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

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Martin,

our blog format is very flexible, and there are not really deadlines, the
only issue is I have a publication calendar which is pre-scheduled a few
days in advance, so it may not appear 'immediately' when you send it but on
average 4-5 days after,

a few ideas for your contributions:

- your analysis of free software as coopted

- your critique of immateriality

- the proper place of technology in the emancipation of the most exploited

other themes are welcome to ...

perhaps we could think of a series of four, to be published each separate
week in January 2011 (earlier is fine)

Michel

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 5:28 AM, j.martin.pedersen <
m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:

>
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>



-- 
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20101208/be35857a/attachment-0001.html>