Hi list,
so this is the follow up to my announcement (once and for all) that i
was soon going to post some ideas to this list (i bet you've been
holding your breath for 120 hours straight ;-}). That's also a method to
make myself do something...
The first point that i wanted to address at the conference was
"In_formation".
It's basically a dry subject that needs some explaining -- so some kind
of written form would be OK for that. It's meant more as something to
consider in the back of your mind - and possibly to integrate into
discussion.
I'm proposing something like a deconstructivist phenomenology turned
information-theory and then applied to technology/society.
Now this fundamentally amounts to saying: Society certainly has
structure, in its essence as being human relation. And this social
structure is certainly also formalized. Meaning that human relation
becomes a formated object of description and communication. So my point
is that if it is an object, then i can also apply my information-theory
to it. We can then use this theory to criticise paradigms and
ideologies, as they are implemented, in structure and formalism of
society. For example hierarchy; I can draw draw ideological connections
between structural linguistics and the military, mathematics and monopolies.
[I'm also (and at the moment prominently) doing some programming work on
information-representation without hierarchical ideology. This might
also (or rather: should also) develop into a communicative platform. And
since it's something a bit different, we can think about different
_forms_ of online collaboration, of sharing and building knowledge.
Question: would you also accept in-progress projects for your
collaboration-tools section? What's Gus doing?]
There's also some fresh material (in German though) online [
http://werg.demokratica.de/archives/00000051.html ] (it's a kinda funny
setting for fundamental philosophical stuff -- but see for yourself).
Maybe you can get a glimpse in there at what i think could be unique
about my approach.. Basically, it's pretty critical, even dismissive, of
our fundamental assumptions about our world, however without winding up
in some kind of deconstructivist mood... i.e. i accept the structure,
constructs as being of the same wavey nature as everything else..
thinking about it, i do have to say that i tend to truism: everything is
the way it is - in fact, i make a point of it.
Even though i "announced" this information-stuff as something that i
wanted to _do_ something with at the conference, i don't know if it's of
pressing interest to collaboration, even though it may be generally
interesting. I wouldn't want to push a theory. What do you think?
For the other part; Economies of free cooperation.
That's of course, when it gets practical, a bit fidgety. I am very
interested in the actual implementation of other social structure,
between, with and against global capitalism and national
propaganda-democracy. But experiments such as that live in a lot of
problems. So it's maybe a subject that anyone can develop fantasies on,
but it's also a bit too easy to dismiss as unrealistic. Maybe a
facilitated brainstorm/open-mike would be good to draw attention to
possibility, but trying not to fall into some kind of mood.. (as it
looks as if we'll be turning out with quite a few "art" people, this
might become quite creative.)
That could possibly be an intro/prequel to something a bit more
panel-ish & theoretical. Brian, Christoph, what will you be doing?
Anyone else out there? Whatever happened to NAM, is there anyone out
there to report from their demise?
Definately, i would like to voice some thoughts that i developed on- and
integrated with Christoph's ideas; Aspects concerning what i would call
a "network society". Here i would also get into some formalism, how a
network society might work legally and how it could be organized.
Let's have a closer look at the idea behind the GPL; the GPL is like a
double meta-quality-certificate wrapped up in a license. It ensures that
the given software always fulfills a certain meta-quality: free access &
modification to the sourcecode for everyone. It is a meta-quality
because it does not define a quality of the software itself (instead it
even wards of liability), instead the way in which the /code/ is dealt
with is qualified. When deriving executable software from the code, the
distributor must ensure free access to the source of the distributed
program. All of this should be quite clear and known so far. Also the
next step, the viral effect (also a meta-quality), in which every user
is forced to grant & legally enforce the qualities of access &
modification (as described above) for all derivative works /of a certain
kind/ (works derived by using the executable software are not covered,
only the use of the source to create new programs is sanctioned by the
viral effect), is well documented. However, attempts to describe the
social implications and lessons to be learned (even a "GPL-Society") by
the GPL have more often than not turned out to be a bit one-sided, to my
mind - see: http://oekonux.org .
The Oekonux-crowd tends to fall into two traps: To get futurologically
nutty and deny the actuality of materiality; i.e. "pour out the child of
actual production, exchange & qualitative difference with in their bath
of value-critique". And assume a pretty simplistic individualism
("self-unfolding") to somehow work as a society in which every
individual is able to unfold his/herself. Now, i don't oppose the
practical advice that individualism and autonomy in work and action has
to offer, but there's a bit more to be said about an economy. But as
they will fight any other economic model beyond "everyone does as they
like - and we firmly believe it will work out", eg. gift-economy
("exchange is bad; alienating" umm.. yes, that may be a continnuous
problem (that is because exchange can be forced by power - but we simply
cannot ignore the fact of power in human relation, in any case). But
then, according to free cooperation, people should always be able to
re-negotiate).
Above i have tried to veer the description into the direction of
production - and to dwell less on the metathema of freedom.
Consecutively, the lessons that i would draw from the GPL might turn out
a bit differently too. To sum it up: i see the GPL as an aggreement on
the (meta-)qualities of some (unqualified) cooperation (having to do
with the production and -implicitly- application of software) which is
bound to the object (and implicitly: medium) of this cooperation: the
software itself. As it is bound to the object, it goes wherever the
software goes, it spreads autonomously into other cooperations - even
into alienated capitalistic ones, wow!
Now couldn't we also qualify & meta-qualify, even virally meta-qualify
other cooperations & collaborations? For example at the Next 5 Minutes 4
conference, at the indymedia-debate, there was some discussion on what
should be the criteria for groups forming an IMC. Whereas no one was
promoting the idea of letting right-wing/conservative groups start up an
IMC (so there was a certain content-filter), there was a relatively
strong opinion which wanted to priviledge organizational criteria
(openness, basic democracy etc.) over the groups political color.
[What's interesting about the indymedia example, as compared to my
ideas, is that it's all very implicit (like many autonomous, anarchist
contexts) - what would happen if we used more explicit lyrics of law..?]
So we have qualities & meta-qualities here too. In a network-society, i
would envision cells, associations that have certain personal
aggreements on the actual object of collaboration. Next to that they can
also aggree to aggree with other groups on forming interfaces for
collaborating. This collaboration may be concerned with forming and
maintaining aggreements on such (meta-)qualities of collaboration which
would effect the initial cell of collaboration. [Practically, for such a
meta-aggreement (basically the license-terms) the idea of a
maintainer-(group) might help. The maintainers job would be to
facilitate and maintain the aggreement - _and to maintain the
possibility for forking the aggreement, if groups cannot aggree_.] The
license/meta-aggreement would become viral, if it also qualified the
internal structure of cells to which an association seeking to comply
with the aggreement would/could cultivate (an) interface(s). Something
like this will of course have to avoid over-regulation, turning certain
groups into untouchables.
And it's important not to make this all too complex. ;-} In all this
formalistic talk, we don't want to forget to learn our lesson from
capitalist "lean-production" (i believe i already mentioned that here).
Lean-production also has a very prominent aspect called "Quality
Management", or even "Total[itarian] Quality Management". That's
formalities gone wild. I'm at the moment doing my service in a
"certified" social institution; and everyone on the ground knows that
it's a useless mound of paperwork, whereas everyone in the
management-sphere "knows" that it's something especially lovely to be
certified.
So too much formality will not help. We cannot contract and control all
the quality of collaboration. Many of these qualities are just
tendencial. The question remaining would be, how to make these desired
structures, qualities of collaboration, tangible without forcing them
formally.
Maybe the establishment of new law. Law up to now is a
quasi-metaphisical acception of social in-formation, bound up with
souvereignity. Everyone accepts it because everyone accepts it -- and
because the state stands strong in acceptance by its fellow states
(wasn't it hardt&negri who said something like that?). As such the law
is accepted per se. Now what if law were simply established by
acceptance of one another as a group - without monolithic souvereignity?
This establishes an own metaphysics of law, next to souvereign law,
possibly interfacing to it (licensing etc.) - but also possibly
protecting, fighting for & establishing itself; dilluting the power of
souvereign law (i could imagine actions against property). Such law is
much more adrift; If you and i aggree - and we aggree to let others
participate in the aggreement if they principally aggree with our form
of aggreement.. and so on - then this law must establish a win-win
situation for people to indulge into its metaphysics (if it doesn't,
forget it).
We should nevertheless keep up the tie-in to souvereign law via the
viral-meta-quality-contract thingy. It kind of puts the spheres of free
cooperation into a situation similar to "the state of exception".
However, without a souvereign. Declared by anyone who likes to - and
nevertheless bound into common law - yet also (in its own way) beyond.
I can imagine a new type of jurisdiction, in which the court's job would
be to facilitate settlements between parties - and to define and ensure
the loose-loose-situation in case there is no aggreement.
I could imagine applying the lottery-representative idea from NAM to
Christoph's concept of "leadership". If roles and representatives are
really necessary, why not allocate them by lottery?
I can imagine using non-capitalistic currencies to build defined
markets. But i also can imagine forming parallel and overlaping economic
spaces of all colors, gift-economic, "self-unfolding".. any other ideas?
For these exchange-, collaboration-, meta-cooperation- & all other types
of cells, a theory seems necessary, to work out the mechanics of free
collaboration.
But not this evening. Thanks for the deadline to get something written,
give me some feedback, questions, and have a good night wherever you are,
cheers,
gabriel.