Get Money to Use ShiftSpace
Theater 1
While the Internet's design is widely understood to be open and distributed, control over how users interact online has given us largely centralized and closed systems. The web is undergoing a transformation whose promise is user empowerment—but who controls the terms of this new read/write web? The web has followed the physical movement of the city's social center from the (public) town square to the (private) mall. ShiftSpace attempts to subvert this trend by providing a new public space on the web.
By pressing the [Shift] + [Space] keys, a ShiftSpace user can invoke a new meta layer above any web page to browse and create additional interpretations, contextualizations and interventions – which we call Shifts. Users can choose between several authoring tools we're working to develop – which we call Spaces. Some are utilitarian (like Notes and Highlights) and some are more experimental / interventionist (like ImageSwap and SourceShift). Users are invited to map these shifts into Trails. These Trails can be used for collaborative research, for curating netart exhibitions or as a platform to facilitate a context-based public debate. At Offf NYC 2007 ShiftSpace will launch a new developer API, through which users can create their own spaces. We will also announce details of a commissions program (get money to use ShiftSpace) in collaboration with Turbulence.org. The platform is evolving through an Open Source process that seeks to build advanced social software tools, develop a meta-web workshop series and create online public spaces within a distributed network architecture.
Dan Phiffer is a new media hacker from California, interested in exploring the cultural dimension of inexpensive communications networks such as voice telephony and the Internet.
Mushon Zer-Aviv is a designer and a media activist from Tel-Aviv whose work explores media in public space and public space in media. Mushon is the co-founder of Shual.com, ShiftSpace.org, YouAreNotHere.org and the Tel Aviv node of the Upgrade international network.
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