Winter Camp 09 : from weak ties to organized networks : ideas, reports, critiques

![CDATA[In most areas of the (post-) industrial world, networks are becoming a ubiquitous feature – of life, work and play. If they can – and are allowed to – teenagers spend hours texting, blogging, dating, chatting, twittering and social networking. In fact, the network addiction transcends age and cultural barriers, with business men and women hooked to their CrackBerries (Presidents too!) and older folks texting away on buses. Garbage men in the Chinese city of Ningbo check out commodity prices of waste copper from their mobiles each morning. Activists organize transnational campaigns online. Web 2.0 companies profit from the free labor and attention provided by the networks of users. If we take these network technologies seriously, we have to ask ourselves: what’s next? Will networking produce a dispersed, weak level of sociality or will the ties become more substantial? What long term cultural transformations might emerge from networked interactions? These and other questions inspired the organization of Winter Camp 09, which took place between the 3rd and 7th of March 2009, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Hosted and organized by the Institute of Network Cultures, the meeting brought together twelve networks that worked on their own projects during the day (although some continued deep into the night) and collectively engaged in analyzing questions regarding the past, present and future of organizing networks during plenary sessions in the evening.]]