excellent jamie - thanks - g sholette
| | hi y'all
sorry not to have been posting after the initial
flurry on transversality. i was disappointed
that thread fizzled out, i think it is rich to
mine. indeed i started doing some mining myself.
what i discovered was a two-part essay, lurking
amongst the data, and i present to you here the
first part, which is published in the new Mute
Magazine (27), just out, and archived at
<www.metamute.com>. The second will be
forthcoming I don't-know-when. I hope it is at
least an addition to existing discussion.
no criticism of persons real and living is meant vituperatively. ;-)
bests,
jamie
-----> SNIP
The Packet Gang (Part One)
Openness And Its Discontents
[ 4857 words ]
1. THE IDEA OF OPENNESS
Since the founding of the Free Software
Foundation in 1985 by Richard Stallman and the
Open Source Initiative in 1998 by Eric Raymond,
the idea of openness has enjoyed some
considerable celebrity. Simply understood, open
source software is that which is published along
with its source code, allowing developers to
collaborate, improve upon each other's work, and
use the code in their own projects. The cachet
of this open model of development has been
greatly increased by the high-profile success of
GNU-Linux, a piece of 'free-as-in-libre and open
source software' (FLOSS). But, taken together
with the distributed co-composition offered by,
for example, the wiki architecture,[1] and the
potential of peer-to-peer networks like
Bittorrent and Gnutella,[2] a more nuanced and
loose idea of openness has suggested itself as a
possible model for other kinds of organisation.
Felix Stalder of Openflows identifies its key
elements as
[Sť] communal management and open access to the informational
resources for production, openness to contributions from a diverse
range of users/producers, flat hierarchies, and a fluid
organisational structure.[3]
This idea of openness is now frequently deployed
not only with reference to composing software
communities but also to political and cultural
groupings. For many, this is easily explained:
FLOSS' 'self-evident' realisation of a
'voluntary global community empowered and
explicitly authorised to reverse-engineer, learn
from, improve and use-validate its own tools and
products', indicates that 'it has to be taken
seriously as a potential source of organising
for other realms of human endeavour.'[4] In many
circles, openness is now seen as 'paradigmatic'.
Publisher and software guru Tim O'Reilly's
presentation at the 2003 Reboot conference,
entitled 'The Open Source Paradigm Shift',
placed FLOSS at the vanguard of a social
phenomenon whose time, he said 'had come'; its
methods of ad hoc, distributed collaboration
constituting a 'new paradigm' at a level
consistent with, for example, the advent of the
printing press and movable type.[5]
Such accounts of the social-political pertinence
of the FLOSS model are increasingly common. A
recent essay by activist Florian Schneider and
writer-research Geert Lovink, for example,
exhibits the premature desire to collapse
FLOSS-style open organisation into a series of
other political phenomena:
freedom of movement and freedom of communication [...] the everyday
struggles of millions of people crossing borders as well as pirating
brands, producing generics, writing open source code or using
p2p-software.[6]
More soberly, Douglas Rushkoff has argued
recently in a report for the Demos think-tank
that 'the emergence of the interactive
mediaspace may offer a new model for
cooperation':
The values engendered by our fledgling networked culture may [...]
prove quite applicable to the broader challenges of our time and
help a world struggling with the impact of globalism, the lure of
fundamentalism and the clash of conflicting value systems [...] One
model for the open-ended and participatory process through which
legislation might occur in a networked democracy can be found in the
open source software movement.[7]
Rushkoff does not try to draw direct parallels
between FLOSS and other forms of activity in the
manner of Schneider and Lovink, but argues
equally problematically that the model used in
open source software composing communities could
be usefully applied to democratic political
organisation. 'A growing willingness to engage
with the underlying code of the democratic
process,' he contends, 'could eventually
manifest in a widespread call for revisions to
our legal, economic and political
structures.'[8] Clearly, then, the idea of
openness has appeal across very different
constituencies - here we already have both the
reformist-liberal and the radical-activist
claiming openness as an ally. Indeed, as ICT
theorist Biella Coleman suggests, the widespread
adoption and use of the idea of openness and its
'profound political impact' may precisely be
contingent on its peculiarly transpolitical
appeal. 'FLOSS,' she writes, resists
political delineation into the traditional political categories of
left, right or centre [...but] has been embraced by a wide range of
people [...] This has enabled [it] to explode from a niche and
academic endeavour into a creative sphere of socio-political and
technical influence bolstered by the internet.[9]
But the broad-church appeal of the idea of
openness suggested by FLOSS need not necessarily
be a cause for celebration, especially since
many of the constituencies making use of it
conceive of themselves as fundamentally opposed.
Can the idea of openness these divergent
constituencies embrace really be the same? And
how can it be that they consider it sufficient
to their very different aims?
The chief purpose of this essay is not to answer
these questions by examining the 'self-evident'
truths of open source production. Such studies
are already being carried out in forums like
Oekunux ; indeed, in the new issue of Mute
Magazine, Gilberto Camara, Director for Earth
Observation at Brazil's National Institute for
Space Research, has published research that
challenges some key tenets of the FLOSS model.
This research exposes the possibility that, in
many instances, FLOSS does not innovate
significantly original software, or sustain
projects outside of corporate or large-scale
academic involvement. Instead this article seeks
to address the intense political expectation
around open organisation among diverse elements
of the diffuse activist organisations which,
post-Seattle, have been loosely referred to as
'the social movement' or 'social movements'. In
referring to the social movement, this article
concerns itself primarily with groups such as
People's Global Action, Indymedia, Euraction Hub
and other such non-hierarchised networks; it
does not have in mind more traditionally
structured organisations like the Social Forums,
SWP-Globalise Resistance or so-called 'civil
society' NGOs.
In the social movement thus defined, openness is
clearly becoming a constitutive organising
principle, as it connects with the hopes and
desires circulating around the idea of the
'multitude', a term whose post-Spinozan
renaissance has been secured by Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri's book Empire. The multitude
is a defiantly heterogeneous figure, a
collective noun intended to counter the
homogenising violence of terms such as 'the
people' or 'the mass'. For many thinkers in the
post-Autonomist tradition, this multitude is a
way of conceiving the revolutionary potential of
a new 'post-Fordist proletariat' of networked
immaterial labourers. In certain circuits within
the social movement, FLOSS organisation is seen
as the techno-social precondition of a radical
democracy in becoming. However tenuous this
assemblage may be, it goes some way to
explaining how FLOSS and the idea of openness
have become central rhetorical terms in the
struggle to produce an identity for the
networked, anti-capitalist movement. But it is
also true that certain characteristics of the
idea of openness have genuine organisational
influence there. A study of openness is thus
useful in three degrees: first, to the social
movement itself 'internally'; second, to
'outsiders' wanting to gain a good understanding
of 'what it is'; third as a critique of those
who would seek to represent the movement with,
or attempt to manipulate it through, a
particular deployment of the idea of openness.
2. 'THE REVOLUTION WILL BE OPEN SOURCE'
It is too easy to make sweeping generalisations
about the ways in which the social movement
realises the idea of openness. Instead we need
to look at the ways in which the kind of
openness identified in FLOSS may practically
correspond to specific moments of organisation
in the social movement. Based on direct
involvement in the social movement in contexts
such as the anti-G8, No Border Camps, PGA
meetings and various actions, I see
correspondences in five immediate areas:
Meetings and Discussions
The time and location of physical meetings are
published in a variety of places, online and
off. The meetings themselves are most often open
to all comers, sometimes with the exception of
'traditional' media. Although often no
recordings or pictures are allowed at meetings,
there is rarely any other vetting of those who
attend. Anyone is allowed to speak, although
there is often a convenor or moderator whose
role is to keep order and ensure progress.
Summaries of discussion are often posted on the
web (see below, Documentation) where they can be
read by those unable to attend a physical
meeting or those otherwise interested parties.
The same is true of IRC meetings, which anyone
may attend, and for which the 'logs' are usually
published (see, again, Documentation). Net-based
mailing lists, through which much discussion is
carried out, are usually open subscription and,
as with physical meetings, those joining are not
vetted.
Decision-Making
Usually, anyone present at a meeting may take
part in the decisions made there, although these
conditions may occasionally be altered in favour
of those actively involved with a project.
Currently, the majority of decision making is
done using the 'consensus' method, in which any
person present not agreeing with a decision can
either choose to abstain or veto ('block'). A
block causes an action or decision to be
stopped, either temporarily or permanently.
Documentation
In general, documents that form organisational
materials within the movement are published
online, usually using a content management
system such as wiki. In most cases, it is
possible for even casual visitors to edit and
alter these documents, although it is possible
to 'roll back' to earlier versions in, for
example, the case of defacements.
Demonstrations
The majority of demonstrations are organised
using the above methods. Not only is their
organisation 'open' but, within a certain range
of political persuasions, anyone may attend.
Self-policing is not 'hard' but 'soft'.
Actions
Even some 'actions' - concentrated interventions
usually involving smaller numbers of people -
are 'open', using the above methods to organise
themselves and, if the action is ongoing, even
allowing new people to participate.
Thus some key moments within the social movement
demonstrably share certain characteristics with
the FLOSS model of openness. Indeed, the
movement deploys many of the same tools as FLOSS
communities (i.e., wiki, IRC and mailing lists)
to organise itself and carry out its projects.
But its characteristic uses of openness are not
enshrined in any formal document. Rather, they
have developed as a way of organising that is
tacitly understood by those involved in the
social movement: an idea of openness that, to
differing degrees, inflects its organisation
throughout. Although the principles are not
rigidly followed, there is often peer criticism
of groups who do not declare their agendas or
who act in a closed, partisan fashion, and,
generally speaking, any group or project wanting
to keep itself closed has an obligation to
explain its rationale to other groups.
Some of these attitudes and principles derive
from the People's Global Action (PGA), an
influential 'instrument' constituting a visible
attempt to organise around networked openness.
The organisational philosophy of PGA,[10] which
was formed after a movement gathering in South
America in August 1997, is based on
'decentralisation'. With 'minimal central
structures', the PGA 'has no membership' or
'juridical personality': 'no organisation or
person represents' it, nor does it 'represent
any organisation or person'. It is a 'tool',
a fluid network for communication and co-ordination between diverse
social movements who share a loose set of principles or 'hallmarks'
[...] Since February 1998 [...] PGA has evolved as an interconnected
and often chaotic web of very diverse groups, with a powerful common
thread of struggle and solidarity at the grassroots level. These
gatherings have played a vital role in face-to-face communication
and exchange of experience, strategies and ideas [...][11]
The PGA has attempted to structure itself around
a set of 'hallmarks' which have been updated at
each key meeting. These are currently as follows:
1. A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism;
all trade agreements, institutions and governments that promote
destructive globalisation.
2. [... A rejection of] all forms and systems of domination and
discrimination including, but not limited to, patriarchy, racism and
religious fundamentalism of all creeds. [...An embracing of] the
full dignity of all human beings.
3. A confrontational attitude, since [... it is not believed that]
lobbying can have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic
organisations, in which transnational capital is the only real
policy-maker.
4. A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for
social movements' struggles, advocating forms of resistance which
maximise respect for life and oppressed peoples' rights, as well as
the construction of local alternatives to global capitalism.
5. An organisational philosophy based on decentralisation and
autonomy.[12]
These hallmarks function to structure
participation in the PGA process. In theory,
they allow the network to remain 'open' while
designating the kinds of activities that don't
fall within its field. PGA meetings, for
example, do not exclude those who don't
subscribe to its hallmarks, but neither would
discussions explicitly contrary to them be given
much attention. Certain kinds of discussion are
openly privileged over others on pragmatic
grounds.
Structures like PGA and those being experimented
with more widely are part of the social
movement's general rejection of organisational
models based on representation, verticality and
hierarchy. In their stead comes
'non-hierarchical decentralisation' and
'horizontal coordination'. 'From this movement,'
writes Massimo De Angelis, 'emerges [...] the
concept and practice of network horizontality,
democracy, of the exercise of power from
below.'[13] For this 'radical political
economist'[,] this form of 'social-cooperation'
is 'ours'. It is 'our' horizontality, and these
are 'our' networks, part of a set of modes of
coordination of human activity that
go beyond the capitalist market and beyond the state. [...] we are
talking about another world. [...] the slogan on T-shirts in Genoa
was entirely correct: another world is not only possible. Rather, we
are already patiently and with effort building another world - with
all its contradictions, limitations and ambiguities - through the
form of our networks.[14]
In other words it is the open, networked,
horizontal form of the movement that produces
its radical potential for social change: the
message, yet again, is the medium. In the case
of the self-described 'open publishing' project
Indymedia, for example, the open submission
structure is said to collapse the distinction
between media producer and consumer, allowing us
to 'become the media'. The Indymedia newswire,
write the collective
works on the principle of OPEN PUBLISHING, an essential element of
the Indymedia project that allows anyone to instantaneously
self-publish their work on a globally accessible web site. The
Indymedia newswire encourages people to become the media [...] While
Indymedia reserves the right to develop sections of the site that
provide edited articles, there is no designated Indymedia editorial
collective that edits articles posted to the news wire.[15]
Here, the idea of openness presents itself as
absolutely inimical to the 'dominant
multinational global news system', where 'news
is not free, news is not open'. With open
publishing, by contrast,
the process of creating news is transparent to the readers. They can
contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of
stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as
possible to help the readers find the stories they want. Readers can
see editorial decisions being made by others. They can see how to
get involved and help make editorial decisions. If they can think of
a better way for the software to help shape editorial decisions,
they can copy the software because it is free and change it and
start their own site. If they want to redistribute the news, they
can, preferably on an open publishing site.
The working parts of journalism are exposed. Open publishing assumes
the reader is smart and creative and might want to be a writer and
an editor and a distributor and even a software programmer [...]
Open publishing is free software. It's freedom of information,
freedom for creativity.[16]
Accounts such as this and De Angelis'
demonstrate the extreme amount of expectation
being focused on openness as an agent for
change. Not only is openness central to the
organisation of the social movement, but in many
cases it is taken that the organisational
quality of openness is inherently radical and
will be productive of positive change in
whichever part of the social-political field it
is deployed. This is seen, for example, in the
work of the group Open Organisations, comprised
of three individuals - Toni Prug, Richard Malter
and Benjamin Geer - who were previously closely
involved with UK Indymedia, and who have until
relatively recently been united in their belief
in the radically liberatory potentials of
openness. For them, any problems with openness
have been seen as a consequence of its being an
as-yet insufficiently theorised and elaborated
form, and thus they have been working on what
might be characterised as a 'strong' or 'robust'
openness model which recommends a set of working
processes or practices intended to foster it.
'Open Organisations', in their model,
are entities that anyone can join, [that function with] complete
transparency and flexible and fair decision making structures,
ownership patterns, and exchange mechanisms, that are designed,
defined, and refined, by members as part of a continual
transformative and learning process.[17]
3. PROBLEMS WITH OPENNESS: THE CRYPTO-HIERARCHY
In effect, by creating 'structured processes',
Open Organisations try to provide for a
consistent openness. In doing so, they
implicitly recognise that there are
inconsistencies between the rhetoric and
behaviour of contemporary political
organisations. But what are these problems and
who -- indeed /where/ -- are openness'
discontents? In fact they abound.
In the case of Inydmedia's 'open publishing'
project, for example, openness has been failing
under the pressures of scale. Initially small
'cottage-industry' IMCs were able to manage the
open-publishing process very well. But, in many
IMCs, when the number of site visitors has risen
past a certain level, problems have been
generated. Popular IMC sites have become targets
for interventions by political opponents, often
from the fascist right, seeking opportunities to
disrupt what they regard as an IMC's
'countercultural' potential, and a platform from
which to promulgate their own rhetoric. Of
course there is nothing to prevent this in the
IMC manifesto; but it has impelled the
understandable decision to edit out fascist
viewpoints and other 'noise', using the /ad hoc/
teams whose function was previously to develop
and maintain the IMC's open-publishing system.
Some IMCs have ultimately been seen to take on a
rather traditional, closed and censorial
function that is all too often undeclared and in
contradiction with the official IMC 'become the
media' line. In other words, Indymedia channels
are often politically censored by a small group
of more-or-less anonymous individuals to quite a
high degree.
This emergence of soft control within
organisations emphatically declared open is
becoming a common and tacitly acknowledged
problem across the social movement. As with
Indymedia, practical issues with open
development and organisation too often give the
lie to the enthusiastic promotion of openness as
an effective alternative to representation.
After one PGA meeting, the group Sans Titre had
this to say:
Whenever we have been involved in PGA-inspired action, we have been
unable to identify decision-making bodies. Moreover, there has been
no collective assessment of the effectiveness of PGA-inspired
actions [...] If the PGA-process includes decision-making and
assessment bodies, where are they to be found? How can we take part?[18]
This problem runs through the temporary
constitutions and dissolutions of 'open'
organisations that make up the social movement.
The avowed 'absence' of decision-making bodies
and points of centralisation can too easily
segue into a concealment of control /per se/. In
fact, in both the FLOSS model and the social
movement, the idea that no one group or person
controls development and decision making is
often quite far from the truth. In both cases it
is formally true that anyone may alter or
intervene in processes according to their needs,
views or projects; but practically speaking, few
people can assume the necessary social position
from which to make effective 'interventions'.
Open source software is generally tightly
controlled by a small group of people: the
Apache Group, for example, very open-handedly
controls the development of the Apache Web
server, and Linus Torvalds has the final say on
the Linux kernel's development.[19] Likewise, in
the social movement, decision making often
devolves to a surprisingly small number of
individuals and groups who make a lot of the
running in deciding what happens, where and
when. Though they never officially 'speak for'
others, much unofficial doctrine nonetheless
emanates from them. Within political networks,
such groups and individuals can be seen as
'supernodes', not only routing more than their
'fair share' of traffic, but actively
determining the 'content' that traverses them.
Such supernodes do not (necessarily) constitute
themselves out of a malicious will-to-power:
rather, power defaults to them through personal
qualities like energy, commitment and charisma,
and the ability to synthesise politically
important social moments into identifiable ideas
and forms.
That this soft control by crypto-hierarchies
exists is tacit knowledge for many who have had
first hand experience with 'open' organisations.
Statements such as the following by a political
activist introduced to what he calls 'the chaos
of open community' at a Washington State forest
blockade camp in 1994 and then later the Carters
Road Community, are typical:
the core group, by virtue of being around longer as individuals, and
also working together longest as a sub group, formed unintentional
elites. These elite groups were covert structures in open consensus
based communities which said loudly and clearly that everyone's
influence and power was equal [...] We all joined in with a vigorous
explanation that [...] there were no leaders [...] The conspiracy to
hide this fact among ourselves and from ourselves was remarkably
successful. It was as though the situation where no leaders existed
was known, deep down by everyone, to be impossible, outsiders were
able to say so, but communards were hoping so much that it was not
true that they were able to pretend...[20]
To examine how much this 'pretence' is the rule
within the social movement is beyond the scope
of this essay. But what is clear is that each of
the five characteristics of 'openness' described
above, when subjected to scrutiny, reveal
themselves as extremely compromised. The
details, for example, of meetings and
discussions are published and circulated, but
this information is primarily received by those
who are able (and often privileged to be able)
to connect to certain (technological/social)
networks. Likewise, the language of a 'call', or
equivalent, can determine whether a party will
feel comfortable or suitable to respond to it:
like PGA's 'hallmarks', language (including, but
not limited to tongue) and phraseology are
points of 'soft control', but not ones that are
openly discussed and studied.
Furthermore, meetings may be 'open to all', but
they can quickly become hostile environments for
parties who do not or cannot observe the 'basic'
consensus that is often tacitly agreed between
long-term actors in a particular scene. This
peer consensus can indeed, on occasion, so
determine the movement's 'open' decision-making
process as to turn it into a war of attrition on
difference, with divergent points of view
gradually giving themselves up to peer opinion
as the 'debate' wears on and on. The 'block' or
'veto' is in fact rarely used because of the
peer pressure placed on those who would use it
('Aw, come on, you're not going to block, are
you?' - a common enough plaint at movement
meetings). In some cases the apparently neutral
'moderator' role can also become bizarrely
instrumentalised, giving rise to the sensation
that 'something has already been decided', and
that the meeting is just for performative
purposes.
Likewise, documentation of meetings and
decisions usually only tells half the story.
Points of serious contention are frequently left
out on grounds that the parties involved in the
disagreement might not want them to be
published. This 'smoothing over' of serious
difference is quite normal. In fact participants
in IRC discussions habitually inflect what they
say because of the future publication of the
logs, using private channels to discuss key
points and only holding 'official' discussions
and 'lines' in the open. Too often the open
channel only 'hears' what it is supposed to hear
and important exchanges are not published.
All of this explains why some activist-theorists
are beginning to interrogate the experiment with
openness as it is taking shape in the social
movement. History has put significant resources
at their disposal. Jo Freeman's 'The Tyranny of
Structurelessness' is a key document,
originating from the experiences of the '60s
feminist liberation movement, and provides a
critique of the laissez faire ideal for group
structures still absolutely relevant today. As
Freeman argues, such structures can become
a smoke screen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned
hegemony over others. Thus, structurelessness becomes a way of
masking power. As long as the structure of the group is informal,
the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few, and
awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules.[21]
Freeman's insight is fundamental: the idea of
openness does not in itself prevent the
formation of the informal structures that I have
described here as crypto-hierarchies; on the
contrary, it is possible that it fosters them to
a greater degree than structured organisations.
Underneath its rhetoric of openness, the
non-hierarchical organisation can thus take on
the qualities of a 'gang'. As Jacques Camatte
and Gianna Collu realised in 1969, such
organisations tend to hide the existence of
their informal ruling cliques to appear more
attractive to outsiders, feeding on the creative
abilities of individual members whilst
suppressing their individual contributions, and
producing layers of authority contingent on
individuals' intellectual or social dominance.
'Even in those groups that want to escape [it]',
writes Camatte, 'the [...] gang mechanism
nevertheless tends to prevail[...] The inability
to question theoretical questions independently
leads the individual to take refuge behind the
authority of another member who becomes,
objectively, a leader, or behind the group
entity, which becomes a gang.'[22]
4. OPENNESS: OPEN TO ALL CONSTITUENCIES
What this initial investigation indicates is
that the idea of openness, which is receiving
such a promotion on the heels of the Free-Libre
and Open Source software movement, is not in and
of itself an immediately sufficient alternative
to the bankrupt structures of representation.
There seem to be good reasons for the discontent
with open organisation felt by many activists,
much of it based on evidence that must remain,
by nature, anecdotal. But what is clear is that,
if we are going to promote open organisation
within the social movement, we must also take
care to scrutinise the tacit flows of power that
underlie and undercut it. The accounts here
suggest that once the formal hierarchical
membrane of group organisation is dismantled -
in which, for example, software composition or
political decision-making might have previously
taken place - what remains are tacit control
structures. In FLOSS, limitations to those who
can access and alter source code are formally
removed. But what then comes to define such
access, and the software that is produced, are
underlying determinants such as education,
social opportunity, social connectivity and
affiliation. The most open system theoretically
imaginable, this is to say, reveals perfectly
the predicating inequities of the wider
environment in which it is situated; and what
the idea of openness must tackle first and most
critically is that a really open organisation
cannot be realised without a prior
radicalisation this social-political field. And
that, of course, is to beg the oldest of
questions.
[1] See: 'What is Wiki?' at [http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki]
[2] See: [http://www.zeropaid.com] for a review
of current peer to peer and fileshare services
[3] Felix Stalder, 'One-size-doesn't-fit-all.
Particulars of the Volunteer Open Source
Development Methodology', available at
[http://openflows.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/25/1722242]
[4] Adam Greenfield, 'The Minimal Compact:
Preliminary Notes on an "Open Source"
Constitution for Post-National Entities',
[http://www.v-2.org/displayArticle.php?article_num=339]
[5] Tim O' Reilly, 'The Open Source Paradigm
Shift,' Keynote, Reboot 2003, available at
[http://www.reboot.dk/reboot6/video/]
[6] Florian Schneider, 'Re: Reverse Engineering
Freedom', Nettime, Tue, 14 Oct 2003, available
at
[http://www.mail-archive.com/nettime-l*at*bbs.thing.net/msg01248.html].
See also Florian Schneider and Geert Lovink,
'Reverse Engineering Freedom,' in Make Worlds,
2003. Available at
[http://www.makeworlds.org/?q=book/view/20]
[7] Douglas Rushkoff, 'Open Source Democracy:
How Online Communication Is Changing Offline
Politics', Demos, 2003
[http://www.demos.co.uk/opensourcedemocracy_pdf_media_public.aspx]
[8] Rushkoff, ibid
[9] Biella Coleman, 'Free and Open Source
Software', in Survival Kit, Part one,
proceedings of RAM4
[10] See: [http://www.apg.org]
[11] 'Sophie', ChiapasLink UK, 'We are
everywhere! People's Global Action meeting in
Cochabamba, Bolivia', posted to A-infos list, 8
Dec 2001.
[http://www.ainfos.ca/01/dec/ainfos00120.html]
[12] PGA hallmarks, available at:
[http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/pga/hallm.htm]
[13] Massimo De Angelis, 'From Movement to
Society', in The Commoner, August 2001,
[http://www.commoner.org.uk/01-3groundzero.htm]
[14] De Angelis, ibid
[15] Indymedia collective statement
[http://www.indymedia.org/fish.php3?file=www.indymedia.newswire]
[16] Matthew Arnison, 'Open Publishing is the
Same as Free Software', March 2001, available at
[http://www.cat.org.au/maffew/cat/openpub.html]
[17] Statement taken from:
[http://wiki.uniteddiversity.com/open_organisations]
[18] Sans Titre, 'Open Letter to the People's
Global Action', 05-09-02.
[http://www.pgaconference.org/_postconference_/pp_sanstitre.htm]
[19] See, for example, Paula Roone, 'Is Linus
Killing Linux?', in TechWeb, January 28, 2001,
[http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010126S0013]
[20] Chris Lee, 'An Article Concerning the Issue
of Covert Power Elites in Open Communities',
4/12/2001,
[http://cartersrd.org.au/covert_elites.html]
[21] Jo Freeman, 'The Tyranny of
Struturelessness', first printed by the Women's
Liberation Movement, USA, 1970
[http://www.anarres.org.au/essays/amtos.htm]
[22] Jacques Camatte, 'On Organisation', in
Invariance, Annee V, Serie II, No.2, reprinted
in This World We Must Leave and Other Essays,
Autonomedia: New York, 1995, p.30
------------------------------
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gregory sholette
Batza Family Chair
Art and Art History
Colgate University
Spring of 2004
Department of Art
and Art History
Colgate University
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, NY 13346
Ph: 315-228-7160
<gshol-*at*artic.edu>;
<gshol-*at*mail.colgate.edu>;
http://www.artic.edu/~gshole/
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