CONCEPT / GOAL / OBJECTIVES

When we use our computers and digital networks to send information it seems to go instantaneously from the sender to the receiver, so frequently we do not think about the path it takes, or the political and economic implications of this path.

From the late seventies to the early nineties networked communications for most people meant being a paying customer of an "online service" - the most prominent of these was CompuServe. Using such a service meant that CompuServe, a private company, had full control of your communication - including who you could communicate with, and what you could communicate. It also meant that they were the sole provider of access, there were no independent providers, only competitive systems from other private companies.

Meanwhile, in the sheltered backrooms of the military, telecommunications and educational research, the Internet was evolving far away from the imagination of capitalist finance. By design, the Internet is a peer to peer network, meaning that any computer can send data to any other computer connected to it. So unlike being a client connected to the servers of a monolithic "online service" like CompuServe, each computer is a part of the network and can connect to other computers, and therefore users. Thus, companies and volunteer organizations could become service providers and many did. A cottage industry of commercial internet service providers sprang up worldwide, along with nonprofit "FreeNets" and public and private "Internet Cafes."
 
The boom of the media, more democratic than any previous media, let to wide spread speculation of this being a revolution that would have deep and broad implications.

After the heady days of "dotCom" boom followed the bust: Along with the Commercialization of the internet, came its capital intensification: Having a simple ISDN connection to the internet and a shelf full of modems was not enough to be a Internet Service Provider Anymore. Asynchronous "broadband" connections like DSL required heavy investments that were impossible to be achieved without major financing. In consequence, centralization returned through the back door – creating consumers and providers similar to the CompuServe era with one significant difference: It all seemed free.

A new buzzword came to town: "Web 2.0". It promises new ways for users to share and communicate online and a new user-driven breed of websites. However, while sharing and communicating is a new concept for websites, sharing and communicating were already common on the Internet, "the Web," while operating on the peer to peer Internet, is actually a client-server system, with the same asymmetric relationships as the CompuServe era's Online services: The user has a browser which communicates with the website, each site Is a monolithic application that controls the interaction of all its users.


STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS

Players:

Tools:

The goal of the Communicators is to pass as many messages around as possible. The goal of the Censor is to remove parts of as many messages as possible. The goal of the Cop is to copy as many messages as possible along with who send them to whom. The goal of the lobbyist to add his own message to as many messages as possible. There is a bank run by a banker. Members of the civil society (cop, lobbyist, censor) have access to this money.

In each round communicators send messages. The cop, lobbyist, and censor can each intercept any message from reaching any target, by going to stand beside a potential receiver before the message is sent, so they do not know ahead of time where the sender will finally send the message. The excercise is conducted for a fixed time, and the results analysed.

1 - Client-server communications

2 - Peer to peer, the internet is born!

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