[p2p-research] Fwd: [-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of open source (innovation as manipulation)

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, May 2, 2010 at 3:17 PM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of open
source (innovation as manipulation)
To: Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com>


Hi Andy,

when you refer to insurrectional anarchists, I was more thinking of small
groups in France, or the black block in the G8-G20 demonstrations, or the
Greek youth revolts, and I don't find these tactics particularly fruitful on
the contrary, they justify repressive measures which get majority support
because of the perceived violence.

This is not an argument against violence of insurrection as such, though I
would tend to think that nonviolence is better not just as a matter of
principle, but also in terms of efficience, and of course, with non-violence
I do not mean coopted ngoi's, but mass movements on the ground.

Since you refer not necessarily to what Im mentioning above, but to massive
social movements, like the examples you cite, I have of course to acquiesce,
but I didn't see them neither as anarchists nor as insurrenctionists, though
they may apply certain tactics. You have to see their aims, which are often
very moderate (non-privatisation of water in bolivia, free elections in
thailand), and their tactics which are mostly event driven, often by the
repression and non-reaction to nonviolent tactics. But insurrection and
violence are always dangerous and can backfire, the thai movement for
example, does not seem to attract middle class democrats, nor much youth. I
don't think most of these movements, and their leaders, are familiar neither
with Agamben, nor Italian autonomists; I find Zapatista manifesto's
eminently readable by the way: i have no objection against specialist
language as such, if it is instrumental, but I do have objections against
building whole theories on questionable premisis.

For example you explain the lack of social movements in western europe by
repressive closure, but I would question that, I don't think those regimes
are more repressive than the southern european ones where more actions are
occuring; I think the lack of activism has other causes. How could could
prove that there is such a direct link between presumed repression and lack
of activism. For example, both thailand and the US are quite repressive, but
have very activie social movements,

I'm just against easy equations, that's all,

Michel

  On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:52 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> "the way I see the method is: take something which has a grain of truth,
> say measures of exception, take it as the absolute truth, then build a whole
> system of thought on that doubtful premise," - this is probably true, a lot
> of the continental theorists work that way.  It's an effect of trying to do
> empirical social science by means of philosophy.  The thing is though, that
> people who use these theories (whether activists or academics) will
> generally use them selectively, use them in a kind of bricolage of several
> of the theories.
>
> The rest of your construction here...  well, there's quite a few
> assumptions need unpacking.  One of these is, which movements/people you are
> taking to be 'real social movements' or 'activists on the ground'.  If
> you're thinking of the Thai context, then it is rather unusual
> internationally (though you will notice standard insurrectionist tactics -
> blockading airports, occupying and shutting down key nodes, storming summits
> - used by both sides).  In Britain and America, activism is at an all-time
> low, old reformist and civil disobedience orientations are proving to be
> really very ineffectual in the current conjuncture, and movements are
> decomposing drastically.  The people who are still active are gravitating
> towards autonomous/insurrectional modalities of action (the biggest events
> in Britain over the last few years have been the G20 and G8, the Climate
> Camps, and then a raft of smaller campaigns such as against DSEi, Smash EDO,
> SHAC, etc).  If you look at continental European countries - France, Greece,
> Denmark - the repressive closure is less far-gone and is only now being
> imposed, and the response has been a wave of insurrectional politics - the
> Ungdomshuset revolt, the constant preparedness to physically defend
> Christiania, the banlieue revolts, the rise of the 'anarcho-autonome' scene
> in France, the Greek revolt of December 2008.  In the South the pattern is
> slightly different but basically similar.  In South Africa for instance the
> old 'civil society' has been demobilised by the ANC in power; what is left
> is an insurgent outside, groups like APF, SECC, LPM, Abahlali, who mobilise
> mainly throuhg popular revolt in the townships.  Chile is similar, the
> Philippines is similar.  Argentina has had constant revolts which are at an
> ebb now, but the movements which came out of the revolts are intractably
> autonomous.  Bolivia the movements got to such a point that neoliberalism
> became unsustainable.  China, the only real resistance to the current
> trajectory comes from the periodic, and rather frequent, uprisings in the
> peripheral zones.  Then there's the very peripheral areas where things get
> even more messy: Chiapas, the Niger Delta, West Papua, etc.  In these cases
> opposition most often emerges as armed opposition.
>
> Some of these have been very effectual.  Governments overthrown in Bolivia,
> Argentina, Ecuador.  Mining shut down in Bougainville.  The Peru Amazon law
> defeated multiple times.  Huge concessions in the Niger Delta.  Autonomous
> zones for over a decade in Chiapas.  Christiania still going, much to the
> chagrin of the Danish elite.
>
> On the other hand, there are a great many 'civil society' organisations
> with memberships dwarfing those of the autonomous social movements,
> ostensibly with the ear of government, which have achieved absolutely
> nothing (think Drop the Debt for example).
>
> Can you come up with any examples of social movements which have
> anti-neoliberal and anti-repressive demands, which have succeeded through
> reformist or ameliorative means in the current period?
>
> Off the top of my head, I can only think of a handful of examples.  They
> either happened in a context of militant autonomous mobilisation mixed with
> insider strategies, in rather unusual contexts where global pressure was
> working for the protest, and where a government is terrified of losing
> legitimacy (TAC in South Africa); or they happened in cases where a
> social-movement-based party had taken political power and either had been
> intermittent in its attempts to, or had failed to, recuperate social
> movements (as in Venezuela).  Most of the time it is the same old story:
> adverse incorporation.  Either social movements are 'listened to' and
> ignored, or their leaders are coopted, or they are drawn into the realm of
> service provision funding bids and lose their oppositional purpose.  None of
> which stops the onward march of neoliberalism or the growth of state
> repression, or even slows it down significantly.  There are a few countries
> where the pattern is a bit different because they remain either broadly
> social-democratic, or broadly within the field of patronage-based
> insertions.
>
> The question of 'language used', or styles of theorising, is another one
> which needs to be unpacked.  It's not clear if you're saying the language is
> too difficult for activists or too Manichean.  If the former, this varies a
> lot across contexts, and you would find for instance activist writings in
> Italy are often as difficult as Agamben's - it happens to be a society with
> a high level of theoretical discussion.  I'd also suggest comparing the
> Zapatistas' style of writing, which is developed specifically for the Mayan
> indigenous context, and yet reads very much like 'postmodern' expression.
> Of course there is a difficulty in that radical theory is not speaking
> directly to the banlieue youth for instance, but it's by no means clear that
> a 'simplified' version would be either; marginal groups often have their own
> subcultures and linguistic styles (slang, dialects and suchlike).  There's
> little point seeking to imitate since these differences are partly
> expressive, they are designed to be specific not general.  On the other
> hand, I have heard from someone who grew up in this kind of background, that
> very marginal groups are more responsive to action than words.  On the
> second point, this would be rather ironic to claim, since activists of all
> kinds (even the liberal-reformist ones) are nearly always accused of being
> too Manichean and cut-and-dried about things.
>
> bw
> Andy
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 7:01 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I think we had this discussion about 18 months ago, when you talked about
>> the contempary situation as a new type of fascism.
>>
>> What is demobilizing about it, in my view, is that it overemphizes the
>> enemy, it presumes a total defeat of civil society, which is not the case,
>> yes, there are new state powers, yes democracy is in crisis, but do we live
>> in a totalitarian state, or totalitarian capitalism, no, absolutely not.
>>
>> I think that the fact the you mention insurrectionist anarchism, surely
>> the most ineffectual strategy at present, as using Agamben, is indicative,
>> it leads to nihilism.
>>
>> Otherwise of course, I do find your thoughts and contributions very
>> informative, since I probably won't have the time to read it all, but I
>> truly feel that the language the post-modern left is using, is bringing it
>> further and further away from any contact with real social movements, and
>> totally away from the construction of a new p2p world, I feel it is the
>> scholastics of our time,
>>
>> the way I see the method is: take something which has a grain of truth,
>> say measures of exception, take it as the absolute truth, then build a whole
>> system of thought on that doubtful premise,
>>
>> of course, I wouldn't be able to engage in a convincing discussion about
>> this, but I noted how activists on the ground, often felt the same way as me
>> during this type of academic conferences ...
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hiya,
>>>
>>> Why do they see state of exception theories as demobilising?
>>>
>>> I've seen Agamben namedropped or concept-dropped in insurrectionist
>>> anarchism, so he seems to be attracting attention from people who are
>>> certainly not 'demobilised'.  On the other hand his view is strongly against
>>> any kind of reformism or gradualism, since the problem is inherent to the
>>> state as a social form.  I wonder if this is where Hardt and Negri feel
>>> threatened - it demobilises *their* kind of politics.
>>>
>>> I also think Agamben and Virilio are too simplistic sometimes (a strange
>>> accusation when they're difficult to read, but I'm thinking of their
>>> conceptual frame rather than their language).  They have quite correctly
>>> deduced the social logic of the state - what Kropotkin calls the 'political
>>> principle' - but they wrongly use it as a general meta-theory of reality,
>>> ignoring the roles of other social logics which either syncretise with or
>>> oppose this logic (to be sure, neither of them deny that there is at least
>>> one other social logic - 'popular defence' in Virilio,
>>> 'whatever-singularities' in Agamben - but there seem only to be these two
>>> logics).  In Kropotkin there is a similar construct but the 'social
>>> principle', the other pole, is given a lot more prominence, and this leads
>>> in people like Martin Buber, Gustav Landauer and Colin Ward (and maybe Hakim
>>> Bey?) to a great deal of openness to the strategic construction of autonomy,
>>> even in quite 'reformist' ways (provided their tendency is to re-empower the
>>> social principle - e.g. squatting, mutual aid, etc).
>>>
>>> Obviously, I theorise this alternative logic in terms of
>>> affinity-networks.  The theory of the alternative pole to state power is
>>> already tending this way in Kropotkin, and I've already explained the extent
>>> (and limits) to which Hardt and Negri conceive it in this sense, but in
>>> Agamben it tends to be rather amorphous, almost a kind of minimum life-force
>>> which is irreducible.  I have a sense that Agamben and Virilio actually
>>> *mean* affinity-networks - Agamben's model is derived from Deleuze's,
>>> which is explicitly network-based; Virilio's draws on the density of
>>> ecological and social connections in peasant/artisan/indigenous communities,
>>> similar to Kropotkin's social principle - but it isn't very developed.  (If
>>> there was no 'second pole', state of exception theories *would* be
>>> thoroughly disempowering - as in their Lacanian incarnation for instance.
>>> In Agamben's case, 'The Coming Community' is very clear in terms of the
>>> articulation of a second pole - this is the text used by Richard Day when he
>>> discusses Agamben.  My first reaction to Agamben - based on Homo Sacer - is
>>> that he was pessimistic and disempowering.  We need to remember that Agamben
>>> has over a dozen books in English alone - his theory is not limited to Homo
>>> Sacer).
>>>
>>> However, it's not only their under-theorisation of the affinity-network
>>> pole which bothers me a bit - it is also their failure to conceive of other
>>> social logics which are not either the state (at its most fascistic) or
>>> affinity-networks (at their most anarchic).  While this might ultimately be
>>> how the social field splits, there are also other logics operative which
>>> don't quite fit - in particular, the capitalist logic, the logic of the
>>> 'included' (addition of axioms), the 'mass' (in Baudrillard's sense), and
>>> reactive networks.  (Looking at the current field, one might specify for
>>> instance the people at the World Economic Forum who opposed the Iraq war as
>>> bad for business; movements such as Drop the Debt; or something like the RSS
>>> or al-Qaeda - none of these are either pure statist sovereignty movements or
>>> affinity-networks).  If the social field is not 'bipolar' (in the IR sense),
>>> if there are three or more logics (I count at least six, maybe seven if
>>> tributary modalities are included, and possibly others I haven't identified
>>> yet), things get a lot more complicated.
>>>
>>> I want to emphasise here that I think Agamben and Virilio are ultimately
>>> *right* - they have identified the social logic of the state very
>>> clearly.  But they have failed to identify adequately the field in which
>>> this logic operates.  They can't really explain why the state doesn't *
>>> always* behave in this way, why it has taken so long to actualise its
>>> social logic, why it does so more in some places than others.  Their account
>>> is too much a matter of inner unfolding, almost a Hegelian process - the
>>> state becomes what it has always been.  Yet in fact, the state only unfolds
>>> its basic logic to the extent to which it is able to do so in a field where
>>> this logic is contested by other social forces.  The pure state of exception
>>> does not emerge, for instance, in syncretic Southern states connected to
>>> social networks; they are capable of brutal violence, but of a different
>>> order, that of the reactive network and the energised mobilisation of
>>> reactive forces (fear, hatred, etc).  And it does not emerge in the
>>> social-democratic state, because the power of the state as a social logic is
>>> mediated by the included and by a particular configuration with capital (the
>>> tripartite alliance of the state, capital and the included through
>>> negotiated social pacts).
>>>
>>> I think what is peculiar about the current conjuncture is that previously
>>> the state was very much constrained by capital - except in Bonapartist
>>> situations (necessarily temporary) or Stalinist situations (excluding
>>> capital from their frame - but not their actual functioning), the state was
>>> not allowed to actualise the 'state of exception' because doing so is 'bad
>>> for business' (the frame of bourgeois constitutionalism).  So if states are
>>> realising this logic today, it is because their relationship to the
>>> capitalist logic has changed: in neoliberal capitalism, the logic of the
>>> state of exception is re-enabled because it becomes compatible with the
>>> unconstrained realisation of the capitalist logic of accumulation, whereas
>>> previously the two had been antagonistic and 'mediated'.  Also important is
>>> the way the role of the included stratum or the logic of the addition of
>>> axioms mediates between the capital-state axis and the excluded or
>>> exploited.  The included stratum *hate* the state of exception (look at
>>> the Guardian for proof of this), but they've been pushed out of political
>>> power in the places where the state of exception has been actualised most
>>> drastically (and crucially, have *not* been pushed out of power in the
>>> places where it has not been actualised so much).  This supports the
>>> Deleuzian hypothesis of the contestation between addition and subtraction of
>>> axioms as different strategies within the alienated/capitalist field.  The
>>> current situation of the included stratum is a situation of 'adverse
>>> incorporation' - being kept on board through ever-decreasing concessions
>>> tending towards zero, or by the absent promise of influence which never
>>> emerges.
>>>
>>> Of course, this also alters the strategic position of autonomous social
>>> movements and the affinity-network social logic, though I don't think it
>>> alters it very much.  Hardt and Negri put a lot of faith in alliances with
>>> the included as a means to tilt the world towards the unfolding of
>>> affinity-networks.  I don't think this is likely to work, because the
>>> included have been quite thoroughly disempowered.  Today it is not so much a
>>> matter of settling for social-democracy as the complete self-disempowerment
>>> of would-be reform movements through the 'Third Way', which is neoliberalism
>>> repeated.  The danger in this approach is that autonomous social movements
>>> disempower themselves by tying themselves to the sinking ship of the
>>> excluded, when in fact, the power of the included was always conditional on
>>> the threat posed by autonomous social movements in fact or in potential (the
>>> included were given power because of their role as a pole of mediation, as
>>> placeholders for the absent excluded).  I think it also fundamentally
>>> misunderstands what autonomous social movements are.  There is a fundamental
>>> structural antagonism between autonomous social movements and the
>>> affinity/horizontal/p2p logic and the logica of the included, because the
>>> logic of the included is firmly within the logic of alienation,
>>> representation and transcendental signification, whereas the
>>> affinity-network logic is firmly outside.  So a strategy of working through
>>> the included cannot lead to a world in which the affinity-network form has
>>> primacy.  In this sense, Agamben and Virilio are right that the hope of
>>> opposing the neoliberal conjuncture lies with autonomous social movements
>>> and not with some kind of neo-reformism.  To go back to the IR analogy, on a
>>> global scale and in most of the key sites in the current global
>>> configuration, what we have in terms of social logics is a multipolar field
>>> which nevertheless resolves itself in the current conjuncture in a largely
>>> bipolar way because of the operation of alliances:  on one side the state
>>> logic + capital + included stratum as very subordinate element + some
>>> incorporated reactive networks; on the other, the affinity-network logic,
>>> sometimes composing into a 'black hole' space with non-incorporated reactive
>>> networks, informal economies, and the tributary logic owing to its emergence
>>> from forcible delinking rather than active assertion of the affinity-network
>>> logic itself.  Since the state operates as the enforcement wing of the first
>>> coalition, the 'fourth world war' tends to pan out as a social war between
>>> the state logic (with state of exception) and the affinity-network logic
>>> (autonomous social movements)  However, it's fairly easy to find local sites
>>> where this is not how the different logics line up.
>>>
>>> bw
>>> Andy
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 2:36 PM, Michel Bauwens <
>>> michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> thanks for the interesting comments,
>>>>
>>>> I'm reading commonwealth, which has an interesting critique of state of
>>>> exception theories as demobilizing, I tend to agree,
>>>>
>>>> Michel
>>>>
>>>>   On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 3:24 AM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hiya,
>>>>>
>>>>> Reminds me a lot of Virilio actually.  The idea that crises are only
>>>>> crises for civilians, and that unfriendly environments operate in favour of
>>>>> the state by reducing the capability for popular defence and creating
>>>>> dependence on those who can work in such environments.  Also Negri on the
>>>>> 'crisis-state', which seems to suggest that this model operates in
>>>>> contemporary capitalism in terms of imminent catastrophe as a pretext for
>>>>> states of exception.
>>>>>
>>>>> It can be traced in corporate and statist discourse, that the people in
>>>>> charge view terrain complexity as something frightening and threatening, and
>>>>> unregulated ecosystems as dangerously chaotic - they fantasise about
>>>>> concreting over everything.  I am thinking here of Sherene Razack on Somalia
>>>>> (discourses trying to mitigate human rights atrocities by 'peacekeepers'
>>>>> tended to fuse the hostile environment with local hostility and miltiary
>>>>> difficulties in the account of Somalia as a hellish place), and Spivak's
>>>>> essay 'Responsibility' (treating water in Bangladesh as the enemy and
>>>>> seeking to regulate it to 'protect' people who will actually end up
>>>>> dispossessed as a result).  In a sense, most of us (in urban settings) are
>>>>> already living in 'created' environments in this sense: urban environments
>>>>> are physically harsh, do not have food sovereignty and are highly dependent
>>>>> on artificial institutions (states, markets, welfare regimes) for
>>>>> material/ecological and social provisions which might be a lot easier to
>>>>> obtain in other settings (water needs to be stored up and piped in, energy
>>>>> concentrated and provided from outside, security provided artificially
>>>>> because of the lack of face-to-face interaction, mass transit becomes a need
>>>>> because of the zoning of cities, space becomes scarce and has to be set
>>>>> aside for purposes which less concentrated space would allow automatically
>>>>> e.g. leisure, health problems need to be treated rather than simply warded
>>>>> off - for most of history cities were population sinks for health
>>>>> reasons...)
>>>>>
>>>>> There is thus an extent to which the contestation of urban spaces
>>>>> (squatting, guerrilla gardening, urban foraging, autoreduction, social
>>>>> centres, etc) can be viewed as 'ruralisation' or 'ecologisation', somewhat
>>>>> akin to weeds peeping through the cracks and eventually eating away concrete
>>>>> - the city becomes a dense ecosystem in its own right to the extent that
>>>>> contestation of urban spaces restores an ecosystemic (rather than a
>>>>> dependent-dominant) dynamic, remembering that ecosystems are peer-networks
>>>>> rather than hierarchies, whereas the urban-rural division is hierarchical.
>>>>>
>>>>> bw
>>>>> Andy
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>  On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Michel Bauwens <
>>>>> michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>>>> From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
>>>>>> Date: Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 2:25 PM
>>>>>> Subject: Fwd: [-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of
>>>>>> open source
>>>>>> To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> interesting reply revolving around
>>>>>> *
>>>>>> *
>>>>>> *" **an interest in introducing an innovation with the intention of
>>>>>> forcing adaptation
>>>>>> in the population. "*
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>>>> From: davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>
>>>>>> Date: Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 10:35 PM
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of
>>>>>> open source
>>>>>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Julian,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm sorry for being unclear.  What I had meant to say is that,
>>>>>> typically, a prototype is a discrete thing which is created with the
>>>>>> intention of being tested.  Certainly the way the prototype is tested
>>>>>> is a) the object itself is put through various challenges that are
>>>>>> anticipated uses and stresses, and b) the general integration of the
>>>>>> thing into the system is also tested at that point (how the thing
>>>>>> might fare in light of unanticipated uses and stresses).  The
>>>>>> distinction I was trying to draw was the coercive potential of
>>>>>> innovations.  Where there is less an interest in testing an individual
>>>>>> thing with the intention of improving it....  and more of an interest
>>>>>> in introducing an innovation with the intention of forcing adaptation
>>>>>> in the population.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I was less concerned with individuals modifying themselves through,
>>>>>> say, education or societies changing populations through educational
>>>>>> institutions.  These things, on their face, have the intention of
>>>>>> shaping the person and society.  They are, at least in principle,
>>>>>> geared towards the preservation of individual and social existence.
>>>>>> Or, at least, they do insofar as they are generated by a public in
>>>>>> service of the ideal public which they represent.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On the other hand, there are technologies that seem to be introduced
>>>>>> with the stated purpose of achieving one objective, yet have the
>>>>>> larger objective of changing human populations.  Take, for instance,
>>>>>> the infamous case of Nestle's infant formula strategy in Africa.
>>>>>> Company reps masquerading as health workers introduce infant formula
>>>>>> to a population that had not used it previously.  The suggested
>>>>>> purpose is to provide nutrition and humanitarian aid.  But when women
>>>>>> stopped lactating and suddenly found themselves forced to pay for the
>>>>>> product or watch their children starve, a much more radical technical
>>>>>> innovation becomes apparent--the forced creation of a new social web
>>>>>> in service of corporate interests.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> More current (and relevant) examples might be the sort of biological
>>>>>> innovations that have been spurred by petrochemical industries as
>>>>>> ubiquitous products (plastics, agricultural products, drugs, etc)
>>>>>> saturate ecosystems with chemicals that interfere with hormone
>>>>>> production across the food chain, resulting in an explosion of
>>>>>> diseases requiring treatment.  I don't know that I know enough to say
>>>>>> that there is anything resembling a conspiracy here....  other than
>>>>>> the sort of conspiracy of opportunistically imposed apathy and
>>>>>> ignorance.  But the general recklessness of big business seems to
>>>>>> suggest that there is something intentional about turning quick
>>>>>> profits, letting major catastrophic accidents happen, and then
>>>>>> profiting further.  Habituating people to live in a precarious state
>>>>>> of withered consciousness seems to have been the real "value"
>>>>>> uncovered by the pervasive barrage of technical innovations....  human
>>>>>> beings can be turned into quivering beasts who will tolerate any
>>>>>> injustice simply to hope for another day, and in many cases, who will
>>>>>> tear at each other's throats in defense of the paymasters responsible
>>>>>> for this exploitation.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I suppose I should hang it up, here.  I might be drawing a false
>>>>>> distinction.  And I certainly am off the rails for this month's
>>>>>> discussion.  There is something moralistic in my argument, resembling
>>>>>> the months old discussion of "good" and "bad" that we had here.  Yet,
>>>>>> I wonder that there might be some value in drawing distinctions
>>>>>> between orders of technological existence.   That the fast-forward
>>>>>> orientation of prototyping is fascinating and productive....  but it
>>>>>> is a loaded term...  and it is one that I have a hard time unpacking.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Davin
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Julian Oliver <
>>>>>> julian at julianoliver.com> wrote:
>>>>>> > ..on Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 03:10:01PM -0000, Johannes Birringer
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> >> >> Davin wrote:>> At one point in time, discrete objects were
>>>>>> things that were considered prototypes that could be thrown into an existing
>>>>>> system and tested. Increasingly, it seems like the prototypes are geared to
>>>>>> test individual and collective consciousness.  In other words, maybe we are
>>>>>> the  prototypes?  Being tested so that we can be effectively processed,
>>>>>> shrink-wrapped, labeled, bought and sold>>
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > Hmm, This statement from Davin confused me also. I thought it was
>>>>>> fairly clear
>>>>>> > that any act of learning - or any 'attempt', which all action is at
>>>>>> it's root -
>>>>>> > simultaneously produces the self as a prototype, even if only for
>>>>>> the duration
>>>>>> > of that act. The very notion of a prototype assumes a platonic and
>>>>>> eventuating
>>>>>> > objecthood, a finished thing. When are people ever so singularly
>>>>>> resolved?
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > Second order prototyping is the work of other people, especially
>>>>>> aquaintances,
>>>>>> > marketeers and those that resource people.
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > Beast,
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > --
>>>>>> > Julian Oliver
>>>>>> > home: New Zealand
>>>>>> > based: Berlin, Germany
>>>>>> > currently: Berlin, Germany
>>>>>> > about: http://julianoliver.com
>>>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>>>> > empyre forum
>>>>>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>>>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> empyre forum
>>>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
>>>>>> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 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
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
>>>> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>>
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
>> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

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







-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

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
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