[p2p-research] update

[Johan Söderberg]

Hi there,

> what have you been doing/thinking/writing in the last 18 months ...?


Well, quite a bit, at least as long as I dont compare myself with you...  Since febuary, I am back in Sweden from a six months stay in your country of origin (in Namur, to be precise) and I have left a defunct relation behind me there, which has set my time free for work, work, work :-)

First and foremost, I am currently writing on my PhD thesis, which needs to be handed in at the begining of the next year. It will consist of four articles out of which three are already finished. I just had one article ("Misuser inventions and the invention of the misuser -- hackers, crackers, filesharers) published in Science as Culture. Two more articles based on my case study of the Ronja project in the Czech republic are accepted for publication in Social Epistemology and Science, Technology and Human Values and will be in print later this year (the first one defends critical theory against constructivists STS theory, the second one attacks Innovation Studies à la von Hippel). The forth article is more or less written and ready to be submitted. The text looks at how hackers make use of the technological determinist assumtptions in the information society myth in order to present their politics as apolitical, mere technical problem-solving. I point out the historical connection from information society myth to Engel's version of historical materialism and thus I argue the continuity from the technological determinsim of "vulgar Raymondism" etc. to the early worker's movement and its faith in the telos of history. It all ends in an argument that a belief in determinism does not foreclose collective action.

On the side, I have one article in the pipeline for a special number of Ephemera which seek to crossbreed construrctivist theory and autonomist/open Marxism. Last year I had one contribution published in the FSCon book Free Beer which you might already have seen, http://freebeer.fscons.org/  It continues the ambition of tracing historical links between hackers and the workers movement which I and George begun with our contribution to Capital & Class. And I have contributed to a Swedish anthology on the situation after the pirate bay.

As for the future, I am currently travelling around to interview the core group behind the Rep-rap project (I have met about 10 of them by now), for a future piece which I have not yet decided. And I am sniffing at the possibility of getting people together for an EU application for money to study the movement around Hacklabs and its roots in the squatting movment in Europe, but that is still in a very scetchy phase. Finally, I will come to the Linköping conference Paying Attention, so we will have a chance to meet then and we can update each other. I dont know what your plans are, Linköping is quite far from Göteborg, but if you are coming to Sweden through the west coast (as opposed Stockholm/Arlanda), you would be a most honorable guest.

En mon temp libre, j'essaye d'apprendre francais.

cheers
Johan



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