[p2p-research] Fwd: [fcforum] Fw: iPad DRM is a dangerous step backward. Sign the petition!

[Andy Robinson]

You have a point, but TBH I think I'd find genuinely autonomous technology a
lot less creepy than long-range human management.  Tools already have some
autonomy - their material composition affects their possible uses - the
hammer for instance is incapable of being soft, too small for some tasks,
etc.  As I've said before, people can form much stronger bonds with 'wilful'
technologies showing signs of autonomy than with those which seem to be
'mere means' - people come to love their old car which needs constant
maintenance to keep it on the road for instance.  Then there's the parallel
with animals - I wouldn't want to view animals as tools, but there is no
denying they have been used as such.

Also, I don't think technological change is unilinear.  Tools and
technologies are developed by agents, for purposes; they are taken up by
other agents, for other purposes.  There are plenty of technologies which
were developed then lost, e.g. aqueducts.  Others which we have still not
rediscovered today - such as how the pyramids were built.  Others which were
designed but never took off - such as laserdisks, hovercraft, electric
knives.  Look at the ways in which European and Chinese technological
development were affected by the early discovery of glass in Europe.  There
were advantages and disadvantages to the discovery.  In the history of
technology, several things are clear.  Firstly that from any point there are
multiple paths.  Secondly, that the choice of paths is not based on
superiority but a kind of arbitrary contingency composed of temporary
usefulness, path-dependency and the motives of 'technicians'.  Thirdly, that
technologies are only discovered and retained to the extent that someone
finds them useful, forming connections at the level of desire.  Fourthly,
that even the most rigid internal path-dependency is vulnerable to
disruption from the outside, and that the 'outside' here is not simply
geographical but also sociological, psychological, epistemological.
Fifthly, that the accumulation of technological means is also the
accumulation of technological vulnerabilities.

The problem is that big centralised corporations and states prefer to
produce and advance technologies which empower big centralised hierarchies
(preferably themselves, but indirectly also their rivals).  Other kinds of
technologies empower diffuse networks against centralised hierarchies.
These are often more useful and functional for 'ordinary' people and for
dissidents and the different, but the imperative to develop them is
different - it either comes from marginal networked communities such as
hackers and OS programmers, from small marginal companies seeking to counter
powerful rivals, from smaller states seeking asymmetrical means to counter
the power of larger states, or from big companies or states seeking to stay
ahead of the potential threat they face from these various targets by
getting to the network-friendly technologies ahead of them.

I've been reading Virilio recently and came across a very interesting
argument...  the limit-point of military deterrence is that the development
of new weapons which transform the field of war is undeterrable.  And this
is the problem for technological determinism also.  There is no way of
knowing in advance what kinds of countermeasures can be designed or what new
technologies or techniques might emerge from a field of contending agents
about which one has imperfect knowledge.

Also remember that technological power at its most basic is not about
machines or accumulation - it is about the capability to act (technique).
This capability can also be actualised in low-tech ways, and through what
seem to be regressions to 'lower' technologies.  A switch from high-tech
farming to organic farming and permaculture for instance, would certainly be
'progress' at the level of technology, even though the tools involved are
incomparably simpler: it would involve a switch to a path which accords more
closely with what is needed at the level of purpose, which even from the
most intransigently anthropocentric point of view serves as a means to
survival and an extension of the most accurate science.  Most often,
however, I would assess whether a technology is 'progressive' or not in
terms of whether it empowers diffuse networks or on the contrary,
disempowers networks to the benefit of hierarchies.  'Progress' in this
regard can only ever be relative to a project.
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