After BitTorrent: Darknets to Native Data

What are the implications of the inherent reflexivity of the Internet for the design professions? Anthony Burke argues that radically innovative and distributed forms of information exchange such as BitTorrent suggest a general shift away from the traditional conception of the architect as master builder to one more in line with the collaborative remixing and patching tactics of the hacker. BitTorrent is a communications protocol that allows massive information exchange across infinite users with minimum resources. Through its sheer force of collectively pooled imagination, it provides a potent example of the sorts of platforms of information exchange that foster the new forms of communal organisation that Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri term the Multitude, and which productively challenge conventional models of cultural invention and production. In this context, Burke raises questions about the implications of this broader shift for the design professionsʹ business organisation, as well as their more general methodologies.