[p2p-research] Non digital commons a lot more complicated than Free Software

[Mathieu ONeil]

Hey Martin,
 
 Mathieu here, I'm the editor of a new journal project, critical studies  in peer production (http://cspp.oekonux.org/), we have been fine-tuning  layout etc for a while, getting ready to launch soon. I really like the  points you make below, if you would like to convert them into a short  article we could include it into our "debate" section with possibly a  response from Michel or whoever feels strongly about the issue?
 
 All best,
 
 Mathieu


----- Original Message -----
From: "j.martin.pedersen" <m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk>
Date: Friday, December 3, 2010 8:31 pm
Subject: Re: [p2p-research] Non digital commons a lot more complicated than Free Software
To: p2p research network <p2presearch at listcultures.org>
Cc: Beatriz Busaniche <bea at vialibre.org.ar>, Massimo De Angelis <commoning at gmail.com>, Silke Helfrich <Silke.Helfrich at gmx.de>, David Bollier <david at bollier.org>, Jai Sen <jai.sen at cacim.net>

> 
> Michel,
> 
> You are right to warn about "being stuck in critique" - or in 
> any other
> rhetoric, whether self-styled or based on established ideology - 
> and I
> shall be the first to lament conventional, unreflective leftist 
> positions.
> As the subject line indicates, virtual commons are within free culture
> commonly, in general, considered in isolation from the 
> materiality that
> makes them possible and which constitutes one of the fastest growing
> environmental threats. This is not an ideological point, but a 
> technicalpoint, and it continues to be a hidden aspect of free 
> culture and
> virtual commons, and will remain hidden until the philosophy and
> language from within the movements recognise the material 
> dependency and
> enormous energy consumption that digital commons entail. That 
> was and is
> all I am saying: do not be in denial.
> 
> Generally, on a personal note, I proceed from the principle that one
> should not bother criticising something that one does not care for:
> critique is an attempt to improve: preguntando caminamos - and the
> questioning as we walk is of course also of our own footsteps and
> direction (in fact, when building alternatives there is not much 
> else to
> question). Else, it would risk ending up like in some western 
> New Age
> community where everyone is smiling with joy, although they are 
> furiouson the inside, with themselves and with each other - for 
> the more
> enlightened, the more happy, and so to admit to *not* be happy 
> and *not*
> on the verge of nirvana would signal a failure. So we smile. In short:
> denial, repression and the danger of explosion.
> 
> I don't understand what you mean with those who "just don't get 
> it" -
> for my part I am quite sure that most people understand very 
> easily that
> energy and hardware don't just drop from the sky, but have to be
> generated and produced and that this production is 
> environmentally and
> humanly costly, *if* they are made aware of that - but you seem to
> suggest that *I* just don't get "it" - "it" being your world 
> view. Well,
> what is it that I don't get?
> 
> I have answered in more detail below - hoping that this can become
> either a constructive exchange, or that we can just leave it 
> here - with
> a view to clearing up some of the misunderstandings that were 
> reflectedin your responses (to what I was trying to say).
> 
> On 29/11/10 01:09, Michel Bauwens wrote:
> > hi martin,
> > 
> > you say "berlin" was allergic to stances directly confronting 
> capital, can
> > you give some concrete examples?
> 
> I said we heard it time and again during the conference and in
> meetings - even in pejorative terms with gestures and with overbearing
> shrugs. I was actually rather shocked, not so much by the 
> arrogance and
> superiority of it, as the assumption that such denigrating statements
> were OK to make and reflected a common(s) sense. This is no 
> place for
> specifics, as they are personal, - if you managed to _not_ 
> notice I am
> rather surprised - but in some sense it doesn't matter, while in 
> othersit matters a lot:
> 
> The movements of peasants, landless and indigenous - as well as urban
> radical movements - I imagine, outnumber the digital commoners; and
> without land and its resources there can be no cyberspace. After all,
> half the population is still rural and many urban dwellers rely upon
> their villages to feed them in the city, as anyone who has ever been
> doing development work on the frontiers of capitalism will know 
> all too
> well.
> 
> Since the expansion of cyberspace threatens the commoners of the land,
> there needs to be some sort of mutual recognition of the this
> inter-dependence. Every time the digital commons discourse 
> ignores and
> denies this material foundation, the problem is consolidated. If 
> you see
> yourself as a public intellectual, then you must realise - as Lessig,
> Benkler et al. before you - that you to quite some extent have 
> to take
> on the responsibility as a central contributor to defining (refining?)
> the discourse of those who follow. At this stage, the digital commons
> discourse is saturated with politics that build on the misleading
> (deliberately misleading! (I will document this on demand)) discourse
> established by the Ivy League leaders who have defined the territory
> intellectually - and done so in such a manner as to not only pose
> minimal threat to capital interests, but indeed to be helpful 
> for their
> expansion.
> 
> The movements for the defense of commons first had their de 
> facto rights
> articulated in the Charter of Forests (ca. 1215-1225), and apart from
> various great uprisings - the last, in this part of the world, during
> the Spanish Revolution in the 1930s - it has been a slow, but safe
> decay: from having collective right of access to land for food, 
> fuel and
> building materials to abstract, individual rights that can be 
> suspendedin a state of emergency, which have become permanent 
> features in the
> contemporary world.
> 
> 
> > one thing worries me though, you say that we should wait "that 
> we are all on
> > the same page", but surely, that cannot be a reason for 
> inaction, until the
> > magical moment when that would happen? this stance, waiting 
> for "once we are
> > all on the same page .. then let us move forward", is a 
> guarantee for
> > staying in the critical stage, with no movement towards 
> concretely building
> > the alternatives ...
> 
> I am not sure why you choose to (mis)understand what I said in 
> this way,
> but to clarify: You asked me for *specific* answers and I said 
> that I do
> not have any real answers at this stage. Why not? Because I 
> consider the
> development of answers, solutions and action plans as 
> necessarily a
> collective effort that has to come from within the movement(s) - 
> we find
> the answers as we walk on, asking each other, reflecting  
> critically,avoiding gooey eyed denial - like moths staring into 
> the virtual light.
> At this stage, my contribution is merely a philosophical 
> questioning of
> the politics of free culture.
> 
> When it comes to the way in which digital commons are embedded in
> natural resource systems and what can be done about it, I said 
> that an
> important first step is towards *acknowledging* that problem. 
> This means
> in very simple terms that if you have not acknowledged and 
> recognised a
> problem, it is going to be difficult to solve it. Everytime the 
> politicsand development of the digital commons rest on the false 
> assumptions of
> immateriality, the materiality is obscured further.
> 
> I don't have the answers - and I don't think that anyone has The 
> Answers- but if any set of solutions are to be developed from 
> within the
> digital commons movement with respect to the problematic 
> embedding in
> and exploitation of natural resources (as carried out by mining and
> nuclear etc etc.), then that embedding must be faced up to.
> 
> "On the same page", then, refers to a collective recognition of the
> problem, which should be seen as a prerequisite to collective 
> solving of
> the problem. You project ideology and negativity into that 
> proposition -
> I don't know why - and claim it is critique that is not 
> constructive. I
> think denial is much less constructive than trying to come to 
> terms with
> problems.
> 
> However, without claiming this is an answer, I do regularly visit
> communities where surfing is limited to a few hours a day, 
> unless there
> is a particularly strong wind or a lot of sunshine, because they 
> are off
> the grid. As such, one of the questions that one could ask, as 
> we walk
> and chew gum and whatever else you like to do, is where are our 
> projectshosted? What could we do to create (non-General Electric 
> patent-based,
> non-industrial scale) wind powered, communally owned hosting on 
> recycledhardware for digital commons?
> 
> 
> > in any case, the pages of the p2p foundation blog are open to 
> any news and
> > comments about the land issue, non-eurocentric visions of 
> history, and the
> > material basis of the digital commons,
> 
> Yes, that is good, and so is this list, and that is why I 
> brought up the
> point.
> 
> 
> > the key for me is to go beyond the stage and stance of 
> critique, that others
> > "just don't get it", towards actually injecting such 
> perspectives in
> > concrete discourse, and associated with constructive action,
> 
> 
> I don't know where you get this from, but if it came from 
> anything I
> said, let me clarify: I never said that anyone "didn't get it" - 
> I said
> that as a culture - a cultural norm - the material embedding is not
> recognised and in a variety of ways even obscured through 
> philosophicalideas and concepts of social organisation that - as 
> the subject line
> still reads, and which is how this exchange came about - "Non digital
> commons a lot more complicated than Free Software". This is only true
> insofar as you see Free Software and other digital commons as 
> having no
> material base. In fact, they are infinitely more complicated, 
> since they
> are a techno-virtual layer on top of ecosystems - or, as it were,
> digital commons require a material, technostructural 
> underpinning. In
> other words, digital commons need to address their hardware and energy
> use, as part of their organisational processes and they should have
> support in doing so. This is not about rejecting digital commons that
> are impure, but rather about a conscious move away from "impurity".
> Purity we can leave to the religions, but that does not mean we should
> deny certain problematic "impurities."
> 
> 
> > I find it hard to imagine that the labour movement would have gotten
> > anywhere without using print media to the full extent, which 
> is what they
> > not only did, but was actually there central focus;  
> creating print vehicle
> > for agitprop was actually the core activity of the 
> revolutionary movements
> 
> There are many readings of the labour movements - some of which argue
> very well that social-democracy and later the welfare system 
> spelled the
> beginning of the end of the working class movements, 
> particularly with
> respect to local control over local infrastructure. Indeed, the very
> notion of a "working class" expresses a defeat of commoners of 
> the land
> and, as noted by Colin Ward, the welfare system, after the 
> crises of the
> 1930s and in order to rebuild after the war, in many communities in
> England shifted power from local communities to central 
> government over
> schools, libraries and so on. If print had helped the labour 
> movements,the centralised curriculum has long since subverted 
> that advantage.
> 
> I don't agree with what seems to be your take on history and I think
> that the writing of the history of the commoners rendered working
> classes has only just begun - there is a lot to discuss and I am very
> wary of anyone claiming to see a full picture of those particular
> histories with specific reference to the transformation of the 
> field of
> forces within which they operate.
> 
> This is a very good place to start, by the way:
> 
> Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged, London: Allen Lane, 1991, Chapter
> 11: "Ships and Chips: Technological Repression and the Origin of 
> the Wage."
> 
> One could also consult the more philosophical:
> 
> “Social Democracy thought fit to to assign to the working class 
> the role
> of the redeemer of future generations, in this way cutting the 
> sinews of
> its greatest strength. This training made the working class 
> forget both
> its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished 
> by the
> image of enslaved ancestors rather than that of liberated 
> grandchildren”(Walter Benjamin 1940/1982: 262).
> 
> Or the radically political (in the words of a critical liberal):
> 
> “The representative of the working classes, Sorel observed, 
> becomes an
> excellent bourgeois very easily. The hideous examples are before our
> eyes – Millerand, Briand, Viviani, the spellbinding demagogue Jean
> Jaurès with his easily acquired popularity. Sorel had once hoped for
> much from these men, but was disillusioned. They all turned out 
> to be
> squalid earthworms, rhetoricians, grafters and intriguers like 
> the rest”
> (Isaiah Berlin 1955/1979: 313)
> 
> In any case, there is certainly substantial disagreements about 
> whetherthe working class has been successful, or whether it has 
> been swallowed
> up in a tide of non-principled stances of influence-seekers and
> moderates, who smiled and said to just follow them.
> 
> Also, your statement about print technology and labour movements 
> - apart
> from relying upon a quetionable history reading - is deeply 
> problematic(or somewhat empty rhetoric). Compare with this statement:
> 
> "When the rains came, the small ponds of the poor people were filled."
> 
> Yes, that is true, but it also rained in the park of the rich 
> and their
> ponds were much bigger, so they were, in absolute terms, filled 
> even more.
> 
> In that sense, you are mobilising the labour movements in a highly
> questionable manner in defence and justification of your own position.
> 
> Technology changed *every*thing, the entire context for all parties
> involved in any struggle, but it likely empowered the already 
> empoweredmore than the less empowered......
> 
> In a silly simplification:
> 
> If the power of the working class was 1.2 power points before 
> print, and
> if print added 2 times power, then they ended at 2.4 power 
> points. If
> the power of the rich was 3.1 before print, and if print added 2 times
> power, then they ended at 6.2 power points.
> 
> Who gained most? Who gained most from the last twenty years of ICT
> revolution? Wal-Mart, as they pioneered just-in-time and became the
> fastest growing corporation in history since Ford (probably now 
> dwarfedby that commons enclosure operation called Facebook?). To 
> realise the
> potential power and emancipation for the oppressed that ICT might
> deliver requires careful consideration, not mere promises based 
> on a
> dubious historical reading.
> 
> Finally, while I think that technological determinism can be a useful
> tool to ponder history and development, I would much rather, as a
> precautionary principle, go with the exact opposite of you....
> 
> ....Here with reference to the work of James C. Scott, 
> surprisingly an
> Ivy League professor, but he is also towards retirement age, 
> which is
> usually when you hear them say something of radical (or even 
> subversive)interest:
> 
> ""
> In his most speculative and contested claim, Scott argues that 
> even the
> lack of a written language in many Zomian societies is an adaptive
> measure and a conscious societal choice. For peasants, writing was,
> first and foremost, a tool of state control - it was the 
> instrument the
> elite used to extract money, labor, and military service from 
> them. As a
> result, Scott argues, when those peasants escaped into the hills they
> discarded writing in an attempt to ensure that similar coercive
> hierarchies didn’t arise in the new societies they formed.
> 
> “I’ve studied peasant rebellions, and one of first things that early
> peasant rebellions always do is to attack the records office,” says
> Scott. “They associate writing with their oppression.”
> 
> The 20th century, with its arsenal of distance-devouring technologies
> from the airplane to the Internet, has made it easier for states to
> smooth the friction of landscape, and recent decades have also 
> seen a
> determined campaign among Asian states to bring their highland regions
> into the fold, often by settling them with lowland people more 
> loyal to
> the national government. As a result, since World War II, Zomia 
> has lost
> much of its distinctive wildness.
> "" --- from:
> 
> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12/06/the_mystery_of_zomia/
> 
> See also "Zomia, A Zone of Resistance: The Last Great Enclosure 
> Movementand Stateless Peoples in Southeast Asia":
> http://www.forcedmigration.org/events/2008/colsonlecture/
> 
> From that perspective, your position is somewhat old school marxist,
> insofar as I know and understand any of all that: we just have 
> to keep
> on pushing through capitalism and we will get to the promised 
> land in
> the end. It doesn't resonate with me. I would much rather ask 
> criticallywhile we walk and use lessons from history written not 
> by winners.
> 
> 
> > I see more and more clearly that certain individuals and 
> social  forces,
> > instead of focusing their critical gaze on the system of 
> infinite growth
> > that is destroying the biosphere, are focusing their critical 
> gaze on those
> > who are actually closer to them; and seeking division instead of
> > commonality; complaining about the imperfections and relative 
> blindness of
> > the free culture movement; rather than to see alignment 
> between social
> > forces that would have the greatest potential uniting.
> 
> 
> Is this based on something I said? You have managed to turn the
> whole thing around?!?! The current growth paradigm thrives on 
> "renewabletechnology" (wind turbines, hybrid cars), and digital 
> commons  - these
> are central to the growth vision. The expansion of digital 
> commons is
> destroying the biosphere. The critical gaze that focuses on the
> materiality of cyberspace and thus the ecological problems of the
> digital commons is precisely addressing the problem of infinite growth
> in a non-simplistic manner - trying to negotiate an ambiguous problem:
> how can we have digital networks without destroying the environment?
> 
> 
> > To compare say the digital commons of appropedia, and its 
> efforts to create
> > sustainable and appropriate technology for local communities 
> worldwide, with
> > the multinational owners of a supermarket chain, is in my 
> eyes, a perverse
> > equation, and shows that a certain sense of priorities has 
> been lost, ("Digital
> > commons are parasites on natural resources and territories
> > of people elsewhere in the world in much the same way as 
> supermarkets are.")
> 
> It is not very helpful to shift from the general to the 
> particular in
> the middle of a conceptual discussion. I spoke of digital 
> commons in
> general - and pointed to a factual general problem - and you respond
> with a specific example..... perhaps an exemption to prove the rule?
> 
> For what it is worth: It is not perverse, but a simple fact: the 
> energyuse of a supermarket - from electricity use in the store 
> to the fossil
> fuel fertilisers used in the production of the commodities for 
> sale - is
> very comparable to the energy and resource use that digital commons
> entail, if you see it from the perspective of the oppressed, 
> landless or
> through the eyes of the children disassembling hardware when it is
> recycled. The supermarket helps some of the poor, some of the 
> time - for
> instance a single mother or the career, short-of-time feminist 
> on her
> way to a meeting about resisting the cuts - indeed, supermarkets can
> help many people, including those who work for it, who would otherwise
> be unemployed, but it comes with a tremendous cost for others, 
> which is
> "hidden".
> 
> The shareholders of Carrefour and Wal-Mart cheer on 
> supermarkets, just
> as the shareholders of IBM and Google cheer on Open Source, Open 
> Accessand other areas of economic growth.
> 
> 
> > the truth is, every living being and system is 
> (inter)dependent on others
> > and in that sense, a parasite ... what matters is to create 
> sustainable> flows between the various living systems, and to 
> generate collective
> > intelligence between autonomous individuals and communities, 
> in order to
> > achieve that, for which digital commons are not parasites, but 
> essential> enablers,
> 
> But they are also exploitors - through mining, heavy metal pollution,
> sweatshop labour and so on - and this is not an ideological 
> point, but
> a simple fact.
> 
> However, all that said, I agree, let us break some eggs to make the
> omelette. I never wanted to argue that the internet should be 
> torn down
> - what would I be doing here? - but it should be used 
> consciously and in
> recognition and full admittance of its costs. There is no such 
> thing as
> marginal reproduction cost, except in Wonderland, perhaps, where
> perpetual motion machines are possible and where gravity can be defied
> by will alone.
> 
> The immateriality argument about the relation between cost and
> reproduction of digital goods, is really comparable to, say, the
> relation between light in your house, on the one hand, and electricity
> and the continued upkeep of the electrical infrastructure 
> (nuclear power
> plants, cables, wires, pylons, switches and so on) on the other: It
> doesn't *seem to* cost anything when I flick the switch and the light
> comes on in "my" house, so why isn't it just free? Would anyone 
> take me
> serious if I said that?
> 
> 
> > as hard as it may be to do and understand, we need to chew gum 
> and walk at
> > the same time, using digital commons to organize, while 
> working at the same
> > time to lighten the physical footprint of digital commons, and 
> using global
> > open design communities to build open and 'light' 
> infrastructures to achieve
> > sustainability,
> 
> Yes, and I never said anything different - but how do you 
> propose to
> "lighten the footprint", as collective action, when the 
> collective is in
> denial about that footprint and when its leaders and 
> consequently the
> followers perpetuate the denial?
> 
> With the best of wishes,
> martin
> 
> _______________________________________________
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****
Dr Mathieu O'Neil
Adjunct Research Fellow
Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute
College of Arts and Social Science
The Australian National University
email: mathieu.oneil[at]anu.edu.au
web: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/mathieu.php



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