[ioct public lecture: oort-cloud.org and social publishing]

Blurb from the ioct blog:

A lecture by Paul B. Hartzog and Richard Adler, at the IOCT, 3pm, Wed 14th November, 2007.
This lecture is free and open to the public.

The frequency and intensity of global communications is increasing, ushered in by collaborative technologies that make possible innovative forms of collective action. As a result, in many ways the structures of industrial modernity face a challenge from emerging peer-to-peer coordinated alternatives. These new alternatives are poised to transform “culture industries” like film, music, publishing, and others.

One recent force is “social publishing” which offers both new practices and new theoretical tools for thinking about the future of publishing. Oort-cloud, an online commons for writers, has embraced social publishing and “Open Lit” in an effort to explore this exciting terrain. A look at Oort-Cloud (http://www.oort-cloud.org) will illustrate the potential of such cooperative enterprises, and provide insight into how how network culture is created.

Important: how to find things of quality (see O'Donnell) Social Publishing (article published in sept. 2006) by Paul

"authors create and distribute their work, and reader, individually and collectively, including fans as well as editors and peers, review, comment, rank, and tag, everything."

What's happening online - there is a creator and there is someone looking to be involved with a creation Authors - create and distribute their work and on the other side we have readers (individually and collectively) - this embodies what Paul and Rick see as the *ideal state*. "OpenLit" is beyond social tagging creative commons is the *lubrication* for this system of openlit. cycle of openlit:

Write - share - read - response

Why has oort cloud settled on science fiction? have a community, willing to take on something new, already have an online presence, have an *open-minded* community, and history of exchange between readers and writers

Current project - Star Trek Rick: "the more you hear feedback the more likely you are able to improve."

Paul: what does this give you? "living with stories" as a consequence of the ubiquity you have the opetion not "select, then publish;" but "publish, then select." (Michel Bauwens).

Paul: his way of participating is as a "good reader." Links in to project gutenburg's call for distributed proof-readers. So challenges of quality and access - the traditional model would have us believe "select, then publish" but it is *perfectly feasibile* to invert this process (see Michel Bauwens).

Question: Bruce - what is the financial model for making this work? Paul: tends to ask questions from the view of equity and participatory culture - so, what might be happening to *large* structures as a result of technological advancement. In his experience, participation is not often because of option for monetary gain (in fact they rejected having google ads on their site in effort to monetize). Decided that monetizing the site would turn away the people who should be participating. Rick: fan fiction communities already have great problems with sense of ownership, the community is what oort cloud is all about

Paul: the reason you give things away is to generate more interest. Think of istock photos.

Rick: think of radiohead example - $3mill for something that was made available for free. 38% people donated. But, donation model worked well for Radiohead because already had a fan base. So, to overcome the idea of obscurity is to get known through something like oort cloud (to establish a name for yourself, get a group of fans). Thus, oortcloud becomes a place where you can build a reputation.

See Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions by Lucy Suchman - her book is an artifact to conversation as the latest release includes her original book with added chapters:

"This edition includes an annotated version of the original text, plus six new chapters looking at relevant developments since the mid 1980s both in computing and in social studies of technology. The focus is on humanlike machines and new forms of human-computer interaction on one hand, and recent theorising regarding humans, machines and relations between them on the other."

What kinds of patterns of behaviour have been developing? Paul: Serialisation was a big thing - the community was able to pick up and read the signals, determine for themselves which evolutionary paths they would take Rick: oort cloud has never had a flame war (!!!) it's been a "very cordial group." There has been strong criticism and rigorous checking but all have remained polite.