[p2p-research] Wikipedia, Citizendium, Eduzendium, ...
Athina Karatzogianni
athina.k at gmail.com
Mon Feb 4 15:03:57 CET 2008
Hi All,
I just had a chance now to read this discussion and by coincidence I have
been discussing with my students, while teaching a course on New Media and
Politics, the issues of participation, democracy and power in relation to
online projects. So it seems quite topical to me right at this moment.
I think a big problem comes from the fact that political and particularly
western democratic theory has dealt with participation in a very bizarre
way. Sadly, it seems what has prevailed regarding theories of participation
in maintream political theory is that the more it increases, the more it
'lowers' the quality of democracy, as the lower classes participate more and
this elitist view inevitably has costs for our understanding of
participation and the internet. The current figures of political
participation in western democracies, according to some, have to stay low
for democracy to work......(blame it all to the Greeks I do!!)
This idea has dictated odd and downright exlusive/binary political
practices, on a micro-level, such as those you referring to in the case of
wikipedia. Moreover, in my view you can't get credit for 2 out of 3, you
need all three things identified by Jon earlier to be there to talk of
peer-to-peer, and perhaps some more, otherwise you end up with good
intentions, espoused ideals and organizational philosophies, which when
translated in reality, in real actions, they are not really charactiristics
of p2p practicing communities. Simply then, you can't have your pie and eat
it too, pretending to be revolutionary/transformative or whatever and all
that while you just apply a selection of these processes (thats more like
some of the NGOs!). Or I will do my 'hobby' (the word MIchel hates) get
credit for it, create reputational capital for myself and hope that I ll be
a little bit revolutionary as well if it turns out that way..........like a
collateral damage kind of thing
It is also funny that one of you mentioned the Soviets.There is a feeling I
am getting some times that perhaps we are in a way running again on a more
global level, a much more sophisticated early 21st century understanding of
social tranformation resembling the early 20th century international
communist ideas, which of course resembles sth else before that (Anarchist
theorists and before that bourgeois revolutions), if we look at this from
world-systemic perspective. I think the bigger question is right now is
whether the explosion of new political ideas due to new technologies is
there to conserve the status quo or transform it. I am getting mixed
signals, which maybe signifies the creation of country-blocks again in the
future.
Yours
Athina
--
Dr Athina Karatzogianni
Lecturer in Media, Culture and Society
The University of Hull
United Kingdom
HU6 7RX
Check out Athina's work:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cyberconflict-Routledge-Research-Information-Technology/dp/0415396840/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Resistance-Conflict-Contemporary-World/dp/0415452988/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cyber-conflict-Politics-Contemporary-Security-Studies/dp/0415459702/
http://vectors.usc.edu/thoughtmesh/publish/135.php
Press interviews:
France:http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0,36-924253,0.html
http://www.20minutes.fr/article/180599/Monde-La-Chine-a-soif-d-informations.php
Greece:http://www.enet.gr/online/online_text/c=112,id=78490200
On Feb 4, 2008 1:46 PM, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
>
> JA = Jon Awbrey
> MB = Michel Bauwens
>
> Michel,
>
> I will make some attempt to work through your initial comments
> before moving on to the newer responses. Old stuff is tagged
> and indented, my current comments are unindented.
>
> JA: It may take me several passes to work through your text below.
>
> JA: Let me begin with your definition of peer production,
> even though I remain a little troubled by a nagging
> sense that some essential element of equality is
> missing from the mix.
>
> MB: | Peer production has three aspects:
> | 1) voluntary contributions;
> | 2) participatory processes;
> | 3) commons oriented output.
>
> JA: You have stated your opinion that Wikipedia exemplifies
> or exhibits the characters of 1 and 3, lacking only 2.
>
> JA: There are several questions that I would have to ask at the outset:
>
> JA: A. Is peer production like "fire production", where missing any side
> of the "fire triangle" -- fuel, heat, oxygen -- breaks the chain
> of necessary causes? Or does one get partial credit for 2/3?
>
> JA: B. What is the output? What is the product of ultimate interest?
> Is it the content of documents and files, the content of minds,
> or is it the conditional general resolution of people to act in
> certain ways, in short, beliefs? [beliefs or habits (Peirce)].
>
> JA: C. What does it say about the level of voluntary contribution
> when there is a very high level of involuntary exclusion?
>
> Re:
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/from-citizendium-to-eduzendium/2008/01/29#comment-182719
>
> MB: Very clear reply ... though I'm still unsatisfied, and the reason
> is of course, that, despite the failing of enacting values in the
> participatory process, it still has 2 of the 3 functions of peer
> production,
>
> MB: let's say that for me peer production is an objective mode
> that potentially expresses an 'espoused ideal', and to
> different degrees, it will have discrepancies with
> how these ideals are espoused.
>
> Just to be clear, we know the espoused ideals by their "espousals",
> that is, from their announcement in the advertisements, prospecti,
> and other public representations collectively known as "PR". But
> whether there is any objective mode of production that actualizes
> these espousals within a given project or range of activities, ay,
> there's the rubber that seeks to gain traction on the road of good
> intentions.
>
> Though advertisements may turn our attention to a particular area
> of activity in the world, we must gather our impressions about the
> objective mode of it through actual experience interacting with it.
>
> Discrepancies between preaching and practice can be symptoms of many
> different states of affairs, anything from a moment's inattention to
> chronic incapacities to reprobate mendacity on the part of preachers.
>
> When we speak of "governance" in the system-theoretic sense of
> "regulation",
> then we become very interested in the "differential dynamics" engendered
> by
> these differences. Indeed, you can usually tell a person who wants to fix
> the problem and who knows at least how to begin fixing the problem from
> a person who wants nothing more than to deny the problem and hide the
> very existence of the problem from others by that person's attitude
> toward these discrepancies.
>
> But I already know the tribal attitude of Wikipediots toward solving any
> problem.
> It is summarized in the Chapter & Verse of WP:BEANS, which amounts to the
> advice:
> "Ignore it and maybe it will go away."
>
> Have to break here ... will continue from this point next time ...
>
> Jon Awbrey
>
> MB: The other thing though, is how to establish a kind of cutting off
> point,
> when it really becomes something else.
>
> MB: Take Russia, at what point did it become something altogether
> different
> than the originally espoused ideals of socialism? How real where the
> original soviets? how significant was it that competing interpretations
> where suppressed from the very start; and what did it really become
> when
> stalinism was fully consolidated as a new system: was it state
> socialism,
> state capitalism ?? extremely difficult questions
>
> MB: and here we are at the very beginning of peer production,
> witnessing a degradation ... at what point does it really
> turn into something altogether different??
>
> MB: So my question to you is:
>
> MB: what then, has it become?
>
> MB: If not peer production and governance, you would then have
> to explain to me how to 'explain away the input and output
> feature, as being also part of another system? and then
> explain that other system, which in my eyes, is not
> a market, nor a command and control system ...
>
> MB: So my problem is:
>
> MB: 1) to see it as a degeneration of peer production and governance, but
> still exemplying this new mode of production; and we can then discuss
> the various degrees of degeneration and perhaps indicate cut-off points
> (by analogy, when did the perhaps original council system become a top
> down
> but different system, only retaining public property, but embedding it
> in a
> new extremely totalitarian and unequal hierarchy system);
>
> MB: 2) to see it as something different than peer production, yet another
> mode?
>
> MB: Please explain how you see this.
>
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
> inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
> mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
> mathweb: http://www.mathweb.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
> getwiki: http://www.getwiki.net/-UserTalk:Jon_Awbrey
> p2p wiki: http://www.p2pfoundation.net/User:JonAwbrey
> zhongwen wp: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
> ontolog: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?JonAwbrey
> http://www.altheim.com/ceryle/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=JonAwbrey
> wp review: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showuser=398
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
--
Dr Athina Karatzogianni
Lecturer in Media, Culture and Society
The University of Hull
United Kingdom
HU6 7RX
Check out Athina's work:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cyberconflict-Routledge-Research-Information-Technology/dp/0415396840/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Resistance-Conflict-Contemporary-World/dp/0415452988/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cyber-conflict-Politics-Contemporary-Security-Studies/dp/0415459702/
http://vectors.usc.edu/thoughtmesh/publish/135.php
Press interviews:
France:http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0,36-924253,0.html
http://www.20minutes.fr/article/180599/Monde-La-Chine-a-soif-d-informations.php
Greece:http://www.enet.gr/online/online_text/c=112,id=78490200
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20080204/a7a03fb0/attachment-0001.html
More information about the p2presearch
mailing list