Institute forApplied Autonomy

The Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) was founded in 1998 as a technological research and development organization dedicated to the cause of individual and collective self-determination. Our mission is to study the forces and structures which affect self-determination and to provide technologies which extend the autonomy of human activists.

• art,
• contestational robotics,
• tactical gizmology

Geert Lovink

Geert Lovink is a media theorist, net critic and activist.

"The Desire to be Wired" 

1. Desire.

I come from a social and cultural context which has its languagetaboos, and among them a strong one refers to the libido. Desire is,therefore, something rather personal, and connecting it to the publicsphere might personalize the approach in a naive sense I learned toavoid. But since the same topic has been voiced last year in thecalling papers of the Enschede Photo Biennial, we might be dealing herewith a common place, therefore with a language defensive reflex, andthis is something useful to talk about.

Rita Raley

Rita Raley is Associate Professor of English, with courtesy appointments in Film and Media Studies, Comparative Literature, and Global Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of digital media and humanist inquiry, with a particular emphasis on cultural critique, artistic practices, and language (codework, machine translation, electronic literature, and electronic English).

• tactical media,
• infopolitics,
• info-activism

 Free Culture Forum

The FCForum is an international arena in wich to build and coordinate action around issues related to free/libre culture and access to knowledge.The FCForum brings together key organizations and active voices in the spheres of free/libre culture and knowledge, and provides a meeting point where we can find answers to the pressing questions behind the current paradigm shift.

• free culture

Michael Benson

Michael Benson is a writer, film-maker, and photographer. In recent years he has authored a series of illustrated books with space themes for Abrams, the leading publisher of art books in the United States. His new book, Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle, was well in reviewed in The New York Times, The LA Times, and other publications. Benson's Beyond exhibition projects are based on his book Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, which has been published in English, French, German, Spanish, Korean and Japanese. Beyond exhibitions of varying sizes have toured Europe and North America, and limited-edition prints from the Beyond project produced by Benson's company, Kinetikon Pictures, have been acquired by museums and private collectors.

• yugoslavia,
• cultural memory

Paul Virilio

Paul Virilio (b. 1932 in Paris) is a world-renowned philosopher, urbanist, and cultural theorist. His work focuses on urban spaces and the development of technology in relation to power and speed. He is known for his coining of the term 'dromology' to explain his theory of speed and technology. Paul Virilio is of mixed ancestry, being the son of an Italian father (who identified as a Communist) and a Breton mother. As a small child in France during the Second World War, Paul Virilio was profoundly impacted by the blitzkrieg and total war; however, these early experiences shaped his understanding of the movement and speed which structures modern society. In order to escape the heavy fighting in the city, he fled with his family to the port of Nantes in 1939.

• accident,
• speed