Openbook by Carlo Giordano - Rhizome 09 Proposal

Openbook - by Carlo Giordano (kjj)

> Personal information
> Project's statement
> Project's description
> Realization details
> Author's infos
> Résumé / CV
> Project budget
> Work samples
> Notes
> Suggested readings

Personal information

name Carlo Giordano (a.k.a. kjj)
email postmaster@kjj.it
country Italy/France
website www.kjj.it

Project's statement

Openbook is a project involving the creation of:

1) an entirely opensource software to create social networks;
2) a social network, built upon this software and ruled by specific Terms Of Service inspired by principles of openness, total absence of market, and degrowth of personal data.

Though distant from other new media works I have produced, Openbook is also (new media) art to the extent that it proposes a quite new point of view over an existing, ordinary reality (social networks).

Openbook is theory by practice, change through software, art by society.

Project's description

Like most of the so-called "web2.0" services, today's social networks are free, at least like in "free beer", meaning they don't ask you to pay in order to access their services. But do you feel free while using these services? Most importantly, are you free when you use them?

Databases like Facebook, with 70 millions users (more than many nations' total inhabitants), should not be closed and in the hands of private corporations. Many would prefer their data not to be processed in the US, one of the country with the worst data retention and the longest list of data abuse cases possible (most notably after September 11th). Many would like their data not to be scanned, combined and processed by marketing corporations. With one hand, networks like Facebook give you unprecedented control over your privacy; with the other, they sell your privacy to the market (see note 1). While the battle for anonimity may already be lost in many situations, in some others many can still opt for more privacy, rather than less (see note 2).

We should have the right to know what these software really DO with our data; that our imaginary be not continuously corrupted by hyper-profiled, "Minority report-style" advertises; our lives and desires, not scanned by multinationals only to be converted into the latest market object or service.

With Openbook I want to meet these desires by creating an open source social network. While being inspired by major existing social networks (see note 3), it introduces one main difference with similar applications, its TERMS OF SERVICE specifying users' rights and guaranteeing that the Service itself will never become commercial, user's data will never be used to feed marketing companies or to bomb your imaginary with hyper-profiled advertising (see note 4).

writeMsgInterface
Fig. 1: Writing a message in Openbook

Modelled after the famous GPL license, these Terms of Service are the core of the social network. With them, I aim to do away with the closed, marketing/profiling approach to personal data, by creating a not-for-profit social network based on values other than those of the market, yet being a 'generalist' network. I believe that, if “social” networks are to serve a public, social function, they have to get truly social and open; but this function cannot be delegated to small, specific and targeted social network, because it invests the society at large.

writeMsgInterface
Fig. 2: Photos application in Openbook

At the same time, rather than being focused/tied to specific technologies, techniques or programming environments, Openbook is more about raising issues around the present and the future of social networks, the values these networks propose/encourage, the social environment they create or contribute to create, than ' simply' creating an opensource alternative. We should start finding a compromise beteween the evident, popular need for these networks and their social sustainability; and think of how to, if not "limit" them, at least regain control over them, instead of searching how to enhance them with new, addictive features designed to waste your time on the Internet
(see note 5).

To this extent, my project is also inspired by those theories of the degrowth (see note 6). This degrowth works both on a level of reducing personal data by sensitizing people and decreasing the data flow itself. This means, for instance, that Openbook will NOT encourage massive, undiscriminated publishing of one's details on the web, nor that phenomenon that I would call “user-frenziness” (see note 7).

Openbook is theory by practice, change through software, art by society.

Realization details

Openbook is currently being written using exclusively open source software.

It is built over a PHP framework based on the MVC pattern (thus making code more reusable and extendible). Choice of this particular framework has been done for a compromise between two needs: the most open source, non-restrictive license possible AND the need for a framework which would make development most rapid possible to me. Anway, software architecture and development is less important than the principles governing the Service - which, in turn, model the software itself.

Openbook integrates several open source libraries to guarantee core functions like detecting/switching multiple languages, authenticate users, reliably send massive amount of emails, integrate external web services etc.

Alpha testing server is a LAMP virtual server located in Italy; beta version will be hosted on a server provided by a company whose ethic guidelines will have been approved and which resides in a country providing the more soft conditions in terms of (mandatory) data retention (which is not at all, presently, the case of Italy).

Alpha software is currently version 0.16; as of now, I'm working on making core functions stable while providing a simple design with some javascript-based enhancements. Openbook will be closed until the first beta version (which will cover core features and architecture). Then access will be organised this way: completely open for software development, community-driven for the Service (according to the principles stated in the Terms of Service); community should in the end take over the founder's choices.

When an XML API will be written to access users' data from outside, access will be extended to those wanting to create meaningful, aestethic data visualizations, thus encouraging artistic reuse of this data while respecting the Terms of Service.

Author's infos

Carlo Giordano (a.k.a. kjj) is a new media expert; he currently works as a project manager for numeriscausa, a contemporary art gallery in Paris, focused on digital and new media art.
> Personal website: www.kjj.it
> numeriscausa

Résumé / CV

> CV Carlo Giordano [PDF]

> Online Privacy-Respectful Bio

Project budget / roadmap

Concept, PHP/MySQL coding: 1500$ (Carlo Giordano)

DHTML+Ajax Design: 1000$ (by external freelance designer)

External Opensource projects remuneration: 500 $ (various opensource projects)

Hosting: 2000 $ (1st year - dedicated server)

Hosting is a crucial issue, since this project aims also to propose an alternative, yet viable, not-for-profit economic model, based - at least at the beginning - on private donations and institutional support.
By investing in a fast, reliable and dedicated server I want to meet the need for a generalist social network - with features comparable to those of major social networks, while increasing users' rights to privacy and to be left free from the market - as opposed to isolated, targeted social networks that do not want to engage society at large.

As for scalability and the relying economic model, while a success in the number of members would obviously mean more servers / bandwidth and growing expenses, since we do not rely on a growth model this growth would be relatively slow and under control (see also note 8).

Work Samples

1) Un drame bien parisien (2006) undramebienparisien
Un drame bien parisien is an installation about the relationship between the Romantic couple and the city. It has been selected for IN-OUT, a workshop / exhibition organized by CITU, a federation of laboratories in Paris.
Highlighting housing issues in Paris, Un drame bien parisien is a work of strong social critic. More...

The work has been a complex management task involving, amongst others, the participation of two theatre actors, a designer for the drawings, a Flash designer. As of coding, the work is based on a PHP engine I wrote for realtime retrieval (hack) and analysis of rental ads extracted from the website of a well-know Paris-based magazine.

Documentary video | Article on Le Monde newspaper (PDF)

As a coder, I collaborated with painter/netartist Carlo Zanni, programming many of his net works. A relevant selection is shown hereafter:

2) Timein (2005)
Exhibited at Gavin Brown's Enterprise at Passerby in New York - in a show organized by Fernanda Arruda and Michael Clifton - Timein is a landscape based on the hacking of the "Time Out New York Magazine" website. To create the project, artists hacked into their Online Queries Database (the one storing all the search queries submitted on www.timeoutny.com) and shaped an ideal dynamic city to visualize the information.
To take part in this piece, people can access www.timeoutny.com and type a query. In this way, the artists will know what information was entered. All the queries will be used to create a unique online artwork.
A live performance has been held during the opening. More...

Coding this project has been one of the most interesting challenges, since the PHP core has to deal with real-time retrieving, archiving and conversion of several external data sources (Timeout NY search queries, weather reports, images from CNN site), while glueing third-party applications: a software for realistic 3d sky rendering and an image program for assembling the final landscape, as well as DHTML code. Also, this has been a complex attempt in aesthetic data visualization.

Gallery's press Release | Tech info

3) Ebaylandscape (2004)
Ebay Landscape is a online environment built using a data flux coming in real time from Internet.
Mountains are generated dinamically grabbing eBay.com stock markets charts, images filling the bamboo trees are "stolen" from CNN.com home page, while the number of stars and the color of the sky depends on the number and IP address of the users connected to the work in that moment.
The project has been shown in many venus, online - exhibition Ebay buy or sell or buy, organized by Pace Digital Gallery(NYC) - and physically - at The Thing NY and at the Galleria Civica di Trento (Italy) among others.

In coding Ebaylandscape I had to focus on how to predict all the possible data glitches of these unpredictable data fluxes, but also on harmonizing - via image processing techniques - the final image result.
> Launch online, real-time project

More infos on these and many other projects can be found in the section Archive of my site, and in the book Vitalogy.

Notes

[1] While Openbook is not "against Facebook", here I would like to briefly recall only some elements of critics addressed to this popular social network:
- an enormous amount of users are entering their email account's password as if they were giving them to a close friend, without even understanding WHY do they exactly have to do this;
- Facebook proactively scans the web for any other source of information which might be related to the users, like blogs, personal websites etc., in order to add it to their online profile (this information, not inserted by the user, being NOT visible to the user him/herself...);
- data is processed and archived indefinitely: for instance, users are not free to delete their profile whenever they wish, but once decided they have to wait a « reasonable » amount of time for Facebook to really delete it - without knowing what« reasonable » means...

See also: Faut-il détruire Facebook (video); and read Facebook's Privacy Policy (very few Facebook user probably read it before signing) and Facebook's Terms

[2] This applies also, for instance, to existing services: by not resigning our privacy to gain access to more features, or same features but faster etc.

[3] Like Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster (and, to a minor extent, MySpace and similar)

[4] Many web applications started ad-free to attract users, only to become cluttered with hyper-targeted ads once reached "maturity". That is why an alternative financing model is necessary, which has to be both public AND non governative.

[5] While trying to grab your last penny - which is the case of many web 2.0 applications, the most vulgar example of which may well be the application called Twitter, a continuous update of our “status” in 160 characters (see also note 8)

[6] E.g. non-growth or a-growth, which does not necessarily mean “decrease” - see Latouche, S. in Suggested Readings. Degrowth principles include also, for instance, the degrowth of advertising and other mechanisms for pushing people to buy, hence produce etc.. We believe notably that profiled advertising, in a subtle yet evident way, increases surveillance and control while limiting freedom of self-expression.

[7] This is a case where values can be directly 'embedded' in software: one of these mechanisms, for instance, is automatic messages deletion after 7 days since the message was opened, in order to discourage data retention (this mechanism can be balanced by allowing users to receive emails instead of internal messages). Many others can be imagined. Data retention has been a major privacy emergency also in Italy (see articles on Punto Informatico - in Italian)

[8] Facebook works in a capitalist logic of growth, both at the level of members (which is reasonable) and of data exchanged by them, which instead is only functional to their figures: more pages = more ads = more profits. But this means thery are obliged to continuously offer new communication services, resulting in a software whose mere architecture is designed to take away your time, to fastly become - in a way - inefficient (and, incidentally, expensive from the point of view of the environment). At every level, Facebook encourages quantity instead of quality.