On Wednesday, April 27 Dutch media theorist, internet critic and activist Geert Lovink was in Toronto to participate in a panel discussion about the Wikileaks phenomenon. Prior to the event, he stopped by Ryerson University's Infoscape Research Lab to discuss what he's been up to in his role as the director of the Institute of Network Cultures.

Since the advent of the internet, Dr. Lovink has been at the forefront of theorizing both the significance and the potential of networked technologies. He's organized countless conferences, exhibits and symposiums all over the world aimed at generating critical discourse about the internet, and in 1995 he co-founded Nettime, a highly influential mailing list that counts figures such as Bruce Sterling and John Perry Barlow among its subscribers.

Although Lovink's lecture on Wednesday covered a lot of ground, his thesis was fairly simple: our critical perspective on network culture is lagging behind the pace of technological and social change on the internet. There remains an emphasis on discussing emerged -- as opposed to emerging -- phenomena and the pace of academic publishing (a PhD dissertation can take four years to prepare and write) is glacial compared to that of the web. For example, until recently it was still common to see critical scholarly articles centred around Myspace.

According to Lovink, this failure to "play catch up" means that we're not properly analyzing a profound shift towards decentralization in network culture, and the bulk of his presentation consisted of examples of the ways in which this trend is manifesting in social networking, e-commerce and online activism.

In regards to social networking, Lovink pointed us towards a growing number of alternatives to Facebook and Twitter. Among them were upstarts like Diaspora, Appleseed and GNU Social. While such projects are still nascent, they suggest that a decentralized approach to social networking -- one that ameliorates concerns about control, commodification and privacy -- may be on the horizon. Lovink -- who participated in Quit Facebook Day last year -- is hopeful enough about these new developments that he was willing to suggest that Mark Zuckerberg's days as king of the social media mountain may be numbered.

Lovink made a number of other observations about Facebook throughout his talk; he noted the site's insistence upon real names is a "post-9/11" reaction to the internet -- where users can always be identified by the authorities -- and quipped that the company has been able to "delay the orgasm indefinitely" in regards to staying privately held (although there is ample speculation that an IPO will happen in 2012).

Regarding e-commerce, Lovink gave shout outs to crowdsourced funding options like Kickstarter and Sellaband (which allows fans and listeners to literally invest in their favourite musicians), as well as micropayment services like Flattr. Successful alternatives to traditional payment models will have to move past the reliance on credit cards, as Lovink reminded us that many of the new arrivals to the internet -- particularly those from the global south -- do not have access to a credit card.

In closing, Lovink talked through some of the successes and failures of activism online, referencing both the venerable IndyMedia project as well as Avaaz, whose online petitions have been highly successful at mobilizing transnational publics around issues of social justice. He also made reference to the various hacks, protests and pranks perpetrated by Anonymous, who Lovink singled out as one of the only groups mounting significant resistance to Zuckerberg's desire to collapse any distinction between our online and offline identities.

Overall, Lovink's point was buoyed by the number of examples of alternative, decentralized services that are popping up online. He offered a refreshing perspective and enough evidence to suggest that, despite the rhetoric of companies like Facebook, Twitter, Paypal and Amazon, their dominance may be more precarious than we think.