Matière et territoire dans la culture du logiciel libre

Sébastien Broca

Géographie, économie, société, 2018, vol. 20, issue 1, 15-32

Abstract: This article questions two ideas that have become commonplace in digital culture, and particularly in free software culture. The first one is the idea that cyberspace is an immaterial (or informational) space, exhibiting properties that are radically distinct from the ones of the material world. The second one is the idea of deterritorialization , according to which online communities are indifferent to the geographical reality of the territory. The article explains how these commonplace assumptions pervade free software culture, tracing their history back to cybernetics and the AI Lab at the MIT, and analyzing the globalization of free software culture since the 1990s. It also criticizes these topoï that often conceal how the transformations of the digital world are intertwined with the transformations of society at large. The conclusion tackles the emergence of the maker movement (which is strongly tied to free software culture) and insists on the persistence of issues related to materiality and territory, even within digital culture.

Keywords: free software; deterritorialization; immaterial; cybernetics; makers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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