[p2p-research] [-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of open source (innovation as manipulation)

Fri Apr 30 15:36:54 CEST 2010

thanks for the interesting comments,

I'm reading commonwealth, which has an interesting critique of state of
exception theories as demobilizing, I tend to agree,

Michel

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 3:24 AM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hiya,
>
> Reminds me a lot of Virilio actually.  The idea that crises are only crises
> for civilians, and that unfriendly environments operate in favour of the
> state by reducing the capability for popular defence and creating dependence
> on those who can work in such environments.  Also Negri on the
> 'crisis-state', which seems to suggest that this model operates in
> contemporary capitalism in terms of imminent catastrophe as a pretext for
> states of exception.
>
> It can be traced in corporate and statist discourse, that the people in
> charge view terrain complexity as something frightening and threatening, and
> unregulated ecosystems as dangerously chaotic - they fantasise about
> concreting over everything.  I am thinking here of Sherene Razack on Somalia
> (discourses trying to mitigate human rights atrocities by 'peacekeepers'
> tended to fuse the hostile environment with local hostility and miltiary
> difficulties in the account of Somalia as a hellish place), and Spivak's
> essay 'Responsibility' (treating water in Bangladesh as the enemy and
> seeking to regulate it to 'protect' people who will actually end up
> dispossessed as a result).  In a sense, most of us (in urban settings) are
> already living in 'created' environments in this sense: urban environments
> are physically harsh, do not have food sovereignty and are highly dependent
> on artificial institutions (states, markets, welfare regimes) for
> material/ecological and social provisions which might be a lot easier to
> obtain in other settings (water needs to be stored up and piped in, energy
> concentrated and provided from outside, security provided artificially
> because of the lack of face-to-face interaction, mass transit becomes a need
> because of the zoning of cities, space becomes scarce and has to be set
> aside for purposes which less concentrated space would allow automatically
> e.g. leisure, health problems need to be treated rather than simply warded
> off - for most of history cities were population sinks for health
> reasons...)
>
> There is thus an extent to which the contestation of urban spaces
> (squatting, guerrilla gardening, urban foraging, autoreduction, social
> centres, etc) can be viewed as 'ruralisation' or 'ecologisation', somewhat
> akin to weeds peeping through the cracks and eventually eating away concrete
> - the city becomes a dense ecosystem in its own right to the extent that
> contestation of urban spaces restores an ecosystemic (rather than a
> dependent-dominant) dynamic, remembering that ecosystems are peer-networks
> rather than hierarchies, whereas the urban-rural division is hierarchical.
>
> bw
> Andy
>
>
>
>  On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 2:25 PM
>> Subject: Fwd: [-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of open
>> source
>> To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>> interesting reply revolving around
>> *
>> *
>> *" **an interest in introducing an innovation with the intention of
>> forcing adaptation
>> in the population. "*
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>
>> Date: Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 10:35 PM
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of open
>> source
>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>
>>
>> Julian,
>>
>> I'm sorry for being unclear.  What I had meant to say is that,
>> typically, a prototype is a discrete thing which is created with the
>> intention of being tested.  Certainly the way the prototype is tested
>> is a) the object itself is put through various challenges that are
>> anticipated uses and stresses, and b) the general integration of the
>> thing into the system is also tested at that point (how the thing
>> might fare in light of unanticipated uses and stresses).  The
>> distinction I was trying to draw was the coercive potential of
>> innovations.  Where there is less an interest in testing an individual
>> thing with the intention of improving it....  and more of an interest
>> in introducing an innovation with the intention of forcing adaptation
>> in the population.
>>
>> I was less concerned with individuals modifying themselves through,
>> say, education or societies changing populations through educational
>> institutions.  These things, on their face, have the intention of
>> shaping the person and society.  They are, at least in principle,
>> geared towards the preservation of individual and social existence.
>> Or, at least, they do insofar as they are generated by a public in
>> service of the ideal public which they represent.
>>
>> On the other hand, there are technologies that seem to be introduced
>> with the stated purpose of achieving one objective, yet have the
>> larger objective of changing human populations.  Take, for instance,
>> the infamous case of Nestle's infant formula strategy in Africa.
>> Company reps masquerading as health workers introduce infant formula
>> to a population that had not used it previously.  The suggested
>> purpose is to provide nutrition and humanitarian aid.  But when women
>> stopped lactating and suddenly found themselves forced to pay for the
>> product or watch their children starve, a much more radical technical
>> innovation becomes apparent--the forced creation of a new social web
>> in service of corporate interests.
>>
>> More current (and relevant) examples might be the sort of biological
>> innovations that have been spurred by petrochemical industries as
>> ubiquitous products (plastics, agricultural products, drugs, etc)
>> saturate ecosystems with chemicals that interfere with hormone
>> production across the food chain, resulting in an explosion of
>> diseases requiring treatment.  I don't know that I know enough to say
>> that there is anything resembling a conspiracy here....  other than
>> the sort of conspiracy of opportunistically imposed apathy and
>> ignorance.  But the general recklessness of big business seems to
>> suggest that there is something intentional about turning quick
>> profits, letting major catastrophic accidents happen, and then
>> profiting further.  Habituating people to live in a precarious state
>> of withered consciousness seems to have been the real "value"
>> uncovered by the pervasive barrage of technical innovations....  human
>> beings can be turned into quivering beasts who will tolerate any
>> injustice simply to hope for another day, and in many cases, who will
>> tear at each other's throats in defense of the paymasters responsible
>> for this exploitation.
>>
>> I suppose I should hang it up, here.  I might be drawing a false
>> distinction.  And I certainly am off the rails for this month's
>> discussion.  There is something moralistic in my argument, resembling
>> the months old discussion of "good" and "bad" that we had here.  Yet,
>> I wonder that there might be some value in drawing distinctions
>> between orders of technological existence.   That the fast-forward
>> orientation of prototyping is fascinating and productive....  but it
>> is a loaded term...  and it is one that I have a hard time unpacking.
>>
>> Davin
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Julian Oliver <julian at julianoliver.com>
>> wrote:
>> > ..on Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 03:10:01PM -0000, Johannes Birringer wrote:
>> >> >> Davin wrote:>> At one point in time, discrete objects were things
>> that were considered prototypes that could be thrown into an existing system
>> and tested. Increasingly, it seems like the prototypes are geared to test
>> individual and collective consciousness.  In other words, maybe we are the
>>  prototypes?  Being tested so that we can be effectively processed,
>> shrink-wrapped, labeled, bought and sold>>
>> >
>> > Hmm, This statement from Davin confused me also. I thought it was fairly
>> clear
>> > that any act of learning - or any 'attempt', which all action is at it's
>> root -
>> > simultaneously produces the self as a prototype, even if only for the
>> duration
>> > of that act. The very notion of a prototype assumes a platonic and
>> eventuating
>> > objecthood, a finished thing. When are people ever so singularly
>> resolved?
>> >
>> > Second order prototyping is the work of other people, especially
>> aquaintances,
>> > marketeers and those that resource people.
>> >
>> > Beast,
>> >
>> > --
>> > Julian Oliver
>> > home: New Zealand
>> > based: Berlin, Germany
>> > currently: Berlin, Germany
>> > about: http://julianoliver.com
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > empyre forum
>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
>> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>
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>>
>>
>

-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

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