Geert Lovink - Quotes

We are drowning in an enormacy of data.
Lovink, Geert.

Real-time change – this is where the internet is heading at the moment – there is a need to reflect, to study what is emerging. I think theory should be ambitious and set further goals. I think there should be ways not to just reflect on what has been emerging last two months, years or even weeks, but it should regain a certain status, not as futurist knowledge, though that would be a good goal. I don’t think we could go back to good days of post modern theory of 80’s and 90’s where theories were being made up – that type of theory production is in crisis – decline.
Lovink, Geert.

Contemporary thinkers do not pay enough attention to details that we see here – the way these cameras are producing a new a visual culture, the way people relate to them while using them.
Lovink, Geert.

I think it is time to take online video seriously. On one hand it is good to take that rich visual art history from television, from film history. There is danger of looming theory of remediation. It kind of crushes the specificities of this medium, ignoring the new elements that are out there that previous media maybe touched or briefly incorporated but never further explored.
Lovink, Geert.

It’s not a task of cultural theory to only be interested in history of internet but a need to come up with critical concepts that may make a difference, to have potential of critical anticipation.
Lovink, Geert.

Once we have this so called semantic web it will be required that all that we upload will be required that we tag, what is voluntarily right now is very soon going to be become the standard.
Lovink, Geert.

The inherent logic of media these days to go faster and faster implies that there is absolutely no time left for history.
Lovink, Geert.

Potentially I see History as extremely subversive or annoying. These people are constantly being portrayed as trapped in their own history.
Lovink, Geert.

This is why we really have to critique the internal culture and work with them to make substantial changes, in the rather opaque way for instance editing is being done, the way for instance Wikipedia is being edited in the 2001 way, nothing has happened in terms of software development, new cultures in terms of people actively contributing to the internet culture now.
Lovink, Geert.

Once a location or behavior has become transparent, there is little chance to detect deviance.
Lovink, Geert."Escaping the Control Loops: Understanding Myspace" in: Kontrol Issue No. 1 "The Pornography of Fabrication Fear".

Activists have not yet dealt with this complex reality and might, as an initial response, condemn the pro-corporate media attitude of mainstream youngsters as naïve, immature and consumerist. While there may be some truth in this picture, such moralism often has little effect and is in fact irrelevant. A Chomsky-style lecture how evil the Rupert Murdoch empire, owner of FOX and MySpace is, will not result in less MySpace visitors. There is something wrong with media ownership and the dubious roles of venture capitalists and investors in Internet start-ups, not in the need for social networking sites as such. Non-profits should take the lead and not be the last to ask what a wiki is.
Lovink, Geert."Escaping the Control Loops: Understanding Myspace" in: Kontrol Issue No. 1 "The Pornography of Fabrication Fear".

One can go into detail and focus on tiny aspects of the classified information, but that does not increase the control over the subjects.
Lovink, Geert."Escaping the Control Loops: Understanding Myspace" in: Kontrol Issue No. 1 "The Pornography of Fabrication Fear".

The constant vigilance pressure changed the psyche of the people. But the technology is not the problem, but the combination of information and competition.We must again become masters of our time.
Lovink, Geert. "Essay on Franco Berardi and the Psychopathology of Info Overload" in: The Faz. June 22, 2010. (German)

Who wants to survive, it must be competitive, and who wants to be competitive, must be linked, record process a huge and ever-increasing flood of data and. This leads to permanent attention stress, less time remains for affectivity.
Lovink, Geert. "Essay on Franco Berardi and the Psychopathology of Info Overload" in: The Faz. June 22, 2010. (German)

We must closely monitor how people grow up in the information sphere.
Lovink, Geert. "Essay on Franco Berardi and the Psychopathology of Info Overload" in: The Faz. June 22, 2010. (German)

Is it ultimately the responsibility of individuals to monitor their Internet use so that it does not have a long-term impact on their cognition?
Lovink, Geert. "Mybrain.net: The Colonization of Real-Time and Other Trends in Web 2.0." in: Eurozine. March 18, 2010.

It seems that the cultural critics will have to sing along with the Daniel Dennetts of this world (loosely gathered on edge.org) in order to communicate their concerns.
Lovink, Geert. "Mybrain.net: The Colonization of Real-Time and Other Trends in Web 2.0." in: Eurozine March 18, 2010.

What place do we want to give digital devices and applications in our everyday life? Will the Internet overwhelm our senses and dictate our worldview? Or will we have the will and vision to master the tools?
Lovink, Geert. "Mybrain.net: The Colonization of Real-Time and Other Trends in Web 2.0." in: Eurozine. March 18, 2010.

Precisely because the universe in which we live is somehow a universe of dead conventions and artificiality, the only authentic real experience must be some extremely violent, shattering experience. And this we experience as a sense that now we are back in real life.
Lovink, Geert and Victoria Lynn (Interviewer). "Interview with Geert Lovink." in: Broadsheet Magazine. February, 2010.

The ideology of ‘participatory culture’ is a pressing issue. We know that of the whole potential, only 10% of people make active use of it, and of that 10% only 10% have a dominant voice. Therefore, to make democratic claims is weird. It’s post-representational.
Lovink, Geert and Victoria Lynn (Interviewer). "Interview with Geert Lovink." in: Broadsheet Magazine. February, 2010.

Our social lives are becoming the main source of income. Revenues no longer come from advertisements. The French theorist and economist Yann Moulier Boutang has described this process really well by using the ‘bees that pollinate’ metaphor. I like it not so much because he compares us with insects but because of the analogy with the billions of clicks we make each day. It’s us who create the user profiles. We play a vital and active, creative role in this process. We’re not passive victims of some capitalist plot. In the same way we need to rethink our attitude towards surveillance and control. Without a critical understanding of the ‘pollination’ process we will merely repeat old school they-rule-us approaches.
Lovink, Geert and Victoria Lynn (Interviewer). "Interview with Geert Lovink." in: Broadsheet Magazine. February, 2010.

We cannot just be users, consumers or prosumers. We have to break through the glass ceiling of the smooth interfaces and start programming.
Lovink, Geert and Victoria Lynn (Interviewer). "Interview with Geert Lovink." in: Broadsheet Magazine. February, 2010.

Today, we can’t even distinguish between the Internet and a network such as the Sicilian mafia: a classic social network that has its influence not only on the island but Italy and the world. It is an offline network related to family relationships, business ties, with a technical component. For young people of course they would think the other way around. They wouldn’t necessarily start with their existing social network offline. So offline and online are blurring and maybe this is why there is no overriding network theory available at the moment because we are in this state of transition.
Lovink, Geert and Victoria Lynn (Interviewer). "Interview with Geert Lovink." in: Broadsheet Magazine. February, 2010.

For many years, philosophers have been casting doubt on this common identification with meaning. If we wish to understand anything about how our complex technical society is made up, we must pay attention to the structures that surround us, from industry norms to building regulations, software icons and internet protocols. If we wish a different society, with more equality and style, it is not enough to think differently; the framework of that thinking must also be overturned. If you want to make a contribution that really makes a difference, then you will have to design the standard for communication of the future yourself. This is the politics of the standard: those who are able to determine the outline of the form determine like no other the culture of tomorrow.
Lovink, Geert. "Net Critique: Standards for All." in: Institute of Network Cultures. February 11, 2009.

But when will the discomfort with the artist as an ‘eye candy maker’ actually emerge?
Lovink, Geert. "Net Critique: Standards for All." in: Institute of Network Cultures. February 11, 2009.

Control is no longer top down but from inside out; it is decentralised and machine-driven. This makes it more difficult to decide who really calls the shots. It seems that power is no longer in the hands of people, but manifests itself in software, surveillance cameras, invisible small chips.
Lovink, Geert. "Net Critique: Standards for All." in: Institute of Network Cultures. February 11, 2009.

I'm worried about the emergence of the monopoly of Google. It's happening before our eyes and we're not doing anything against it. We are changing Microsoft's monopoly by Google. My priority here in Holland is campaigning against Google, convince people to use alternative search sites and keep your e-mail providers, and not use Gmail.
Lovink, Geert and Peter Moon (Interviewer). "Net Critique: Interview for Season (Brazilian Weekly, in Portugese)." in: Institute of Network Cultures. June 3, 2008. (Portugese).

It was always interesting to see, as you say, how one struggles with the process of identifying with an author who so clearly cannot be turned into an (academic) school, as happened with Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze.
Lovink, Geert and Ken Wark (Email Exchanges). "Net Critique: Irony and Sadness - After Jean Baudrillard." in: Institute of Network Cultures. March 15, 2007.

Radical sadness in this respect is an attempt to circumvent the conventions of the everyday. There is the revolt again death and an ironical play with it.Baudrillard did not want to surrender. If we want to talk the language of theory, it is not the task of subject to take over the role of the object and all its (passionate) indifference. Theory should not end up in the self-help section. Death can spread disillusion or reinstate illusion (to reformulate what he once said).
Lovink, Geert and Ken Wark (Email Exchanges). "Net Critique: Irony and Sadness - After Jean Baudrillard." in: Institute of Network Cultures. March 15, 2007.

Baudrillard liberated generations of theorists from exégesis.
Lovink, Geert and Ken Wark (Email Exchanges). "Net Critique: Irony and Sadness - After Jean Baudrillard." in: Institute of Network Cultures. March 15, 2007.

If ‘creative industries’ as a concept wants to be meaningful, and avoid being a policy version of the nineties’ ‘new economy’craze (only without the venture capital), it will have to seriously address the issue of sustainability.
Lovink, Geert. The Principle of Notworking: Concepts in Critical Internet Culture. Amsterdam University Press. 2005. Inaugural speech as director of the Institute of Network Cultures, also available in French, Hindu and Dutch. ISBN: 905629380X.

Internet culture is in a permanent flux. There is no linear growth, neither up nor down. The only certainty is the steady rise, both in absolute and relative numbers of users outside of the West.
Lovink, Geert. The Principle of Notworking: Concepts in Critical Internet Culture. Amsterdam University Press. 2005. Inaugural speech as director of the Institute of Network Cultures, also available in French, Hindu and Dutch. ISBN: 905629380X.

What defines the Internet is its social architecture. It’s the living environment that counts, the live interaction, not just the storage and retrieval procedure.
Lovink, Geert. The Principle of Notworking: Concepts in Critical Internet Culture. Amsterdam University Press. 2005. Inaugural speech as director of the Institute of Network Cultures, also available in French, Hindu and Dutch. ISBN: 905629380X.

The culturalization of the Internet is at hand, and both the offline elite and techno geeks and media activists look at this slow but steady process with dismay.
Lovink, Geert. The Principle of Notworking: Concepts in Critical Internet Culture. Amsterdam University Press. 2005. Inaugural speech as director of the Institute of Network Cultures, also available in French, Hindu and Dutch. ISBN: 905629380X.

Cultural studies was all about creating meaning, not data. It is only in the mid-nineties that we found ourselves in the middle of heated debates over software piracy, the heroic Netscape, privacy issues, telecom pricing, and monopoly of microsoft, cool and bad interface design. New media had become an issue you could exchange arguments about with perfect strangers, on the streets of Melbourne, in a Bucharest cafe, at a bus stop in Montreal, on a suburban train gliding over Osaka.
Lovink, Geert. Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia. MIT Press. 2002. Paperback, 390 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0262122510.

In general, I prefer melancholic attitudes about and around such slips into solid modernity- let's say, a profound ambivalence combined with a clear, decisive expression. A sense of the cultural elitist knowledge with a mission, not the banal and rude style of people who anyway already know the tastes of the masses. This vulgar market way of thinking is mostly anti-intellectual, something I really detest. I can critique conservatism and elitism, but not populism; but it's not clear that it's a sensitive enough approach.
Lovink, Geert. Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia. MIT Press. 2002. Paperback, 390 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0262122510.

Moderation means stop now sometimes less spam, and also a certain range.
Lovink, Geert and Tilman Baumgärtel (Interviewer). "Nettime. Free: Squalls in the Village Pond." in: Heise.de. October 13, 1998.

Humanism had died, at the latest in 1945. What it left behind was too soft, too weak, to become a hegemonic force. Instead, Western elites mixed it with bits and pieces of New Age and other out-of-context religious fragments, and ideology became invisible, hidden in the commodity form. The love-and-peace types had an idealistic touch, but only a few of them faced the consquences and chose the radical option of armed struggle.
Lovink, Geert."Critique of Transhumanism." in: Alamut.com June 12, 1998.

What makes transhumanism so strong is its embedding, its deep penetration, in the infrastructure and software. We can laugh about the silliness of Hans Moravec and his poor, linear imagination. But that is cheap. There is no radical critique of the new technologies.
Lovink, Geert."Critique of Transhumanism." in: Alamut.com June 12, 1998.

So transhumanism does not even have to present itself as an ideology -- it can immediately enter the room of the ruler. And so it happens, willingly supported by artists, visionairies, followed by marketing researchers. The rest is history.
Lovink, Geert."Critique of Transhumanism." in: Alamut.com June 12, 1998.

It is my personal commitment to combine cyber pragmatism and media activism with pleasurable forms of European nihilism.
Lovink, Geert. "Strategies for Media Activism." in: Trace Archive. Presentation at the Forum Event of "Code Red" The Performance Space, Sydney. November 23, 1997.

New media is a dirty business, full of traps and seductive offers to work for 'the other side'.
Lovink, Geert. "Strategies for Media Activism." in: Trace Archive. Presentation at the Forum Event of "Code Red" The Performance Space, Sydney. November 23, 1997.

For the time being, the struggle is about the definition of the terms under which the 'information society' will become operational.
Lovink, Geert. "Strategies for Media Activism." in: Trace Archive. Presentation at the Forum Event of "Code Red" The Performance Space, Sydney. November 23, 1997.

What network architecture will be used? Do we accept the dominant software and screen design or do we look for alternatives? Is there still space for theory and reflection, meaningless playing around? Is the production stress overruling creativity?
Lovink, Geert. "Strategies for Media Activism." in: Trace Archive. Presentation at the Forum Event of "Code Red" The Performance Space, Sydney. November 23, 1997.

But the fact is that the gold rush is over. Prices of web-design have fallen sharply. We can see the rise of the html-slaves, employed without contracts or health insurance, producing code for little or no money. Small businesses disappear, not only ISPs but also in the art and design sector. On the macro-economic level we have witnessed an unprecedented series of mergers in the telecommunication and media sector. This has led, for example, to the near monopoly position of WorldCom (which now owns 60% of the access business in the USA). Or take the Spanish telecom giant Telefonica and its Intranet, which will soon control the entire Spanish speaking world. We do not need to mention Microsoft here.
Lovink, Geert. "Strategies for Media Activism." in: Trace Archive. Presentation at the Forum Event of "Code Red" The Performance Space, Sydney. November 23, 1997.

Perhaps the answer is the phrase "On the Internet no one knows you are a dog." Indeed, and no one cares: a tragic end of the once so liberating politics of identity. What counts now are the commercial use of avatars, the number of hits on a site ("2 million a day"), the rise of webvertisement and the final putting into place of electronic commerce.
Lovink, Geert. "Strategies for Media Activism." in: Trace Archive. Presentation at the Forum Event of "Code Red" The Performance Space, Sydney. November 23, 1997.

What lacks is playful negativism, a nihilism on the run, never self-satisfied. Not just nomadic as a Lebensphilosophie, but rather tactical, an ever changing strategy of building infrastructures and leaving them, when the time has come, and move onwards.
Lovink, Geert. "Strategies for Media Activism." in: Trace Archive. Presentation at the Forum Event of "Code Red" The Performance Space, Sydney. November 23, 1997.

Media activism nowadays is not about the expression of truth or a higher goal. It is about the art of getting access (to buildings, networks, resources), hacking the power and withdrawing at the right moment. The current political and social conflicts are way too fluid and complex to be dealt with in such one-dimension models like propaganda, "publicity" or "edutainment."
Lovink, Geert. "Strategies for Media Activism." in: Trace Archive. Presentation at the Forum Event of "Code Red" The Performance Space, Sydney. November 23, 1997.

Activists are developing now 'negative software', (anti-)racism search engines, (temporary) public terminals, free groupware, anti-aesthetic browsers against both Microsoft and Netscape, electronic parasites that live on corporate software and content.
Lovink, Geert. "Strategies for Media Activism." in: Trace Archive. Presentation at the Forum Event of "Code Red" The Performance Space, Sydney. November 23, 1997.

This public sphere cannot come into being in a purely global, commercial environment and obviously also not in places where the state has absolute control over the nation's intranet and firewalls. It is in this 'third place', the public part of cyberspace, that the media activism will start to flourish.
Lovink, Geert. "Strategies for Media Activism." in: Trace Archive. Presentation at the Forum Event of "Code Red" The Performance Space, Sydney. November 23, 1997.