Table Of ContentNew online technologies have brought with them B
a great promise of freedom. The computer and a Bastard Culture!
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particularly the Internet have been represented t ed
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as enabling technologies, turning consumers into r m
me puseeorpsl ean adn du saemrsa itnetuor sp hroadveu cbeeresn. F eunrtthhuesrimasotircea, lllayy d C How User Participation Transforms atters
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greeted as heroes of the digital era.
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a t Cultural Production
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Schäfer’s groundbreaking research into hacking,
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fan communities and Web 2.0 applications de- e
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a monstrates how the dynamic of innovation, con-
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t trol and interaction have shifted the boundaries
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of the traditional culture industry into the user
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s domain. The media industry undergoes a shift
from creating content to providing platforms for
user-driven social interactions and user-generated
content. In this extended culture industry, partici-
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pation unfolds not only in the co-creation of
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media content and software-based products, but
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also in the development and defense of distinctive o
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media practices that represent a socio-political
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understanding of new technologies. b
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Mirko Tobias Schäfer lectures in digital culture at s
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Utrecht University. c
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‘Profound and meticulously researched work, which has f
e
expanded my worldview.’ Howard Rheingold, author of r
Smart Mobs. The Next Social Revolution
‘Invited or not, the brilliant and not-so-brilliant members
of our digital culture are actively participating. We’re not
just using but changing, repurposing, and re-inventing
the technologies set before us. Bastard or not, the reality
we are creating together is an odd and often unconscious
collaboration between people, corporations, and techno-
logy itself. Schäfer has patiently, deliberately, and quite
engagingly exposed this hidden landscape of cultural pro-
www.aup.nl
duction, and shown us what we might do to direct it to-
ISBN 978-90-896-4256-1
ward positive, even evolutionary ends.’ Douglas Rushkoff,
author of Program or Be Programmed. Ten Commands for
a Digital Age
9 789089 642561 amsterdam university press amsterdam university press mirko tobias schäfer
Bastard Culture!
Bastard Culture!
How User Participation
Transforms Cultural Production
Mirko Tobias Schäfer
Amsterdam University Press
MediaMatters is a series published by Amsterdam University Press on current de
bates about media technology and practices. International scholars critically anal
yse and theorize the materiality and performativity, as well as spatial practices of
screen media in contributions that engage with today’s digital media culture.
For more information about the series, please visit: www.aup.nl
The open-access-publication of this book is made possible by a grant from the
Research Institute for History and Culture (OGC).
The research is made possible by the Department of Media and Culture Studies
(MCW) and the Research Institute for History and Culture (OGC) at Utrecht
University.
Cover illustration: Axel Swoboda
Cover design: Suzan Beijer, Amersfoort
Lay out: Philos, Almere
isbn 978 90 8964 256 1
e-isbn 978 90 4851 315 4
nur 670
M.T. Schäfer / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2011
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-
No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share, copy, dis
tribute, transmit the work. http://creativecommons.org/licensees/by-nc-nd/3.0
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 7
Introduction 9
Chapter 1 - Promoting Utopia/Selling Technology 25
1.1 Cisco Systems: empowering the Internet generation 31
1.2 Web 2.0: celebrating collaboration 35
Chapter 2 - Claiming Participation 41
2.1 New media, new participation? 41
2.2 Domains of user participation 46
2.3 Explicit and implicit participation 51
Chapter 3 - Enabling/Repressing Participation 55
3.1 The computer 57
3.2 Software 63
3.3 The Internet 71
Chapter 4 - Bastard Culture 77
4.1 Participation as explicit media practice 79
4.2 Participation as implicit media practice 105
Chapter 5 - The Extension of Cultural Industries 125
5.1 Confrontation: fighting participation 127
5.2 Implementation: controlling participation 146
5.3 Integration: embracing participation 157
Chapter 6 - Participatory Culture 167
Notes 175
Resources 215
Literature 217
Appendix A - Abbreviations 232
Appendix B - Glossary 234
Index 239
6
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to many people who in one way or another contributed to realizing
this work. I must pay tribute to the people at the Department for Media Studies
(MCW), and at the Research Institute for Culture and History (OGC) at Utrecht
University for supporting not only my research, but also for providing me with an
open-minded, friendly, and intellectually stimulating environment.
I want to thank my colleagues at the New Media & Digital Culture (NMDC). At
countless occasions I benefited from their knowledge and wisdom. I thank Frank
Kessler and Joost Raessens for their efforts in overseeing this venture and guiding
my often unorganised thoughts into direction of a more solid argument. I am also
very grateful for the helpful comments and remarks I have received numerous times
from Marianne van den Boomen, Bernhard Rieder, William Uricchio, and Imar de
Vries. I am also indebted to my research students Lisette van Blokland, Jaap Kok,
Vlad Micu, Pascal Rancuret, and Javier Sancho Rodriguez for numerous interviews
with members from the homebrew and console gaming scene, as well as for their
hands-on investigation of homebrew software and modded game consoles. My
thanks also to Steph Harmon for her careful editing and the staff at Amsterdam
University Press, especially Inge van der Bijl for smoothly managing this project,
and Jeroen Sondervan for his indefatigable support and prospective view on copy
rights and publishing in the digital age.
Many people have been important, at one stage or the other by giving feedback and
commenting on concepts and/or unfinished chapters and half-baked ideas:
Aibopet, Florian Cramer, Andreas Leo Findeisen, Frank Hartmann, Patrick
Kranzlmüller, Franz Lehner, Koen Leurs, Geert Lovink, Dennis Jaromil Rojo,
Douglas Rushkoff, Tanja Sihvonen, Kim de Vries. I also thank Jesse Darlin, Ralf
Futselaar, Pepita Hesselberth, Jim Hurley, Boris May, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Audrey
Samson, Peter Steinberger, Axel Swoboda, Nanna Verhoeff, and Florian Waldvogel,
and of course my family for their support. Finally my gratitude goes to Eva Stegeman.
7
Introduction!!
Yet Another Media Revolution
The desktop revolution has brought the tools that only professionals have had into the hands
of the public. God knows what will happen now (Marvin Minsky, Time 1983).
In 1983, Time magazine nominated the PC as the ‘Machine of the Year’. The edition’s
title, ‘The Computer Moves In’, announced the Information Age’s entry into our
living rooms. On the cover, a man sits alienated in front of his new roommate. What
he plans to do with the computer or what the machine might do to him is not quite
clear. In January 2007, a computer was again displayed on the Time cover, but this
time the computer screen is a mirror reflecting the ‘Person of the Year’: ‘Yes, You.
You Control the Information Age. Welcome to Your World’. The cover is a symbol
of the emancipation of the computer user from the alienated user of 1983 to the
‘hero of the Information Age’ in 2007.
The attention devoted to the computer in 1983 marks an important milestone
in the emergence of what has become known as the ‘information society’. What
started as a secret technology for military research – an accounting machine in
scientific laboratories and corporate companies, advanced technology initially
unthinkable as a mass-produced consumer good – suddenly entered the lives and
homes of common users as the microcomputer.
With this microcomputer, users had a high-tech device at their disposal, a ma
chine which was able to execute every task provided in a symbolic language the
machine can understand. Over the past two decades, the computer has developed
into an everyday medium. Due to easy-to-use interfaces and the Internet, which has
increased the reach and use of computers globally, computer use has become
common everyday practice. The 24-year interval between the two editions of Time
magazine bridges the gap between the introduction of the computer into the con
sumer sphere and the emergence of a new global cultural practice. Several trends
during this time span ultimately shaped the contemporary cultural practice of
computer use:
1. The computer developed into a medium for work, leisure and entertainment
2. The Internet became the primary means to connect computers, thereby
constituting a world-wide information infrastructure
3. The emergence of the World Wide Web (WWW) which, with its graphical
user interfaces and hypertext structures, made networked computers a useful
tool for common users and consequently became a mass medium by 1995
4. Most recently, in concert with the above, broad-band Internet connections
9
