Spent some time yesterday at the “art & culture” day of the http://www.oi-london.org.uk/
Was interesting in the way that meeting intelligent and bright people always tends to be.. + found a spot by the local hardware shop on great eastern st corner/circus with shoreditch high st, that seems to have sheesha galore..
However, I kept having a strange taste/sense.. Perhaps am misunderstanding, perhaps am miss reading, or miss something or other however, it seemed to be a very middle of the road gathering. Perhaps not as overtly Open capitalistic as: http://www.aaa.org.hk/Programme/Details/440 – however, the usage of Open to tease out stuff for free and other people’s *immediate* benefit seemed a bit exploitative.. Specially with out a free coffee.. (had to go and get one despite helping to set things a bit + there was one in the kitchen..)
Sure, the way networking operates is that you just give stuff to gain “trust” and “cred”, then some finance or another comes your way. But That Is precisely one of the elements in capitalistic networking that gets on my tits. It is for numericalised value benefit – eg money. Your links and relations are monetised by, err, you/me.. This turns the networking from fun to function, from being able to cultivate exploring unknowns – to having to cultivate exploring knows because its your bread.
Sure, perhaps not all or every-time – however, there pressure is there. Instead of radicalising culture and networking culture in the way of freeing individuals from residual and oppressive counter emancipatory culture – the networking process just found other ways to inhibit – potentially – and restrict freedoms.
The OI is in a process of teasing out ideas from people to learn what it should be.. To develop a brief..