So it was refreshing to listen to a recently released interview with Adam Overton, a Los Angeles based artist, composer, performer, massage therapist, who is also very active in building an inclusive community of experimental artists, not only in Los Angeles, but also online. Listen here. It’s refreshing to hear someone who is so dedicated to the open and inclusive possibilities that the Internet can facilitate. In the interview, Overton mentions that he is as interested in music and work made by people he doesn’t know at all, as he is in the work made by those closest to him. It is heartening to hear that, via his wiki Upload Download Perform, which is an online resource for experimental composers to share their scores with a larger community, he has come in contact with composers and artists living in far off cities. While the community of people interested in experimental music and performance may not be the large, Overton is proposing a model for a community that can only grow through its inclusiveness, rather than the ever collapsing inward online world described by Eli Pariser.