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

[j.martin.pedersen]

Hi,

Thanks.

That sounds like it cold work! Rushed emails is not really a
constructive format for this kind of discussion,

Let me know more about what you have in mind, such as: length (word
count), specific points that you liked, deadline..

cheers,
martin

On 03/12/10 22:56, Mathieu ONeil wrote:
> 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
>> Jaur�s 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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> p2presearch mailing list
>> p2presearch at listcultures.org
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
> 
> ****
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org