diff --git a/WORKFLOW b/WORKFLOW index 1e6900c8d5e87da0911fa9748ead24a72ab4fb16..d3e015568b60efdef70bce50b099e0ecf98326e9 100644 --- a/WORKFLOW +++ b/WORKFLOW @@ -24,44 +24,8 @@ Ver el archivo *gitflow*. ## Propuesta de texto -* Moverse a la rama *queue* y agregarlo dentro del directorio *\_queue* en - texto plano. - -Comandos: - - git checkout queue - git add _queue/nombre-del-articulo.markdown - git commit - - -## Traducción - -* Desde la rama *queue*, crear una nueva rama con el articulo a traducir. - -* En general la traducción se hace sobre el mismo texto original, con la - traducción de cada párrafo inmediatamente debajo del original (es decir, - intercalados). - -* Para facilitar la revisión, generar un commit después por cada párrafo - traducido. - -Comandos: - - git flow feature start nombre-del-articulo - # Después de traducir un párrafo - git commit -a -m "Nombre del artÃculo, párrafo #" - - -## Revisión - -* Se hace una lectura de prueba y se eliminan los párrafos en el idioma - original. - -* Se mergea en la rama *queue*. - -Comandos: - - git flow feature finish nombre-del-articulo +* Podés hacernos un issue en el + [repositorio](https://github.com/edsl/articulos) de los artÃculos. ## Publicación diff --git a/_queue/accelerate.markdown b/_queue/accelerate.markdown deleted file mode 100644 index 491678ac7e1c27f5f1fbaaa4b1d08529850a1dec..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/_queue/accelerate.markdown +++ /dev/null @@ -1,296 +0,0 @@ -#ACCELERATE -MANIFESTO FOR AN ACCELERATIONIST POLITICS -01. INTRODUCTION: On the Conjuncture -1. At the beginning of the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, global civilization faces -a new breed of cataclysm. These coming apocalypses ridicule the norms and organisational -structures of the politics which were forged in the birth of the nation-state, the rise of -capitalism, and a Twentieth Century of unprecedented wars. -2. Most significant is the breakdown of the planetary climatic system. In time, this threatens -the continued existence of the present global human population. Though this is the most -critical of the threats which face humanity, a series of lesser but potentially equally -destabilising problems exist alongside and intersect with it. Terminal resource depletion, -especially in water and energy reserves, offers the prospect of mass starvation, collapsing -economic paradigms, and new hot and cold wars. Continued financial crisis has led -governments to embrace the paralyzing death spiral policies of austerity, privatisation of -social welfare services, mass unemployment, and stagnating wages. Increasing automation in -production processes – including ‘intellectual labour’ – is evidence of the secular crisis of -capitalism, soon to render it incapable of maintaining current standards of living for even the -former middle classes of the global north. -3. In contrast to these ever-accelerating catastrophes, today’s politics is beset by an inability -to generate the new ideas and modes of organisation necessary to transform our societies to -confront and resolve the coming annihilations. While crisis gathers force and speed, politics -withers and retreats. In this paralysis of the political imaginary, the future has been cancelled. -4. Since 1979, the hegemonic global political ideology has been neoliberalism, found in some -variant throughout the leading economic powers. In spite of the deep structural challenges the -new global problems present to it, most immediately the credit, financial, and fiscal crises -since 2007-8, neoliberal programmes have only evolved in the sense of deepening. This -continuation of the neoliberal project, or neoliberalism 2.0, has begun to apply another round -of structural adjustments, most significantly in the form of encouraging new and aggressive -incursions by the private sector into what remains of social democratic institutions and -services. This is in spite of the immediately negative economic and social effects of such -policies, and the longer term fundamental barriers posed by the new global crises. -5. That the forces of right wing governmental, non-governmental, and corporate power have -been able to press forth with neoliberalisation is at least in part a result of the continued -paralysis and ineffectual nature of much what remains of the left. Thirty years of neoliberalism -have rendered most left-leaning political parties bereft of radical thought, hollowed out, and -without a popular mandate. At best they have responded to our present crises with calls for a -return to a Keynesian economics, in spite of the evidence that the very conditions which -enabled post-war social democracy to occur no longer exist. We cannot return to mass -industrial-Fordist labour by fiat, if at all. Even the neosocialist regimes of South America’s -Bolivarian Revolution, whilst heartening in their ability to resist the dogmas of contemporary -capitalism, remain disappointingly unable to advance an alternative beyond mid-Twentieth -Century socialism. Organised labour, being systematically weakened by the changes wrought -in the neoliberal project, is sclerotic at an institutional level and – at best – capable only of -mildly mitigating the new structural adjustments. But with no systematic approach to building -a new economy, or the structural solidarity to push such changes through, for now labour -remains relatively impotent. The new social movements which emerged since the end of the -Cold War, experiencing a resurgence in the years after 2008, have been similarly unable to -devise a new political ideological vision. Instead they expend considerable energy on internal -direct-democratic process and affective self-valorisation over strategic efficacy, and frequently -propound a variant of neo-primitivist localism, as if to if to oppose the abstract violence of -globalised capital with the flimsy and ephemeral “authenticity†of communal immediacy. - -6. In the absence of a radically new social, political, organisational, and economic vision the -hegemonic powers of the right will continue to be able to push forward their narrow-minded -imaginary, in the face of any and all evidence. At best, the left may be able for a time to -partially resist some of the worst incursions. But this is to be Canute against an ultimately -irresistible tide. To generate a new left global hegemony entails a recovery of lost possible -futures, and indeed the recovery of the future as such. - -02. INTEREGNUM: On Accelerationisms -1. If any system has been associated with ideas of acceleration it is capitalism. The essential -metabolism of capitalism demands economic growth, with competition between individual -capitalist entities setting in motion increasing technological developments in an attempt to -achieve competitive advantage, all accompanied by increasing social dislocation. In its -neoliberal form, its ideological self-presentation is one of liberating the forces of creative -destruction, setting free ever-accelerating technological and social innovations. -2. The philosopher Nick Land captured this most acutely, with a myopic yet hypnotising belief -that capitalist speed alone could generate a global transition towards unparalleled -technological singularity. In this visioning of capital, the human can eventually be discarded as -mere drag to an abstract planetary intelligence rapidly constructing itself from the bricolaged -fragments of former civilisations. However Landian neoliberalism confuses speed with -acceleration. We may be moving fast, but only within a strictly defined set of capitalist -parameters that themselves never waver. We experience only the increasing speed of a local -horizon, a simple brain-dead onrush rather than an acceleration which is also navigational, an -experimental process of discovery within a universal space of possibility. It is the latter mode -of acceleration which we hold as essential. -3. Even worse, as Deleuze and Guattari recognized, from the very beginning what capitalist -speed deterritorializes with one hand, it reterritorializes with the other. Progress becomes -constrained within a framework of surplus value, a reserve army of labour, and free-floating -capital. Modernity is reduced to statistical measures of economic growth and social innovation -becomes encrusted with kitsch remainders from our communal past. Thatcherite-Reaganite -deregulation sits comfortably alongside Victorian ‘back-to-basics’ family and religious values. -4. A deeper tension within neoliberalism is in terms of its self-image as the vehicle of -modernity, as literally synonymous with modernisation, whilst promising a future that it is -constitutively incapable of providing. Indeed, as neoliberalism has progressed, rather than -enabling individual creativity, it has tended towards eliminating cognitive inventiveness in -favour of an affective production line of scripted interactions, coupled to global supply chains -and a neo-Fordist Eastern production zone. A vanishingly small cognitariat of elite intellectual -workers shrinks with each passing year – and increasingly so as algorithmic automation -winds its way through the spheres of affective and intellectual labour. Neoliberalism, though -positing itself as a necessary historical development, was in fact a merely contingent means -to ward off the crisis of value that emerged in the 1970s. Inevitably this was a sublimation of -the crisis rather than its ultimate overcoming. -5. It is Marx, along with Land, who remains the paradigmatic accelerationist thinker. Contrary -to the all-too familiar critique, and even the behaviour of some contemporary Marxians, we -must remember that Marx himself used the most advanced theoretical tools and empirical -data available in an attempt to fully understand and transform his world. He was not a thinker -who resisted modernity, but rather one who sought to analyse and intervene within it, -understanding that for all its exploitation and corruption, capitalism remained the most -advanced economic system to date. Its gains were not to be reversed, but accelerated -beyond the constraints the capitalist value form. -6. Indeed, as even Lenin wrote in the 1918 text “Left Wing†Childishness: -"Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the -latest discoveries of modern science. It is inconceivable without planned state - -organisation which keeps tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a -unified standard in production and distribution. We Marxists have always spoken of -this, and it is not worth while wasting two seconds talking to people who do not -understand even this (anarchists and a good half of the Left SocialistRevolutionaries)." -7. As Marx was aware, capitalism cannot be identified as the agent of true acceleration. -Similarly, the assessment of left politics as antithetical to technosocial acceleration is also, at -least in part, a severe misrepresentation. Indeed, if the political left is to have a future it must -be one in which it maximally embraces this suppressed accelerationist tendency. - -03: MANIFEST: On the Future -1. We believe the most important division in today’s left is between those that hold to a folk -politics of localism, direct action, and relentless horizontalism, and those that outline what -must become called an accelerationist politics at ease with a modernity of abstraction, -complexity, globality, and technology. The former remains content with establishing small and -temporary spaces of non-capitalist social relations, eschewing the real problems entailed in -facing foes which are intrinsically non-local, abstract, and rooted deep in our everyday -infrastructure. The failure of such politics has been built-in from the very beginning. By -contrast, an accelerationist politics seeks to preserve the gains of late capitalism while going -further than its value system, governance structures, and mass pathologies will allow. -2. All of us want to work less. It is an intriguing question as to why it was that the world’s -leading economist of the post-war era believed that an enlightened capitalism inevitably -progressed towards a radical reduction of working hours. In The Economic Prospects for Our -Grandchildren (written in 1930), Keynes forecast a capitalist future where individuals would -have their work reduced to three hours a day. What has instead occurred is the progressive -elimination of the work-life distinction, with work coming to permeate every aspect of the -emerging social factory. -3. Capitalism has begun to constrain the productive forces of technology, or at least, direct -them towards needlessly narrow ends. Patent wars and idea monopolisation are -contemporary phenomena that point to both capital’s need to move beyond competition, and -capital’s increasingly retrograde approach to technology. The properly accelerative gains of -neoliberalism have not led to less work or less stress. And rather than a world of space travel, -future shock, and revolutionary technological potential, we exist in a time where the only thing -which develops is marginally better consumer gadgetry. Relentless iterations of the same -basic product sustain marginal consumer demand at the expense of human acceleration. -4. We do not want to return to Fordism. There can be no return to Fordism. The capitalist -“golden era†was premised on the production paradigm of the orderly factory environment, -where (male) workers received security and a basic standard of living in return for a lifetime of -stultifying boredom and social repression. Such a system relied upon an international -hierarchy of colonies, empires, and an underdeveloped periphery; a national hierarchy of -racism and sexism; and a rigid family hierarchy of female subjugation. For all the nostalgia -many may feel, this regime is both undesirable and practically impossible to return to. -5. Accelerationists want to unleash latent productive forces. In this project, the material -platform of neoliberalism does not need to be destroyed. It needs to be repurposed towards -common ends. The existing infrastructure is not a capitalist stage to be smashed, but a -springboard to launch towards post-capitalism. -6. Given the enslavement of technoscience to capitalist objectives (especially since the late -1970s) we surely do not yet know what a modern technosocial body can do. Who amongst us -fully recognizes what untapped potentials await in the technology which has already been -developed? Our wager is that the true transformative potentials of much of our technological -and scientific research remain unexploited, filled with presently redundant features (or pre- - -adaptations) that, following a shift beyond the short-sighted capitalist socius, can become -decisive. -7. We want to accelerate the process of technological evolution. But what we are arguing for -is not techno-utopianism. Never believe that technology will be sufficient to save us. -Necessary, yes, but never sufficient without socio-political action. Technology and the social -are intimately bound up with one another, and changes in either potentiate and reinforce -changes in the other. Whereas the techno-utopians argue for acceleration on the basis that it -will automatically overcome social conflict, our position is that technology should be -accelerated precisely because it is needed in order to win social conflicts. -8. We believe that any post-capitalism will require post-capitalist planning. The faith placed in -the idea that, after a revolution, the people will spontaneously constitute a novel -socioeconomic system that isn’t simply a return to capitalism is naïve at best, and ignorant at -worst. To further this, we must develop both a cognitive map of the existing system and a -speculative image of the future economic system. -9. To do so, the left must take advantage of every technological and scientific advance made -possible by capitalist society. We declare that quantification is not an evil to be eliminated, but -a tool to be used in the most effective manner possible. Economic modelling is – simply put – -a necessity for making intelligible a complex world. The 2008 financial crisis reveals the risks -of blindly accepting mathematical models on faith, yet this is a problem of illegitimate authority -not of mathematics itself. The tools to be found in social network analysis, agent-based -modelling, big data analytics, and non-equilibrium economic models, are necessary cognitive -mediators for understanding complex systems like the modern economy. The accelerationist -left must become literate in these technical fields. -10. Any transformation of society must involve economic and social experimentation. The -Chilean Project Cybersyn is emblematic of this experimental attitude – fusing advanced -cybernetic technologies, with sophisticated economic modelling, and a democratic platform -instantiated in the technological infrastructure itself. Similar experiments were conducted in -1950s-1960s Soviet economics as well, employing cybernetics and linear programming in an -attempt to overcome the new problems faced by the first communist economy. That both of -these were ultimately unsuccessful can be traced to the political and technological constraints -these early cyberneticians operated under. -11. The left must develop sociotechnical hegemony: both in the sphere of ideas, and in the -sphere of material platforms. Platforms are the infrastructure of global society. They establish -the basic parameters of what is possible, both behaviourally and ideologically. In this sense, -they embody the material transcendental of society: they are what make possible particular -sets of actions, relationships, and powers. While much of the current global platform is biased -towards capitalist social relations, this is not an inevitable necessity. These material platforms -of production, finance, logistics, and consumption can and will be reprogrammed and -reformatted towards post-capitalist ends. -12. We do not believe that direct action is sufficient to achieve any of this. The habitual tactics -of marching, holding signs, and establishing temporary autonomous zones risk becoming -comforting substitutes for effective success. “At least we have done something†is the rallying -cry of those who privilege self-esteem rather than effective action. The only criterion of a good -tactic is whether it enables significant success or not. We must be done with fetishising -particular modes of action. Politics must be treated as a set of dynamic systems, riven with -conflict, adaptations and counter-adaptations, and strategic arms races. This means that each -individual type of political action becomes blunted and ineffective over time as the other sides -adapt. No given mode of political action is historically inviolable. Indeed, over time, there is an -increasing need to discard familiar tactics as the forces and entities they are marshalled -against learn to defend and counter-attack them effectively. It is in part the contemporary left’s -inability to do so which lies close to the heart of the contemporary malaise. -13. The overwhelming privileging of democracy-as-process needs to be left behind. The -fetishisation of openness, horizontality, and inclusion of much of today’s ‘radical’ left set the - -stage for ineffectiveness. Secrecy, verticality, and exclusion all have their place as well in -effective political action (though not, of course, an exclusive one). -14. Democracy cannot be defined simply by its means – not via voting, discussion, or general -assemblies. Real democracy must be defined by its goal – collective self-mastery. This is a -project which must align politics with the legacy of the Enlightenment, to the extent that it is -only through harnessing our ability to understand ourselves and our world better (our social, -technical, economic, psychological world) that we can come to rule ourselves. We need to -posit a collectively controlled legitimate vertical authority in addition to distributed horizontal -forms of sociality, to avoid becoming the slaves of either a tyrannical totalitarian centralism or -a capricious emergent order beyond our control. The command of The Plan must be married -to the improvised order of The Network. -15. We do not present any particular organisation as the ideal means to embody these -vectors. What is needed – what has always been needed – is an ecology of organisations, a -pluralism of forces, resonating and feeding back on their comparative strengths. Sectarianism -is the death knell of the left as much as centralization is, and in this regard we continue to -welcome experimentation with different tactics (even those we disagree with). -16. We have three medium term concrete goals. First, we need to build an intellectual -infrastructure. Mimicking the Mont Pelerin Society of the neoliberal revolution, this is to be -tasked with creating a new ideology, economic and social models, and a vision of the good to -replace and surpass the emaciated ideals that rule our world today. This is an infrastructure in -the sense of requiring the construction not just of ideas, but institutions and material paths to -inculcate, embody and spread them. -17. We need to construct wide-scale media reform. In spite of the seeming democratisation -offered by the internet and social media, traditional media outlets remain crucial in the -selection and framing of narratives, along with possessing the funds to prosecute -investigative journalism. Bringing these bodies as close as possible to popular control is -crucial to undoing the current presentation of the state of things. -18. Finally, we need to reconstitute various forms of class power. Such a reconstitution must -move beyond the notion that an organically generated global proletariat already exists. -Instead it must seek to knit together a disparate array of partial proletarian identities, often -embodied in post-Fordist forms of precarious labour. -19. Groups and individuals are already at work on each of these, but each is on their own -insufficient. What is required is all three feeding back into one another, with each modifying -the contemporary conjunction in such a way that the others become more and more effective. -A positive feedback loop of infrastructural, ideological, social and economic transformation, -generating a new complex hegemony, a new post-capitalist technosocial platform. History -demonstrates it has always been a broad assemblage of tactics and organisations which has -brought about systematic change; these lessons must be learned. -20. To achieve each of these goals, on the most practical level we hold that the accelerationist -left must think more seriously about the flows of resources and money required to build an -effective new political infrastructure. Beyond the ‘people power’ of bodies in the street, we -require funding, whether from governments, institutions, think tanks, unions, or individual -benefactors. We consider the location and conduction of such funding flows essential to begin -reconstructing an ecology of effective accelerationist left organizations. -21. We declare that only a Promethean politics of maximal mastery over society and its -environment is capable of either dealing with global problems or achieving victory over -capital. This mastery must be distinguished from that beloved of thinkers of the original -Enlightenment. The clockwork universe of Laplace, so easily mastered given sufficient -information, is long gone from the agenda of serious scientific understanding. But this is not to -align ourselves with the tired residue of postmodernity, decrying mastery as proto-fascistic or -authority as innately illegitimate. Instead we propose that the problems besetting our planet -and our species oblige us to refurbish mastery in a newly complex guise; whilst we cannot - -predict the precise result of our actions, we can determine probabilistically likely ranges of -outcomes. What must be coupled to such complex systems analysis is a new form of action: -improvisatory and capable of executing a design through a practice which works with the -contingencies it discovers only in the course of its acting, in a politics of geosocial artistry and -cunning rationality. A form of abductive experimentation that seeks the best means to act in a -complex world. -22. We need to revive the argument that was traditionally made for post-capitalism: not only is -capitalism an unjust and perverted system, but it is also a system that holds back progress. -Our technological development is being suppressed by capitalism, as much as it has been -unleashed. Accelerationism is the basic belief that these capacities can and should be let -loose by moving beyond the limitations imposed by capitalist society. The movement towards -a surpassing of our current constraints must include more than simply a struggle for a more -rational global society. We believe it must also include recovering the dreams which transfixed -many from the middle of the Nineteenth Century until the dawn of the neoliberal era, of the -quest of Homo Sapiens towards expansion beyond the limitations of the earth and our -immediate bodily forms. These visions are today viewed as relics of a more innocent moment. -Yet they both diagnose the staggering lack of imagination in our own time, and offer the -promise of a future that is affectively invigorating, as well as intellectually energising. After all, -it is only a post-capitalist society, made possible by an accelerationist politics, which will ever -be capable of delivering on the promissory note of the mid-Twentieth Century’s space -programmes, to shift beyond a world of minimal technical upgrades towards all-encompassing -change. Towards a time of collective self-mastery, and the properly alien future that entails -and enables. Towards a completion of the Enlightenment project of self-criticism and selfmastery, rather than its elimination. -23. The choice facing us is severe: either a globalised post-capitalism or a slow fragmentation -towards primitivism, perpetual crisis, and planetary ecological collapse. -24. The future needs to be constructed. It has been demolished by neoliberal capitalism and -reduced to a cut-price promise of greater inequality, conflict, and chaos. This collapse in the -idea of the future is symptomatic of the regressive historical status of our age, rather than, as -cynics across the political spectrum would have us believe, a sign of sceptical maturity. What -accelerationism pushes towards is a future that is more modern – an alternative modernity -that neoliberalism is inherently unable to generate. The future must be cracked open once -again, unfastening our horizons towards the universal possibilities of the Outside. - diff --git a/_queue/celerity.markdown b/_queue/celerity.markdown deleted file mode 100644 index 3974b9767b63d097cc50e15e9431b7dbd4dd8e37..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/_queue/celerity.markdown +++ /dev/null @@ -1,497 +0,0 @@ -#Celerity: A Critique of the Manifesto for an -Accelerationist Politics -McKenzie Wark -0.0 You have to love any manifesto which gets to -climate change in only its second paragraph. It shows -a keen attention to the actual agenda of the times. -This is not the least merit of #Accelerate: Manifesto for -an Accelerationist Politics. It has at least some grasp of -contemporary conjuncture in which we find -ourselves. But the grasp is in my view, only partial. In -some ways it’s a rather old-fashioned text. Of course, -one is always drawing on the past to imagine a -future. But this process – some would call it -détournement, some would call it hacking – has to be -done with a little more historical depth and breadth. -What follows, then, is a friendly commentary and -critique of #Accelerate. The numbering of these -counter-theses match those of the original document. -1.1 The widening gyre of the commodity economy is a -series of what, after Marx, we can call metabolic rifts. -In the division between exchange value and use -value, commodity exchange severs objects from the -matrices of their engendering. Only one side of the -double form of value is subject to a quantitative -feedback loop – exchange value. Its vestigial double – -use value – or the mesh from which things are - -extracted, is not so easily quantified. And so rifts open -up in the metabolic process. Rifts which political -systems borne of the successive eras of commodity -economy cannot even recognize as problems, let alone -solve. -1.2 Climate change is the most troubling of these rifts, -but there are many others. The problem with the -dynamic of the commodity economy is that the -struggle within it of subordinated classes tends, -among other things, to force the ruling class toward -substituting technology for direct labor. But each of -these substitutions draws in turn on more energy and -more material resources. The whole infrastructure of -the global commodity economy has by now -committed itself to the consumption of more -resources than may even exist. The ruling class, when -not deluding itself with various ideological ruses, -surely knows that maintaining a commodity economy -on full speed ahead can only worsen various -metabolic rifts, climate disruption among them. One -suspects it is quietly preparing for this, arming itself, -building its private arks. -1.3 Against this hideous prospect, its high time for a -new imaginary, a new space for thought and action. -Such an imaginary already exists, but in fragments. -The difficulty for subordinate classes is always the - -project of the totality, the very thing over which they -have no power. Well, nobody has power over the -totality as totality any more! The biosphere is in -decline as a result of a mass of private interests -competing to chop it into bits of exchange value. The -challenge is to claim the totality, to open it, to put -modernity back in play as a space affording more -than one path to a viable future. -1.4 The ruling class would like us to imagine that the -‘neoliberal’ future is the only one. This term needs to -be challenged on a number of fronts. Firstly, this is -not a restoration of a liberal order. Its something new. -It was not a turning back of the clock to a form of -commodity economy prior to the welfare state and all -the other compromises wrested from the ruling class -by organized labor and the social movements. It’s a -new stage, based on new technical infrastructures, -new forms of control. Secondly: what makes anyone -think capitalism was ever ‘liberal’ in the first place? -The autonomy of the economic sphere is itself an -ideological proposition. The ‘liberal’ economic sphere -was achieved through massive state violence against -premodern peoples and their ways of life. So: there -was no liberal capitalism; there is no neoliberal -capitalism. But there is a new stage of the commodity -economy whose contours are rather undefined - -theoretically, and not least because the left buys into -the ‘neoliberal’ myth as much as the right. -1.5 In the overdeveloped world of Europe, the United -States and Japan, class composition has changed -significantly. Manufacturing has declined within the -composition of labor. The pressure points that -organized labor used to have at which to struggle for -its interests are no longer within reach. Even if we -could shut down all the hair salons it would not have -the same effect as shutting down a strategic industry -like steel. Now that such strategic industries are often -not located in the overdeveloped world, the ruling -class has less and less interest in maintaining the -conditions of reproduction within the space of the old -overdeveloped nations. If your big investments are -not there, then why care about the health or education -of those workers? The old Keynsian solutions to the -current crisis would in fact work very well, but there -is no coalition of interest for them, and significant -ruling class pressure to use the crisis to reduce the -reproductive functions of the state. In any case, the -emerging forms of commodification take aim at -precisely the affective labor and informational labor -that the state usually still provides, in health and -education. The overdeveloped world offers few new -domains for commodification, so these old socialized -ones become targets. - -1.6 The diffusion of commodity relations throughout -the whole domain of the overdeveloped world -fragments and renders more and more molecular the -points of conflict and struggle. Local and specific -forms of challenge arise, from Occupy Wall Street to -the quiet, passive ‘Bartleby’ tactics of not doing -anything at work you don’t really have to do. The -problem is finding forms of semantic glue to stitch -such actions together rhetorically. This need not be a -radical language, it just needs to be a plausible one. A -popular poetics of the open totality, of there being -more than one possible future, and more than one -possible path out of the present. -2.0 Celerity -2.0 Not so fast, you may say. Let’s not get caught up -in too quick a dismissal of existing forms of theory -and praxis. While the manifesto form thrives on the -pure annihilation of the past, let’s proceed will all -deliberate speed, but not too haphazardly. -2.1 To begin with: while the commodity economy -presents itself as forward-moving, even as -‘progressive’, let’s challenge that myth. It seems that a -large part of what the ruling class is now doing in the -overdeveloped world is cultivating and defending - -quasi-monopoly conditions. Using the archaic patent -system to shut out any whipper-snappers, or to joust -with each other for turf. Meanwhile, what the ruling -class seems to be doing in the so-called -underdeveloped world is rolling out the old -industrial paradigm of the nineteenth century on a -massive scale. It encounters there in modified form -the recalcitrance of labor, and responds with the same -spectacular offerings, which are met with the same -boredom, again, on an expanded scale. The relations -of production of the commodity economy seem more -a fetter on the free development of new social and -technical arrangements, new kinds of future, than -their custodians. The commodity form itself is out of -date. -2.2 There’s something to be said for the thought -exercise of imagining where the commodity form, left -to accelerate according to its own one-track mind, -would end up. Its replacement of recalcitrant labor by -capital would become absolute, making labor -obsolete, like a vestigial organ. If only there were -enough energy and resources left. It might even make -not only labor but the ruling class obsolete. A whole -planet ticking over via silicon encrusting bits! But this -is only a thought exercise, a fatal strategy in theory. In -practice there’s not enough planet left to entertain -such an idea. Besides: technology may have agency - -but it isn’t absolute. It is pressed this way and that by -competing class interests. Even when it seems like -alternate paths to the future are foreclosed, there’s -always struggle, internal differentiation. There’s -always points that can be prized open. -2.3 Opening the path to other futures means -reopening the qualitative dimension of modernity, its -aesthetic dimension. This was the chosen terrain of its -avant-gardes: the futurists and constructivists, the -surrealists and situationists, the accelerationists and -schizomaniacs. All of which opened up futures that -have now been foreclosed. But: to make three steps -forward, two steps back. There are many resources in -the aesthetic alter-modern spaces of the past via -which to experiment with steps forward. -2.4 All these qualitative avant-gardes met their -Waterloo: the quantitative rear-guard. The path to -sustaining the commodity economy after the -challenges of organized labor and the social -movements reached its peak was a new kind of -quantification, a new logistics, a new mesh of vectors -for command and control. Initially it was crude and -dealt only with aggregates and proxies, like the early -computer simulations of the cold war. But what really -led to its dominance is the embedding in everyday -life itself of the production of the quantitative data for - -its expansion to the whole of life. Thus, the qualitative -avant-gardes have to re-imagine possible spaces for -alter-modernities based on this transformation of -everyday life in all its forms into a gamespace of -quantified data. Just as the situationists imagined a -space of play in the interstitial spaces of the policing -of the city via the dérive, so too we now have to -imagine and experiment with emerging gaps and -cracks in the gamespace that the commodity economy -has become. The time of the hack, or the exploit, is at -hand. -2.5 Here we can follow in the path of Marx, but not by -treating him scholastically. Rather, one has to -reinvent his practice: his use of conceptual tools as -tools, his use of the best empirical data, his -attunement to the struggles around him, his -deployment of the communicative strategies of -modernity itself. Moreover, we need to recover -Marx’s version of the Nietzschian slogan: “god is -dead.†For Marx, history is not transitive. There’s no -going back. There’s only forward. It’s a question of -struggling to open another future besides this one -which, as he himself intuited, has no future at all. So: -let’s look not at what Marx says, but what he does. -Let’s align ourselves, as he did, with the avant garde -of the times. - -2.6 There’s little to be gained from re-hashing the -various experiments in twentieth century revolution. -Lenin and Mao have little to teach us. Their situation -is not our situation. The rest is moot. -2.7 Who are the forces for social change? Marx asks -this in his Manifesto. And his answer: those who ask -the property question. It turns out that putting all -property in the hands of the state is not the right -answer to the property question. Goodbye Lenin; -goodbye Mao. But the question remains a valid one. -Who are the agents struggling in and against the -emergent productive forms who can shape the -affordances of those technologies and labor -processes? One of the answers is: the worker. But -another is: the ‘hacker’. The worker is the one who -struggles in and against a productive regime. The -hacker is the one who contributes to designing new -ones, or at the very least populating the existing ones -with new concepts, new ideas – recuperated by the -new property forms of so-called ‘intellectual -property’. These are the accelerators of modernity: -those who labor in and against it. These are the ones -for whom the regime of the commodity economy is as -much fetter as enabler. The relation between these -classes, and with other subaltern classes, becomes the -key tactical issue. An issue of not just a poetics of an -open future, but modes of coordination. - -3.0 Futurity -3.1 The task is one of coordinating the latent energies -of a people bored with what the commodity has to -offer with the awareness of what shaping powers -remain to us to open cracks towards new futures. It’s -not either or. ‘Folk politics’ and technical politics need -to talk to each other. To do otherwise is to lapse, on -the one hand, into local and specific grievances, or -purely negative energies, or a refusal to confront the -larger picture of metabolic rift. On the other hand, to -ignore folk politics is also a danger, the danger of the -technocratic fix. It’s to base decisions on a refusal to -acknowledge folk struggle and demand, but also -insight and information from the popular struggles in -and against commodity economy. What we need is -neither abstraction nor occupying, but the occupying of -abstraction. -3.2 It’s a question of whether boredom with the -commodity economy will work fast enough, as it -spreads from the overdeveloped world to the -underdeveloped, to open up a new path before -metabolic rifts like the climate crisis forces the planet -toward more violent, disorganizing, and frankly -fascist ‘solutions’ to its problems. Already in China -factory workers are starting to get restless. Beyond -that, there’s only so much cheap labor left on the -planet to exploit. Meanwhile, in the overdeveloped - -world, a rather novel regime of value extraction is -finding ways to extract value from non-work. Search -engines and social networking find ways to extract -value from activity regardless of whether it is ‘work’ -and without paying for it. It’s a kind of vulture -industry, parasitic on frankly successful popular -struggles to free vast tracts of information from the -commodity form and circulate it freely. But having -beaten back the old culture industries with this tactic, -the social movement that was free culture finds itself -recuperated at a higher level of abstraction by the -vulture industries and their ‘gamification’ of every -aspect of everyday life. So: any alter-modernity -project has to bypass the expansion of the old -commodification regimes across the planet, but also -these curious new ones, dominant in the -overdeveloped world, but tending now to transform -information flows everywhere. -3.3 Of course, part of the old ruling class still insists -on increasingly repressive and global measures to -restrict information to the old property form, whether -of patent or copyright or trademark. But the current -productive regime respects no such antiquated -embedding of information into particular objects. -“Information wants to be free but is everywhere in -chains.†But it has in part been sidestepped by -another faction of the ruling class itself, which finds - -ways to extract value from the spontaneous, popular -gift economies of information that have sprung up. -New tactics are called for now, to work against the -new forms of commodification as well as the old. -Perhaps it would even be possible to design more -efficient and useful technical and social relations, no -matter how lo-tech, precisely because they would not -require the cumbersome ‘digital rights management’ -and so forth of the old fettered regime. -3.4 While there may be no going back to the old -Fordist models of production, the partial -socializations of the surplus that were the fruit of -struggle of that time have much to recommend them. -It really is the case that these ‘socialist’ systems of -housing, healthcare and education outperformed -their profiteering cousins. The ideology of the times -denies this, but it’s the case. These efficient systems -are being carved up in the overdeveloped world for -no better reason than to produce inefficient copies of -them which enable the ruling class to extract a -surplus from something. Let’s never forget: it may not -have been utopia, but socialism succeeded, in the west, -in these domains. -3.5 Building better futures will take all the technical -infrastructure we can get. But it’s not as simple as -repurposing existing infrastructures, all of which are - -based on ever-expanding resource use and labor -exploitation as design givens. The first step forward is -to get out of either/or language about technology. So -much discussion either sees it as panacea or curse. -Technology, as Stiegler says, is a pharamakon: its both, -and everything in between. A technology is not what -it does, it is also what it might do. We need an openended, experimental approach, a critical design -approach. Being ‘for’ or ‘against’ it is one of the old -problems of an unhelpful discourse of modernity. -3.6 One of the best of the ‘socialist’ systems of the -west was publicly funded big science. Science was -always subordinated to national security and -industrial development goals, but it was not identical -to them. The internet was invented more or less by -accident. Most of the breakthroughs happened before -science was narrowly constrained to producing value -for the commodity economy or specific defense needs. -We need to recover a sense of the possibility of -science. Most of its failures were not failures of -science, but failures of politics. Pesticides like DDT -cause damage because of a failure of the feedback -loop from folk politics to technocratic decision -making. The same is true of so many toxic disasters -today. Indeed, one needs science to know when the -product of a science is being misapplied. Climate -science is the reason we know so much of applied - -science in industry is causing problems. We need -more science, not less. Including a science of popular -knowledge of the effects of applied industrial science. -3.7 Even a little techno-utopianism might not be a bad -thing from time to time, to imagine possible spaces, -even if only conceptual spaces, like in the work of -Constant. But if we acknowledge that tech on its own -can’t save us, then we need to be attendant also to -experiments in ‘social’ technology. Horizontalism, for -example, as practiced in Occupy Wall Street and -elsewhere, is also a technology. Whether it’s a technoutopia one is embarked upon, or a new social -practice, one has to pay attention to how the social -inhabits the former and the technical permeates the -latter. Tech and the social (or the political) are not -separate things. The phrase “the technological is -politically (or socially) constructed†is meaningless. -One is simply looking at the same systems through -different lenses when one speaks of the political or -the technical. But among intellectuals, the social, the -political (and we can add the cultural) are something -of a fetish. There’s something tactically useful in -stressing the technical bases of all such perspectives. -Among engineers and designers, of course, the -opposite thinking strategy applies. Accelerating -technical evolution requires a conversation that is - -sophisticated in such matters, and which includes all -perspectives, including ‘folk’ ones. -3.8 There can be no return to ‘planning’ as a panacea, -however, as it always implies asymmetries of -information. The excluded parties and their -knowledge, their struggles, always turn out to be -relevant. We need only look at the ecological disasters -of Soviet planning for examples. The challenge is to -coordinate qualitative knowledge as well as the -market coordinates quantitative knowledge – and -better. -3.9 New kinds of quantitative measure can also help. -Let’s use that weapon against the ruling class! But we -also need new visualization tools, new narratives, -new poetics. And ones which do not exclude ‘folk -politics’ but rather include them. The question to ask -about any new ‘cognitive mediator’ is: whose cognition -is it mediating? -3.10 The emphasis for an alter-modernity at this point -has to be on its experimental practices. This means a -synthesis not just of the qualitative and quantitative -dimensions of modernity but also threading back -together its critical, negative tendencies and its -affirmative, design-based ones. - -3.11 All this calls for a gathering of social forces. It -requires cross-class alliances, of workers and hackers. -It requires transnational networks, spanning the -overdeveloped and underdeveloped worlds. It’s not -simply a matter of ‘reprogramming’ existing technical -infrastructures. It’s a question of aligning the -tendencies which struggle within it at all its points. -3.12 It is no longer enough to say what an ideal -‘politics’ might be. Perhaps ‘politics’ itself needs to -become an object of sever critique. Intellectuals like to -imagine an ideal version of politics, but are less keen -on the actually existing ones. It’s a question of finding -the right job for those of us who talk and write and -don’t do much else. Perhaps as agents of a low theory, -which tries to link up particular struggles, rather than -plan it, top down. Let’s talk no more of what politics -‘ought’ to be like. Comrades, roll up your sleeves! -3.13 Certainly let’s not retreat too far back towards -the secrecy, verticality and exclusion which got us -into this mess in the first place. Planning has its place. -Every economy plans. But too much closure just leads -to information deficits. -3.14 Neither the command of the plan nor the purely -horizontal participatory model works on its own. -They exist in tension with each other, and with many - -other social forms. Let’s play with a full deck of social -forms. -3.15 There is always an ecology of organizations, of a -sort. But the problem with the current one is that it -does not reproduce its own conditions of existence. It -destroys them. This must be a central object of both -critique and experiment at all levels. -3.16 Retreating to the mountain, equipping some -ruling elite with a new ideology and a few cognitive -tools – only prolongs the crisis. Let’s not dally with -the fantasy of a new prince of Syracuse. -3.21 The Promethean mythology of the futurists -might work for some, but a more capacious and -global deployment of the mythic stock of images and -stories is more what the times call for. Besides, what -happened to Prometheus? -3.24 The prospect of a future does however need -reconstruction. It might begin with a synthesis of -various strands of modernity that are now -fragmented into separate realms, all under the reign -of the commodity and its quantitative equivalence. -But such a prospect means nothing without -identifiable social actors. It calls for a popular, and -populist, struggle, in many languages, drawing - -different modes of thought and experiment into -common projects. It may not need an over-arching -image or metaphor. Fordist models even in ideology -seem a thing of the past. The task is not political -rhetoric but an actually political one, of finding the -modus vivendi for different forces in struggle, acting -now with the utmost celerity. -4.0 Personal Concluding Thoughts -4.0 So: Two cheers for #Accelerate. But only two. It -successfully develops the provocative writing of Nick -Land, and to his left. But if Land is a ‘rightaccelerationist’, #Acclerate ends up being something -of a centrist-accelerationist position. It defaults to -planning, to the intellectual retreat up to the -mountain, rather than engaging with new forms of -struggle. Still, its reanimated futurism, its openness -toward technology, to thinking problems at scale, -these are positive features. What remains is to push it -a little toward a more ‘left-accelerationist’ position, -without lapsing into the sins of the left: the fetish of -politics as the magical solution to everything high -among them. -4.1 To the extent that personally I find common -ground here is that #Accelerate overlaps with a -position I started to stake out ten years ago now, in A - -Hacker Manifesto (Harvard UP 2004) and Gamer -Theory (Harvard UP 2007). Those texts reflect the -positive and more pessimistic dimensions of -accelerationism respectively. I drew on different -modernist avant garde resources, the genealogy of -which I then sketched out in The Beach Beneath the -Street (Verso, 2011) and The Spectacle of Disintegration -(Verso 2013). In short: there’s other paths to the same -territory besides the strange one that wends from Karl -Marx via Georges Bataille to Nick Land. (Deleuze, -however, we have in common). Perhaps the collective -project is remap that territory, so we know better -what our options are in what resources can be drawn -from the past. Otherwise: damn the torpedoes, full -speed ahead. - diff --git a/_queue/jopp_hacklabs-and-hackerspaces.md b/_queue/jopp_hacklabs-and-hackerspaces.md deleted file mode 100644 index a6804fb78313d4be76007002970243a1ddc8f78f..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/_queue/jopp_hacklabs-and-hackerspaces.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1146 +0,0 @@ -http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-2/peer-reviewed-papers/hacklabs-and-hackerspaces/ - -· Hacklabs and hackerspaces – tracing two genealogies - -**Maxigas** - -1. Introduction ---------------- - -It seems very promising to chart the genealogy of hackerspaces from the -point of view of hacklabs, since the relationship between these scenes -have seldom been discussed and largely remains unreflected. A -methodological examination will highlight many interesting differences -and connections that can be useful for practitioners who seek to foster -and spread the hackerspace culture, as well as for academics who seek to -conceptualise and understand it. In particular, hackerspaces proved to -be a viral phenomenon which may have reached the height of its -popularity, and while a new wave of fablabs spring up, people like -Grenzfurthner and Schneider (2009) have started asking questions about -the direction of these movements. I would like to contribute to this -debate about the political direction and the political potentials of -hacklabs and hackerspaces with a comparative, critical, -historiographical paper. I am mostly interested in how these intertwined -networks of institutions and communities can escape the the capitalist -apparatus of capture, and how these potentialities are conditioned by a -historical embeddedness in various scenes and histories. - -Hacklabs manifest some of the same traits as hackerspaces, and, indeed, -many communities who are registered on hackerspaces.org identify -themselves as “hacklabs†as well. Furthermore, some registered groups -would not be considered to be a “real†hackerspace by most of the -others. In fact, there is a rich spectrum of terms and places with a -family resemblance such as “coworking spacesâ€, “innovation -laboratoriesâ€, “media labsâ€, “fab labsâ€, “makerspacesâ€, and so on. Not -all of these are even based on an existing community, but have been -founded by actors of the formal educational system or commercial sector. -It is impossible to clarify everything in the scope of a short article. -I will therefore only consider community-led hacklabs and hackerspaces -here. - -Despite the fact that these spaces share the same cultural heritage, -some of their ideological and historical roots are indeed different. -This results in a slightly different adoption of technologies and a -subtle divergence in their organisational models. Historically speaking, -hacklabs started in the middle of the 1990s and became widespread in the -first half of the 2000s. Hackerspaces started in the late 1990s and -became widespread in the second half of the 2000s. Ideologically -speaking, most hacklabs have been explicitly politicised as part of the -broader anarchist/autonomist scene, while hackerspaces, developing in -the libertarian sphere of influence around the Chaos Computer Club, are -not necessarily defining themselves as overtly political. While -practitioners in both scenes would consider their own activities as -oriented towards the liberation of technological knowledge and related -practices, the interpretations of what is meant by “liberty†diverges. -One concrete example of how these historical and ideological divergences -show up is to be found in the legal status of the spaces: while hacklabs -are often located in squatted buildings, hackerspaces are generally -rented. - -This paper is comprised of three distinct sections. The first two -sections draw up the historical and ideological genealogy of hacklabs -and hackerspaces. The third section brings together these findings in -order to reflect on the differences from a contemporary point of view. -While the genealogical sections are descriptive, the evaluation in the -last section is normative, asking how the differences identified in the -paper play out strategically from the point of view of creating -postcapitalist spaces, subjects and technologies. - -Note that at the moment the terms “hacklab†and “hackerspace†are used -largely synonymously. Contrary to prevailing categorisation, I use -hacklabs in their older (1990s) historical sense, in order to highlight -historical and ideological differences that result in a somewhat -different approach to technology. This is not linguistic nitpicking but -meant to allow a more nuanced understanding of the environments and -practices under consideration. The evolving meaning of these terms, -reflecting the social changes that have taken place, is recorded on -Wikipedia. The Hacklab article was created in 2006 (Wikipedia -contributors, 2010a), the Hackerspace article in 2008 (Wikipedia -contributors, 2011). In 2010, the content of the Hacklab article was -merged into the Hackerspaces article. This merger was based on the -rationale given on the corresponding discussion page (Wikipedia -contributors, 2010). A user by the name “Anarkitekt†wrote that “I’ve -never heard or read anything implying that there is an ideological -difference between the terms hackerspace and hacklab†(Wikipedia -contributors, 2010b). Thus the treatment of the topic by Wikipedians -supports my claim that the proliferation of hackerspaces went hand in -hand with a forgetting of the history that I am setting out to -recapitulate here. - -![](http://peerproduction.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/figure1Maxigas8.jpg) - -Figure 1. Survey of domain registrations of the hacklabs list from -hacklabs.org - -2. Hacklabs ------------ - -The surge of hacklabs can be attributed to a number of factors. In order -to sketch out their genealogy, two contexts will be expanded on here: -the autonomous movement and media activism. A shortened and simplified -account of these two histories are given that emphasises elements that -are important from the point of view of the emergence of hacklabs. The -hacker culture, of no less importance, will be treated in the next -section in more detail. A definition from a seminal article by Simon -Yuill highlights the basic rationales behind these initiatives (2008): - -“Hacklabs are, mostly, voluntary-run spaces providing free public access -to computers and internet. They generally make use of reclaimed and -recycled machines running GNU/Linux, and alongside providing computer -access, most hacklabs run workshops in a range of topics from basic -computer use and installing GNU/Linux software, to programming, -electronics, and independent (or pirate) radio broadcast. The first -hacklabs developed in Europe, often coming out of the traditions of -squatted social centres and community media labs. In Italy they have -been connected with the autonomist social centres, and in Spain, -Germany, and the Netherlands with anarchist squatting movements.†- -The autonomous movement grew out of the “cultural shock†(Wallerstein, -2004) of 1968 which included a new wave of contestations against -capitalism, both in its welfare state form and in its Eastern -manifestation as “bureaucratic capitalism†(Debord [1970], 1977). It was -concurrently linked to the rise of youth subcultures. It was mainly -oriented towards mass direct action and the establishment of initiatives -that sought to provide an alternative to the institutions operated by -state and capital. Its crucial formal characteristic was -self-organisation emphasising the horizontal distribution of power. In -the 1970s, the autonomous movement played a role in the politics of -Italy, Germany and France (in order of importance) and to a lesser -extent in other European countries like Greece (Wright, 2002). The -theoretical basis is that the working class (and later the oppressed in -general) can be an independent historical actor in the face of state and -capital, building its own power structures through self-valorisation and -appropriation. It drew from orthodox Marxism, left-communism and -anarchism, both in theoretical terms and in terms of a historical -continuity and direct contact between these other movements. The rise -and fall of left wing terrorist organisations, which emerged from a -similar milieu (like the RAF in Germany or the Red Brigade in Italy), -has marked a break in the history of the autonomous movements. -Afterwards they became less coherent and more heterogenous. Two specific -practices that were established by autonomists are squatting and media -activism (Lotringer Marazzi, 2007). - -The reappropriation of physical places and real estate has a much longer -history than the autonomous movement. Sometimes, as in the case of the -pirate settlements described by Hakim Bey (1995,, 2003), these places -have evolved into sites for alternative “forms of life†(Agamben, 1998). -The housing shortage after the Second World War resulted in a wave of -occupations in the United Kingdom (Hinton, 1988) which necessarily took -on a political character and produced community experiences. However, -the specificity of squatting lay in the strategy of taking occupied -houses as a point of departure for the reinvention of all spheres of -life while confronting authorities and the “establishment†more -generally conceived. While many houses served as private homes, -concentrating on experimenting with alternative life styles or simply -satisfying basic needs, others opted to play a public role in urban -life. The latter are called “social centresâ€. A social centre would -provide space for initiatives that sought to establish an alternative to -official institutions. For example, the infoshop would be an alternative -information desk, library and archive, while the bicycle kitchen would -be an alternative to bike shops and bike repair shops. These two -examples show that among the various institutions to be replaced, both -those operated by state and capital were included. On the other hand, -both temporary and more or less permanently occupied spaces served as -bases, and sometimes as front lines, of an array of protest activities. - -With the onset of neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005; 2007), squatters had to -fight hard for their territory, resulting in the “squat wars†of the -90s. The stake of these clashes that often saw whole streets under -blockade was to force the state and capital to recognise squatting as a -more or less legitimate social practice. While trespassing and breaking -in to private property remained illegal, occupiers received at least -temporary legal protection and disputes had to be resolved in court, -often taking a long time to conclude. Squatting proliferated in the -resulting â€grey areaâ€. Enforcement practices, squatting laws and -frameworks were established in the UK, Catalonia, Netherlands and -Germany. Some of the more powerful occupied social centres (like the EKH -in Vienna) and a handful of strong scenes in certain cities (like -Barcelona) managed to secure their existence into the first decade of -the 21^st^twenty first century. Recent years saw a series of crackdowns -on the last remaining popular squatting locations such as the -abolishment of laws protecting squatters in the Netherlands (Usher,, -2010) and discussion of the same in the UK (House of Commons,, 2010). - -Media activism developed along similar lines, building on a long -tradition of independent publishing. Adrian Jones (2009) argues for a -structural but also historical continuity in the pirate radio practices -of the 1960s and contemporary copyright conflicts epitomised by the -Pirate Bay. On the strictly activist front, one important early -contribution was Radio Alice (est., 1976) which emerged from the the -autonomist scene of Bologna (Berardi Mecchia, 2007). Pirate radio and -its reformist counterparts, community radio stations, flourished ever -since. Reclaiming the radio frequency was only the first step, however. -As Dee Dee Halleck explains, media activists soon made use of the -consumer electronic products such as camcorders that became available on -the market from the late 80s onwards. They organised production in -collectives such as Paper Tiger Television and distribution in -grassroots initiatives such as Deep Dish TV which focused on satellite -air time (Halleck, 1998). The next logical step was information and -communication technologies such as the personal computer — appearing on -the market at the same time. It was different from the camcorder in the -sense that it was a general purpose information processing tool. With -the combination of commercially available Internet access, it changed -the landscape of political advocacy and organising practices. At the -forefront of developing theory and practice around the new communication -technologies was the Critical Art Ensemble. It started with video works -in 1986, but then moved on to the use of other emerging technologies -(Critical Art Ensemble, 2000). Although they have published exclusively -Internet-based works like *Diseases of the Consciousness* (1997), their -*tactical media* approach emphasises the use of the right tool for the -right job. In 2002 they organised a workshop in New York’s Eyebeam, -which belongs to the wider hackerspace scene. New media activists played -an integral part in the emergence of the alterglobalisation movement, -establishing the Indymedia network. Indymedia is comprised of local -Independent Media Centres and a global infrastructure holding it -together (Morris 2004 gives a fair description). Focusing on open -publishing as an editorial principle, the initiative quickly united and -involved so many activists that it became one of the most recognised -brands of the alterglobalisation movement, only slowly falling into -irrelevance around the end of the decade. More or less in parallel with -this development, the telestreet movement was spearheaded by Franco -Berardi, also known as Bifo, who was also involved in Radio Alice, -mentioned above. OrfeoTv was started in 2002 and used modified -consumer-grade television receivers for pirate television broadcast (see -Telestreet, the Italian Media Jacking Movement, 2005). Although the -telestreet initiative happened on a much smaller scale than the other -developments outlined above, it is noteworthy because telestreet -operators reverse-engineered mass products in the same manner as -hardware hackers do. - -Taking a cue from Situationism with its principal idea of making -interventions in the communication flow as its point of departure, the -media activists sought to expand what they called “culture jamming†into -a popular practice by emphasising a folkloristic element (Critical Art -Ensemble, 2001). Similarly to the proletarian educational initiatives of -the classical workers’ movements (for example Burgmann 2005:8 on -Proletarian Schools), such an approach brought to the fore issues of -access, frequency regulations, popular education, editorial policies and -mass creativity, all of which pointed in the direction of lowering the -barriers of participation for cultural and technological production in -tandem with establishing a distributed communication infrastructure for -anticapitalist organising. Many media activists adhered to some version -of Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, taking the stand that cultural -and educational work is as important as directly challenging property -relations. Indeed, this work was seen as in continuation with -overturning those property relations in the area of media, culture and -technology. This tendency to stress the importance of information for -the mechanism of social change was further strengthened by claims -popularised by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri that immaterial and -linguistic labour are the hegemonic mode of production in the -contemporary configuration of capitalism (2002, 2004). At the extreme -end of this spectrum, some argued that decisive elements of politics -depend on a performance of representation, often technologically -mediated, placing media activism at the centre of the struggle against -state and capitalism. Irrespectivly of these ideological beliefs, -however, what distinguished the media practitioners in terms of identity -is that they did not see themselves simply as outsiders or service -providers, but as an integral part of a social movement. As Söderberg -demonstrates (2011), political convictions of a user community can be an -often overlooked enabler of technological creativity. - -These two intertwined tendencies came together in the creation of -hacklabs. Squats, on the one hand, closely embedded in the urban flows -of life, had to use communication infrastructures such as Internet -access and public access to terminals. Media activists, on the other -hand, who are more often than not also grounded in a a local community, -needed venues to convene, produce, teach and learn. As Marion Hamm -observes when discussing how physical and virtual spaces enmeshed due to -the activists’ use of electronic media communication: “This practice is -not a virtual reality as it was imagined in the eighties as a graphical -simulation of reality. It takes place at the keyboard just as much as in -the technicians’ workshops, on the streets and in the temporary media -centres, in tents, in socio-cultural centres and squatted houses.†-(Translated by Aileen Derieg,, 2003). One example of how these lines -converge is the Ultralab in Forte Prenestino, an occupied fortress in -Rome which is also renowned for its autonomous politics in Italy. The -Ultralab is declared to be an “emergent pattern†on its website -(AvANa.net, 2005), bringing together various technological needs of the -communities supported by the Forte. The users of the social centre have -a shared need for a local area computer network that connects the -various spaces in the squat, for hosting server computers with the -websites and mailing lists of the local groups, for installing and -maintaining public access terminals, for having office space for the -graphics and press teams, and finally for having a gathering space for -the sharing of knowledge. The point of departure for this development -was the server room of AvANa, which started as a bulletin board system -(BBS), that is, a dial-in message board in 1994 (Bazichelli 2008:80-81). -As video activist Agnese Trocchi remembers, - -“AvANa BBS was spreading the concept of Subversive Thelematic: right to -anonymity, access for all and digital democracy. AvANa BBs was -physically located in Forte Prenestino the older and bigger squatted -space in Rome. So at the end of the 1990’s I found myself working with -technology and the imaginative space that it was opening in the young -and angry minds of communities of squatters, activist and ravers.†-(quoted in Willemsen, 2006) - -AvANa and Forte Prenestino connected to the European Counter Network -(now at ecn.org), which linked several occupied social centres in Italy, -providing secure communication channels and resilient electronic public -presence to antifascist groups, the Disobbedienti movement, and other -groups affiliated with the autonomous and squatting scenes. Locating the -nodes inside squats had their own drawbacks, but also provided a certain -level of physical and political protection from the authorities. - -Another, more recent example is the short lived Hackney Crack House, a -hacklab located on 195 Mare Street in London. This squat situated in an -early Georgian house was comprised of a theatre building, a bar, two -stores of living spaces and a basement that housed a bicycle workshop -and a studio space (see Foti, 2010). The hacklab provided a local area -network and a media server for the house, and served as a tinkering -space for the technologically inclined. During events like the Free -School, participants, including both absolute beginners and more -dedicated hobbyists, could learn to use free and open source -technologies, network security and penetration testing. Everyday -activities ranged from fixing broken electronics through building -large-scale mixed media installations to playing computer games. - -The descriptions given above serve to indicate how hacklabs grew out of -the needs and aspirations of squatters and media activists. This history -comes with a number of consequences. Firstly, that the hacklabs fitted -organically into the anti-institutional ethos cultivated by people in -the autonomous spaces. Secondly, they were embedded in the political -regime of these spaces, and were subject to the same forms of frail -political sovereignty that such projects develop. Both Forte Prenestino -and Mare Street had written and unwritten conducts of behaviour which -users were expected to follow. The latter squat had an actively -advertised Safer Places Policy, stating for instance that people who -exhibit sexist, racist, or authoritive behaviour should expect to be -challenged and, if necessary, excluded. Thirdly, the politicised logic -of squatting, and more specifically the ideology behind appropriative -anarchism, had its consequences too. A social centre is designated to be -a public institution whose legitimacy rests on serving its audience and -neighbourhood, if possibly better than the local authorities do, by -which the risk of eviction is somewhat reduced . Lastly, the state of -occupation fosters a milieu of complicity. Consequently, certain forms -of illegality are seen as at least necessary, or sometimes even as -desirable. These factors are crucial for understanding the differences -between hacklabs and hackerspaces, to be discussed in Section 3. - -A rudimentary survey based on website registrations (see Figure 1. in -the appendix), desktop research and interviews shows that the first -hacklabs were established in the decade around the turn of the -millennium (1995-2005). Their concentration to South Europe has been -underlined by the organisation of yearly Hackmeetings in Italy, starting -in 1998. The Hackmeeting is a gathering where practitioners can exchange -knowledge, present their work, and enjoy the company of each other. In -North Europe plug’n’politix, hosted first by Egocity (a squatted -Internet cafe in Zurich, Switzerland) provided a meeting point for -like-minded projects in 2001. A network by the same name was established -and a second meeting followed in 2004 in Barcelona. In the meantime, -Hacklabs.org (defunct since, 2006) was set up in 2002 to maintain a list -of hacklabs, dead or alive, and provide news and basic information about -the movement. A review of the advertised activities of hacklabs show -workshops organised around topics like free software development, -security and anonymity, electronic art and media production. - -The activities of Print, a hacklab located in a squat in Dijon which is -called Les Tanneries, show the kinds of contributions that came out of -these places. People active in Print have maintained a computer lab with -free Internet access for visitors to the social centre, and a collection -of old hardware parts that individuals could use to build their own -computers. They have organised events of various sizes (from a couple of -people to a thousand) related to free software, like a party for fixing -the last bugs in the upcoming release of the Debian GNU/Linux operating -system. Furthermore, they have provided network support and distributed -computers with Internet access at a European gathering of Peoples’ -Global Action, a world-wide gathering of grassroots activists connected -to the alterglobalisation movement. In a similar vein, they have staged -various protests in the city calling attention to issues related to -state surveillance and copyright legislations. These actions have built -on a tradition of setting up artistic installations in various places in -and around the building, the most striking example being the huge -graffiti on the firewall spelling out “apt-get install anarchismâ€. It is -a practical joke on how programs are set up on Debian systems, so -practical that it actually works. - -Another example from South Europe is Riereta in Barcelona, a hacklab -occupying a separate building that hosts a radio studio ran by women. -The activities there gravitate around the three axes of free software, -technology, and artistic creativity. However, as a testimony of the -influence from media activism, most projects and events are concentrated -on media production, such as real time audio and video processing, -broadcasting and campaigning against copyright and other restrictions to -free distribution of information. The list of examples could easily be -made longer, demonstrating that most hacklabs share similar ideas and -practicesand maintains links with alterglobalisation politics, occupied -spaces and (new) media activism. - -To summarise, due to their historical situatedness in anticapitalist -movements and the barriers of access to the contemporary communication -infrastructure, hacklabs tended to focus on the adoption of computer -networks and media technologies for political uses, spreading access to -dispossesed and championing folk creativity. - -3. Hackerspaces ---------------- - -It is probably safe to state that hackerspaces are at the height of -their popularity at the moment. As mentioned in the introduction, many -different institutions and initiatives are now calling themselves -“hackerspacesâ€. At least in Europe, there is a core of more or less -community-led projects that define themselves as hackerspaces. The case -of hacklabs have already been described, but it is merely one example -from the extreme end of the political spectrum. There are a number of -more variations populating the world, such as fablabs, makerlabs, -telecottages, medialabs, innovation labs and co-working spaces. What -distinguishes the last two from the others (and possibly also from -fablabs) is that they are set up in the context of an institution, be -that a university, a company or a foundation. More often than not , -their mission is to foster innovation. Such spaces tend to focus on -concrete results like research projects or commercial products. -Telecottages and telehouses occupy the middle of the range- They are -typically seeded from development funds to improve local social and -economic conditions through ICTs. Even makerlabs are sometimes -commercial ventures (like Fablab in Budapest, not to be confused with -the Hungarian Autonomous Centre for Knowledge mentioned above), based on -the idea of providing access to tools for companies and individuals as a -service. Fablabs may be the next generation of the hackerspace -evolution, focusing on manufacturing of custom built objects. It is -framed as a re-imagining of the factory with inspiration from the peer -production model (MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, 2007). What sets -hackerspaces apart — along with most fablabs — is that they are set up -by hackers for hackers with the principal mission of supporting hacking. - -This is therefore the right point in the paper to dwelve on the social -and historical phenomena of hacking. This is not to say that hacklabs — -as is indicated by their name — would be less involved in and inspired -by the hacker tradition. A separate study could be devoted to these two -movements’ embeddedness in the free software movement. However, since -both movements are contributing to an equal extent but in different -ways, this aspect will not be elaborated here at length as the contrast -would be more difficult to tease out. It is hence assumed that much of -what is said here about hacker culture and its influence on the -hackerspace movement applies equally to hacklabs. - -The beginnings of the hacker subculture are well-documented. -Interestingly, it also starts in the 1960s and spreads out in the 1970s, -much like the history of the autonomous movement. Indeed, in a sense it -can be considered as one of the youth subcultures which Wallerstein -attributes to the “cultural shock†of 1968 (2004). In order not to be -lost in the mythology, the story will be kept brief and schematic. One -hotbed seems to have been the university culture epitomised by the MIT -Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and cultivated in half a dozen other -research institutes around the USA. Another one was the phreaker scene -that found its expression in the Yippie spinoff magazine TAP. While the -former were working on engineering breakthroughs such as early computers -and operating systems, as well as on networks precursoring the Internet, -the latter were doing the opposite: reverse-engineering information and -communication technologies, which mainly meant telephone networks at the -time. In 1984 ATT was broken into smaller companies — the Baby Bells, -but not before important parts of the network had been shut down by -phreakers (Slatalla Quittner 1995, Sterling, 1992). The same year saw -the last issue of TAP and the first issue of the still active 2600 -magazine. The university culture was preserved in the *Jargon File* in -1975 which is still maintained (Steele Raymond, 1996). It was the -inventor of cyberpunk, William Gibson, popularised the term cyberspace -in his novel Neuromancer. He thus inspired the cyberpunk subculture -which gave a complete — if not “real†— Weltanschauung to hacker -culture. The idea of a dark future where freedom is found on the fringes -and corporations rule the world spoke to both the university hackers and -the phreakers. The stars of the phreaking underground had been -persecuted by law authorities for their pranks on the communication -giants, while Richard Stallman — “the last of the [first generation of] -true hackers†(Levy [1984], 2001) — invented free software in 1983 and -set out to fight the increasing privatisation of knowledge by -corporations, as could then be seen in the expansion of copyright claims -to software, the spread of non-disclosure agreements, and the -mushrooming of start-up companies. - -The history of the hacker movement in Europe has been less well -documented. An important instance is the Chaos Computer Club which was -founded in 1981 by Wau Holland and others sitting in the editorial room -of the taz paper in the building of Kommune I., a famous autonomous -squat (Anon, 2008:85). The Chaos Computer Club entered into the -limelight in 1984. Hackers belonging to the club had wired themselves -134,000 Deutsche Marks through the national videotex system, called -Bildschirmtext or BTX. The Post Office had practical monopoly on the -market with this obsolete product, and claimed to maintain a secure -network even after it had been notified about the exploit. The money was -returned the next day in front of the press. This began the Club’s -tumultuous relationship with the German government that lasts until -today. - -In their study of the hacker culture, Gabriella Coleman and Alex Golub -have argued that as far as it hangs together, this subculture manifests -an innovative yet historically determined version of liberalism, while -in its manifold trends it expresses and exploits some of the -contradictions inherent to the same political tradition (2008). They -concentrate on three currents of hacker practice: cryptofreedom, free -and open source software, and the hacker underground. However, they do -not claim that these categories would exhaust the richness of hacker -culture. On the contrary, in a review article in the Atlantic, Coleman -(2010) explicitly mentions that the information security scene has been -underrepresented in the literature about hackers. The three tendencies -identified in their text differ slightly from the classification I am -suggesting here. Stallman’s legal invention and technical project -cemented free software as one pillar of hackerdom for the coming -decades. The exploits of the phreakers opened a way for the hacker -underground where its initial playfulness developed in two directions, -towards profit or politics. - -In Europe, the stance of the Chaos Computer Club paved the way for -independent information security research. Admittedly, all of those -approaches concentrated on a specific interpretation of individual -freedom, one which understands freedom as a question of knowledge. -Moreover, this knowledge is understood to be produced and circulated in -a network of humans and computers — in direct contrast to the version of -liberalism associated with romantic individualism, as Coleman and Golub -observes. Therefore, this is a technologically informed antihumanist -liberalism. Hackers carve out different positions within these -parameters that sometimes complement and sometimes contradict each -other. The free software community sees the universal access to -knowledge as the essential condition of freedom. The hacker underground -wields knowledge to ensure the freedom of an individual or a faction. -“Gray hat†information security experts see full disclosure as the best -way to ensure the stability of the infrastructure, and thus the freedom -of communication. Full disclosure refers to the practice of releasing -information and tools revealing security flaws to the public. This idea -goes back to the tradition of 19th century locksmiths, who maintained -that the best locks are built on widely understood principles instead of -secrets: the only secret, to be kept private, should be the key itself -(Hobbs, Tomlinson Fenby [1853] 1868:2 cited in Blaze 2003 as well as -Cheswick, Bellovin Rubin 2003:120). The idea that freedom depends on -knowledge and, in turn, knowledge depends on freedom, is articulated in -the hackers aphorism attributed to Stewart Brand: “Information wants to -be free.†(Clarke, 2001). - -During the course of the 1990s the hacker world saw the setting up of -institutions that have been in place up until now. From all three -sub-traditions mentioned above have grown distinct industries, catering -to fully employed professionals, precarious workers, and enthusiasts -alike. The Electronic Frontier Foundation was established in 1990 in the -United States to defend and promote hacker values through legal support, -policy work and specific educational and research projects. It occupies -a position very different but comparable to the Chaos Computer Club in -Europe. Early EFF discourse like John Perry Barlow’s *A Declaration of -the Independence of Cyberspace* invokes the Western movie narrative of -an indigenous territory prone to be occupied by the civilising East. It -is littered withreferences to the Founding Fathers and the U.S. -Constitution (1996). Conferences, gatherings and camps addressing the -three tendencies above became extremely popular, similarly to how the -film industry increasingly relied on festivals. The Chaos Communication -Congress has run from 1984 and is now the most prominent event in -Europe, while in the USA H.O.P.E. was organised in 1994 by the people -around the 2600 magazine, and is still going strong. Hacker camping was -initiated by a series of events in Netherlands running since 1989. These -experiences solidified and popularised the hacker movement and the -desire for permanent hacker spaces was part of this development. - -As Nick Farr (2009) has pointed out, the first wave of pioneering -hackerspaces were founded in the 1990s, just as were hacklabs. L0pht -stated in 1992 in the Boston area as a membership based club that -offered shared physical and virtual infrastructure to select people. -Some other places were started in those years in the USA based on this -“covert†model. In Europe, C-base in Berlin started with a more public -profile in 1995, promoting free access to the Internet and serving as a -venue for various community groups. These second wave spaces “proved -that hackers could be perfectly open about their work, organise -officially, gain recognition from the government and respect from the -public by living and applying the Hacker ethic in their efforts†(Farr, -2009). However, it is with the current, third wave that the number of -hackerspaces begun to grow exponentially and it developed into a global -movement of sorts. I argue that the term hackerspaces was not widely -used before this point and the small number of hackerspaces that existed -were less consistent and did not yet develop the characteristics of a -movement. Notably, this is in constrast with narrative of the hacklabs -presented earlier which appeared as a more consistent political -movement. - -Several accounts (for example Anon, 2008) highlight a series of talks in -2007 and 2008 that inspired, and continue to inspire, the foundation of -new hackerspaces. Judging from registered hackerspaces, however, the -proliferation seems to have started earlier. In 2007 Farr organised a -project called Hackers on a Plane, which brought hackers from the USA to -the Chaos Communication Congress, and included a tour of hackerspaces in -the area. Ohlig and Weiler from the C4 hackerspace in Cologne gave a -ground-braking talk on the conference entitled *Building a Hackerspace* -(2007). The presentation defined the hackerspace design patterns, which -are written in the form of a catechism and provide solutions to common -problems that arise during the organisation of the hackerspace. More -importantly, it has canonised the concept of hackerspaces and put the -idea of setting up new ones all over the world on the agenda of the -hacker movement. When the USA delegation returned home, they presented -their experiences under the programmatic title *Building Hacker Spaces -Everywhere: Your Excuses are Invalid*. They argued that “four people can -start a sustainable hacker spaceâ€, and showed how to do it (Farr et al, -2008). The same year saw the launch of hackerspaces.org, in Europe with -*Building an international movement: hackerspaces.org* (Pettis et al, -2008), and also in August at the North American HOPE (Anon, 2008). While -the domain is registered since 2006, the Internet Archive saw the first -website there in 2008 listing 72 hackerspaces. Since then the -communication platforms provided by the portal became a vital element in -the hackerspaces movement, sporting the slogan “build! unite! multiply!†-(hackerspaces.org, 2011). A survey of the founding date of the 500 -registered hackerspaces show a growing trend from 2008 (see Figure 2). - -Notably, most of these developments focused on the formal -characteristics of hackerspaces, for instance how to manage problems and -grow a community. They emphasised an open membership model for -maintaining a common workspace that functions as a cooperative -socialising, learning and production environment. However, the content -of the activities going on in hackerspaces also shows great consistency. -The technologies used can be described as layers of sedimentation: newer -technologies take their place alongside older ones without it becoming -entirely obsolete. First of all, the fact that hackers collaborate in a -physical space meant a resurgence of work on electronics, which -conjoined with the established trend of tinkering with physical -computers. A rough outline of connected research areas could be (in -order of appearance): free software development, computer recycling, -wireless mesh networking, microelectronics, open hardware, 3D printing, -machine workshops and cooking. - -From this rudimentary time line, it is evident that activities in -hackerspaces have gravitated towards the physical. The individual -trajectories of all these technology areas could be unfolded, but here -the focus will be on microelectronics. This choice of focus is merited -because microelectronics played a key role in kickstarting hackerspaces, -as evidenced by the popularity of basic electronic classes and -programmable microcontroller workshops in the programme of young -hackerspaces. Physical computing was layed out by Igoe and O’Sullivan in -*Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with -Computers* (2004), and had a great impact on the whole computing scene. -This new framework of human-machine interaction stressed the way people -behave in everyday situations using their whole body, and opened the way -for exploratory research through the construction of intelligent -appliances. The next year O’Reilly Media started to publish Make -Magazine which focuses on do-it-yourself technology, including -tutorials, recipes, and commentary. Among the authors one find many of -the celebrities of the hacker subculture. “The first magazine devoted to -digital projects, hardware hacks, and DIY inspiration. Kite aerial -photography, video cam stabiliser, magnetic stripe card reader, and much -more.†(Make Magazine, 2011) In Europe, Massimo Banzi and others started -to work on the invention of Arduino, a programmable microcontroller -board with an easy-to-use software interface. This amateur-friendly -microcontroller system became the staple of hackerspaces and artists’ -workshops and initiated a whole new generation into rapid prototyping -and electronics work. To put it together, physical computing provided a -theoretical area to be explored, and the Arduino became its killer -application, while Make magazine and similar media facilitated the -spread of research results. It is open to speculation how this trend -fits into the bigger picture of what seems to be a shift in -sensibilities in society at large. If the 1990s was marked by a -preoccupation with discourses and languages, preeminence is now given to -materialities and embodiedness. - -The Hungarian Autonomous Center for Knowledge in Budapest is a fairly -typical third wave hackerspace. It was founded in 2009 after a -presentation at the local new tech meetup, itself inspired by the -hackerspaces presentation in Berlin (Stef, 2009). The location is -comprised of a workspace, kitchen, chill-out room and terrace in an -inner city cultural centre which hosts ateliers for artists along with a -pub and some shops. The rent is covered by membership fees and donations -from individuals, companies and other organisations. Members are -entitled to a key, while visitors can look up when the space is open -thanks to a real time signal system called Hacksense. It displays the -status of the lab on the website, the twitter account and a database. -Thus, visitors are welcome any time, and especially at the announced -events that happen a few times every month. These include meetings and -community events, as well as practical workshops, presentations and -courses. In line with the hackerspaces design patterns, orientating -discussions happen weekly on Tuesdays, where decisions are made based on -a rough consensus. Hackathons are special events where several people -work on announced topics for six hours or a whole day. These events are -sometimes synchronised internationally with other hackspaces. However, -most of the activity happens on a more ad-hoc basis, depending on the -schedule and the whim of the participants. For this reason, the online -chat channel and the wiki website are heavily used for coordination, -documentation and socialisation. Projects usually belong to one or more -individual, but some projects are endorsed by almost everybody. - -Among the projects housed at Hungarian Autonomous Center for Knowledge, -some arepure software projects. A case in point isf33dme, a -browser-based feed reader. f33dme is a popular project in the -hackerspace and as more people adopt it for their needs, it gets more -robust and more features are added over time. Although this is nothing -new compared to the free software development model found elsewhere, the -fact that there is an embodied user community has contributed to its -success. There are also ‘hardware hacks’ like the SIDBox, which is built -from the music chip from an old Commodore C64 computer, adding USB input -and a mini-jack output. This enables the user to play music from a -contemporary computer using the chip as an external sound card. An ever -expanding ‘hardware corner’ with electronic parts, soldering iron and -multimeters facilitates this kind of work. There is also a 3D printer -and tools for physical work. The members are precarious ICT workers, -researchers at computer security companies, and/or students in related -fields. It is a significant aspect of the viability of the hackerspace -that quite a few core members work flexible hours or work only -occasionally, so at least during some periods they have time to dedicate -to the hackerspace. Some of the activities have a direct political -character, mostly concentrating on issues such as open data, -transparency and privacy. Noteworthy are the collaboration with groups -who campaign for information rights issues in the European Parliament -and in European countries, or helping journalists to harvest datasets -from publicly available databases. The hackerspace sends delegations -which represents it atevents in the global hackerspace movement, such as -the aforementioned Congress and the Chaos Communication Camp, and -smaller ones such as the Stadtflucht sojourn organised by Metalab, a -hackerspace in Vienna (Metalab, 2011). - -To conclude, the emergence of hackerspaces is in line with a larger -trajectory in the hacker movement, which gradually has gained more -institutional structures. The turn towards the physical (mainly through -utilising micro-controlers) marked the point when hackerspaces became -widespread, since development and collaboration on such projects is -greatly facilitated by having a shared space. While most discourse and -innovation in the community was focused on the organisational form -rather than the political content of hackerspaces, such less defined and -more liberal-leaning political content allowed the movement to spread -and forge connections in multiple directions without loosing its own -thrust: from companies through civil society to a general audience. - -![](http://peerproduction.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/figure3maxigas2.jpg) - -Figure 3. The two previous figures superimposed for the sake of -clarification. - -4. Hacklabs and Hackerspaces ----------------------------- - -Having outlined the parallel genealogies of hacklabs and hackerspaces, -it is now possible to contrast these ideal types with each other and -make some comparative observations. For the sake of brevity, only a few -points will be highlighted in this section. Hopefully, these will -further clarify the differences between labs and spaces and provide some -useful critierias for further research. - -An interesting occasion presented itself in 2010 for making a direct -comparison between the Hackney Crack House hacklab and the Hungarian -Autonomous Center for Knowledge hackerspace. I then had first hand -experience of the distinct ways in which the hacklab and the hackerspace -developed and presented one and the same artifact. The artifact in -question is called “Burnstationâ€. Even a brief sketch of the different -directions in which Burnstation was developed can serve to illuminate -some key points deriving from the conceptual and historical genealogies -put forth above. The Burnstation is a physical “kiosk†that enables the -user to browse, listen, select, burn to CD or copy to USB audio files -from a music database (Rama Cosentino platoniq, 2003). The original -Burnstation was invented in the riereta in Barcelona, which started as a -hacklab with a media focus in 2001 and became institutionalised in 2005, -when it received funding from the local authorities — which means it is -more of a hackerspace nowadays. Underlying this transformation, it is -also registered on hackerspaces.org. The many variations of Burnstation -have been displayed publicly in various exhibition contexts as well as -being widely used in hacklabs and hackerspaces. Snapshots of what the -original Burnstation and its two derivatives looked like at some point -in its ongoing development process can be seen in Figure 4 (Rama et al), -Figure 5 (HCH) and Figure 6 (H.A.C.K.). - -The most striking difference between the two recent reimplementations of -Burnstation is that in the version built by the hacklab people, the -original concept was altered so that the music collection includes -exclusively Creative Commons licensed material that can be freely -distributed to an anything-goes library, including many files which are -illegal to copy. The message was therefore changed radically from the -consumption and celebration of the fruits of a new kind of production -regime to one that emphasised piracy and transgression. The public -display of the installation was a statement against the Digital Economy -Act that just came into force in the United Kingdom. The act -criminalised file sharing and threatened to suspend Internet access in -cases where intellectual property rights were violated (Parliament of -the United Kingdom, 2010). Thus the installation was promoting illegal -activity in direct opposition to the existing state policies — which was -not as controversial as it sounds since the venues and exhibitions where -it was on show were themselves on a frail legal footing. In contrast, -the Burnstation developed by the hackerspace appeared in an exhibition -on the 300th birthday of copyright in a prestigious institution, -showcasing the alternative practices and legislative frameworks to the -traditional view of intellectual property rights. - -Another aspect of the difference between the two installations was -apparent in the solutions for user interaction. The hackerspace version -was based on an updated version of the original software and hardware: a -user-friendly web interface running behind a touch screen. The hacklab -version, on the other hand, reimplemented the software in a text-only -environment and had a painted keyboard, providing a more arcane -navigation experience. Moreover, the exhibited installation was placed -in a pirate-themed environment where the computer could only be -approached through a paddling pool. The two different approaches -correspond to the two broad trends in interface design: while one aims -at a transparent and smooth experience, the other sets up barriers to -emphasise the interface in a playful way. To conclude, the hackerspace -members created an alternative experience that fitted in more smoothly -into the hegemonic worldview of intellectual property and -user-friendliness, while the hacklab crew challenged the same hegemonic -notions, foregrounding freedom and desire. At the same time, it is plain -to see that many factors tie the two projects together. Both groups -carried out a collective project open for collaboration and built on -existing results of similar initiatives, using low-tech and recycled -components creatively. Ultimately, both projects marked a departure from -preconfigured and consumerist relations with technology. In different -ways, their interventions sought to put in question existing copyright -law. - -![](http://peerproduction.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/image1maxigas1.jpg) - -Figure 4. Burnstation (Rama Cosentino platoniq). Emerging Art Festival, -2011, Buenos Aires. Photo by Dianeth Medina. - -Generally speaking, technological choices made in the two types of -spaces described above seem to be conditioned by two factors: the -historical lineage and the political-cultural surrounding. Since the -hacklabs bloomed at a time when Internet access and even computers were -a scarce resource and desktop computing with free software was not -trivial, their contribution in the area of access and network -technologies was crucial. Moreover, their contribution to technological -development and political messages — for example in the case of the -Indymedia network — fitted into the pattern of the alterglobalisation -movement, while sharing some of the same defaults. Similarly, a few -years later, hackerspaces pushed the limits of currently available -technology by embracing and advancing microcontrollers and 3D printers. -At the time of writing, they are the only spaces where a general public -can freely access and learn about such devices, although it is not clear -whether these will become as ubiquitous in daily life as computers and -networks. The important difference is that the hackerspaces are not -embedded and consciously committed to an overtly political project or -idea. Of course this does not prevent political projects from being -undertaken in hackerspacesIn the best of cases, the absence of an openly -declared ideology will potentially lead to a wider diffusion of the -project. In the worst case, however, the lack of a political -conscioussness leads to the reproduction of dominant power structures -orientated towards white middle class tech-savvy males, a claim to be -investigated below. - -A more abstract issue to address in order to highlight the structural -differences between hacklabs and hackerspaces is their policy and -practices towards inclusion and exclusion. On the one hand, the -autonomous or anarchist orientation of hacklabscontrasts sharply with -the liberal or libertarian orientation of most hackerspaces. On the -other hand, since hacklabs are more integral to a wider political -movement, non-technological aspects play a bigger role in how they are -run. A concrete example is that while sexism and similarly -offensivebehaviours are mostly seen as legitimate reasons for excluding -an individual from hacklabs, in hackerspaces such issues are either -highly controversial and discussed at length to no avail (as in Metalab) -or simply a non-topic (as in H.A.C.K.). Still, a lecture and discussion -at the latest Chaos Communication Camp found that although hacker -culture is still overwhelmingly male-oriented, it has become more and -more welcoming to women and sexual minorities in the last decade -(Braybrooke, 2011). - -The different priorities of hacklabs and hackerspaces can be -demonstrated with their diverging policies on wheelchair accessibility. -While the hacklab in London described above was not wheelchair -accessible, a ramp has been built for the house itself to be so. -Discussions about open training sessions included the issue, and a -temporary computer room was planned on the ground floor. In a similar -vein, the hackerspace called Metalab in Vienna was made wheelchair -accessible, and even a wheelchair toilet was installed that a regular -visitor was using. However, with time it was decided that the darkroom -would take the place of the wheelchair toilet, practically excluding the -person from the space. A similar change occurred with the shower, which -was taken over by the expansion of the machine workshop (Anon, 2011). -This affected a more or less homeless person who most often came to the -hackerspace to play chess. These decisions show the reversal of an -exceptionally inclusive social and spatial arrangement because of a -prioritised focus on technology, coupled with the primacy assigned to -collective interests over minority needs. Hacklabs, especially if they -reside in occupied spaces, are less inclined to make such decisions, -partly because of the ethos of the public space that often comes with -occupations, and especially in social centres. However, it has to be -notes that while accessibility and non-discriminations are legitimate -grounds for debate in hacklabs but not necessarily in hackerspaces, as -the above example shows even hacklabs have made little practical -progress on the issue. - -![](http://peerproduction.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/image2maxigas1.jpg) - -Figure 5. Piratepond installation from Hackney Crack House at the -Temporary Autonomous Art exhibition in London, 2011, including a -Burnstation. Photo in the public domain. - -Finally I would like to make apoint about the political impact of these -diverging constellations, and ask to what extent and in which ways they -contribute to and support postcapitalist practices, movements and -subjectivities. The hacklabs gave a technological advantage to -grassroots political movements, pioneering access to information and -communication technologies and innovative solutions in an era where -access was not available to most people as a consumer service. On the -downside, those initiatives often got stuck in what has could be called -a “activist ghetto†or an “undergroundâ€, which meant that even the -Burnstation project described above was only available to a limited -social group. Through a process that Granzfurthner and Schneider -describe as the capitalist co-optation of the fertile resistance -inherent in such scenes ([2009]), the hackerspaces managed to go beyond -these historical limits and forged important connections. The latter -continue to have a lasting impact through the technological artifacts — -both abstract and physical — that they create, as well as the innovation -and most importantly the education that they practice. The case of 3D -printers, which according to Jakob Rigi can revolutionise production -processes and create the conditions for a society based on craftsmanship -rather than factories, is but one case in point ([2011]). Moreover, -thanks to their more open dynamics, hackerspaces can foster -collaboration between a wide range of social actors. For the hacker -culture that has managed to catapult itself to the front pages of -international newspapers in the last few years, it is of immense -significance to have acquired a global network of real workshop spaces -that provide an infrastructure. In the current global political -atmosphere dominated by an array of crises, this scene shows vitality -and direction. However, as the superuser command says, “With great power -comes great responsibilityâ€. - -The appreciation of history is not about passing judgement on the old -and the dead, but it is there to inspire present efforts. As Théorie -Communiste argues, each cycle of struggle brings something new based on -what happened before, thereby expanding the historical limits of the -struggle (Endnotes, 2008). Perhaps the political potential of -hackerspaces lies precisely in the fact that they have not become a -social movement and therefore not limited by the conventions of social -movements. They stand at the intersection of the dystopian “geeky -workshop paradises†(Granzfurthner and Schneider [2009]) and the utopian -reality of genuinely contestant spaces that have wide impact. If more -hackers can combine the technological productivity of the “hands-on -imperative†(Levy [1968], 2001) and the wide possibilities of -transversal cross-pollination of hackerspaces with the social critique -of the hacklabs, there is a world to win. - -![](http://peerproduction.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/image3maxigas1.jpg) - -Figure 6. Burnstation from Hungarian Autonomous Center for Knowledge, -exhibited at KOPIRÃJT, OSA Archivum, 2010. Photo by eapo. License: CC -BY-NC. - -Cited works ------------ - -Agamben, G. (1998) *Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life*. -Standford, CA: Stanford University Press. - -Anon. (2008) *Hackerspaces: The Beginning*. [e-book] -http://blog.hackerspaces.org/2011/08/31/hackerspaces-the-beginning-the-book/ -[last checked 05/7 2011] - -. (2011) Interview on politics of hackerspaces. Vienna. - -AvANa.net. (2005) *Cronaca della nascita di un medialab al -forteprenestino*. http://avana.forteprenestino.net/index.htm [last -checked 5/7 2011] - -Barlow, J.P. (1996) *A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace*. -https://projects.eff.org/\~barlow/Declaration-Final.html [last checked -10/14 2011] - -Bazichelli, T. (2008) *Networking — The Net as Artwork*. Aarhus: Digital -Aesthetics Research Center. - -Berardi, F. (Bifo) Mecchia, G. (2007) ‘Technology and Knowledge in a -Universe of Indetermination’. *SubStance* 36(1): 56-74. - -Bey, H. (1995,, 2003) *Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs and European -Renegadoes*. New York: Autonomedia. - -Blaze, M. (2003) ‘*Is it harmful to discuss security vulnerabilities?’* -http://www.crypto.com/hobbs.html [last checked 10/14 2011] - -Braybrooke, K. (2011) ‘She-Hackers: Millennials and Gender in European -F/LOSS Subcultures — A Presentation of Research and Invitation for -Debate’, talk at the 4th Chaos Communication Camp, Finowfurt airport, -8/10-14. - -Burgmann, V. (2005) ‘From Syndicalism to Seattle: Class and the Politics -of Identity’. *International Labor and Working-Class History* -67(Spring,, 2005): 1-21. - -Cheswick, W. R., Bellovin, S.M. and Rubin, A.D. (2003) *Firewalls and -Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker*. Boston, MA: -Addison-Wesley (Pearson Education). - -Clarke, R. (2001) ‘*Information Wants to be Free …’*. -http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/IWtbF.html [last checked 10/14 2011] - -Coleman, G. and Golub, A. (2008) ‘Hacker Practice: Moral Genres and The -Cultural Articulation of Liberalism’. *Anthropological Theory* September -8(3): 255-277. - -​(2010) ‘The Anthropology of Hackers’, *The Atlantic*, -http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/the-anthropology-of-hackers/63308/ -[last checked 10/14 2011] - -Cosentino, R. platoniq. (2005). *Burnstation — Free Audio Culture*. -http://burnstation.net/indexnew.html [last checked 5/7 2011] - -Critical Art Ensemble. (2000) Critical Art Ensemble Timeline. *TDR*44(4, -Winter): 132-135. - -(2002). *Digital Resistance: Exploration in Tactical Media*, Autonomedia -and Critical Art Ensemble: New York. - -Debord, G. ([1967], 1977) *Society of the Spectacle*. s.l.: Black Red. - -Endnotes, eds. (2008) *Endnotes 1: Preliminary Materials for a Balance -Sheet of the 20th Century*. London: Endnotes. - -Farr, N. et al. (2008) ‘Building Hacker Spaces Everywhere: Your Excuses -are Invalid’, talk at The Last HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth), Hotel -Pennsylvania, 7/18-20. - -Farr, N. (2009) ‘Respect the Past, Examine the Present, Build the -Future’. *Hackerspaces Flux**.* -http://blog.hackerspaces.org/2009/08/25/respect-the-past-examine-the-present-build-the-future/ -[last checked 10/14 2011] - -Foti, M. (2010) ‘*The New Lansdowne Club History of the building and 3D -reconstructions: The New Lansdowne Club in 2010′*. -http://www.newlansdowneclub3d.org.uk/ex4.html [last checked 10/13 2011] - -Grenzfurthner, J. and Schneider, F. A. (of monochrom). [2009] ‘*Hacking -the Spaces’*. http://www.monochrom.at/hacking-the-spaces/ [last checked -10/24 2011] - -hackerspaces.org. (2011) ‘*Hackerspaces | flux | About us’*. -http://blog.hackerspaces.org/about/ [last checked Oct 20 2011] - -Hamm, M. (2003) ‘A r/c tivism in Physical and Virtual Spaces’. -*Republicart* 9. -http://www.republicart.net/disc/realpublicspaces/hamm02\_en.htm [last -checked 10/13 2011] - -Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2002) *Empire*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard -University Press. - -​(2004) *Multitude*. New York: Penguin. - -Harvey, D. (2005,, 2007). *A Brief History of Neoliberalism.* Oxford, -New York: OUP. - -Hinton, J. (1988). ‘Self-Help and Socialism the Squatters’ Movement of -1946′. *History Workshop* 25(Spring): 100-126. - -Hobbs, A.C., Tomlinson, C. Fenby, J.B. [1853] (1868). *Locks and Safes: -The Construction of Locks*. London: Virtue Co. - -House of Commons. (2010). ‘Early day motion 1545: Squatting’. *Website -of the Houses of Parliament of the United Kingdom*,. -http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-12/1545 [last checked 3/82010]. - -Igoe, T. O’Sullivan, D. (2004) *Physical Computing: Sensing and -Controlling the Physical World with Computers*. Boston, MA: Premier -Press. - -Immanuel, W. (2004) *World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction*. Durham -and London: Duke University Press. - -Johns, A. (2009) ‘Piracy as a Business Force’. *Culture Machine* 10. -http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/issue/view/21 [last checked -5/7 2012] - -Levy, S. [1968] (2001). *Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution*, -New York: Penguin. - -Lotringer, S. and Marazzi, C., eds. (2007). *Autonomia: Post-Political -Politics*. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). - -Make Magazine (2011) *DIY Projects, Inspiration, How-tos, Hacks, Mods -More @ Makezine.com – Tweak Technology to Your Will*. -http://makezine.com/volumes/index.csp [last checked Oct 14 2011] - -Metalab (2011) ‘*Stadtflucht’*. https://metalab.at/wiki/Stadtflucht -[last checked 10/20 2011] - -MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. (2007) ‘*The Fab Charter’.* -http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/charter/ [last checked 3/20 2012]. - -Morris, D. (2004) ‘Globalisation and Media Democracy: The Case of -Indymedia’. In Schuler, D. Day, P. (eds) *Shaping the Network Society: -The New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace.* Massachusetts, MA: MIT -Press. - -Ohlig, J. and Weiler, L. (2007) ‘Building a Hackerspace’, talk at 24C3, -the 24th Chaos Communication Congress, Berliner Congress Center, -12/27-30. - -Pettis, B. et al. (2008) ‘Building an international movement: -hackerspaces.org’, talk at 25C3, the 25th Chaos Communication Congress, -Berliner Congress Center, 12/27-30. - -Parliament of the United Kingdom. (2010) *Digital Economy Act*. [act of -parliament] -http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/24/pdfs/ukpga\_20100024\_en.pdf -[last checked Oct 20 2011] - -Proudhon, P-J. (2007) [1840]. ‘Chapter I: Method Pursued In This Work — -The Idea of a Revolution’. In *What is Property?* Wikimedia Foundation. -http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/What\_is\_Property%3F/1 [last checked 5/7 -2011] - -Rigi, J. [2011] (unpublished). Peer to Peer Production and Advanced -Communism: The Alternative to Capitalism. - -Slatalla, M. and Quittner, J. (1995) *Masters of Deception: The Gang -that Rules Cyberspace*. New York: HarperCollins. - -Söderberg, J. (2011) ‘Free Space Optics in the Czech Wireless Community: -Shedding Some Light on the Role of Normativity for User-Initiated -Innovations ‘*. Science Technology Human Values*September 36: 423. - -Steele, G.L. Raymond, E.S. eds. (1996) *The New Hacker’s Dictionary* -(3rd ed.). Cambridge, MA, London: MIT Press. - -Stef. (2009) ‘WTF: hackerspace’, talk at New Tech Meetup, Dürer Kert, 06 -2009. - -Sterling, Bruce (1992) *The Hacker Crackdown*. New York: Bantam. - -Taylor, Charles (1989) *Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern -Identity*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. - -*Telestreet: The Italian Media Jacking Movement* (2005) Directed by And. -http://www.archive.org/details/telestreet2 [last checked 08 March 2011] - -Usher, S. (2010) ‘Amsterdam protest at new squatting laws’. *BBC News -Europe*, 10/2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11458225 [last -checked 3/8 2011] - -Willemsen, M. (2006) ‘Telestreet: Squatting Frequencies — Merel -Willemsen in conversation with Agnese Trocchi, co-founder of Candida -TV’. *Untitled Magazine* 37(Spring). -http://www.cascoprojects.org/?programme=allentryid=89 [last checked 5/7 -2011] - -Wright, S. (2002). *Storming Heaven: Class composition and struggle in -Italian Autonomist Marxism*. London: Pluto Press. - -Yuill, S. (2008) All Problems of Notation Will be Solved by the Masses, -*Mute — Politics and Culture after the -Net*http://www.metamute.org/en/All-Problems-of-Notation-Will-be-Solved-by-the-Masses -[last checked 5/7 2011] - -Wikipedia contributors (2010a) ‘*History: Hacklab’.* -http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacklabaction=history [last -checked Oct 10 2011] - -(2010b) ‘*Talk: Hacklab’.* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hacklab -[last checked 10/10 2011] - -(2011). ‘*History: Hackerspace’.* -http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacklabaction=history [last -checked 10/10 2011] - -- [About](http://peerproduction.net/about/) -- [Issues](http://peerproduction.net/issues/) -- [Peer Review](http://peerproduction.net/peer-review/) -- [News](http://peerproduction.net/news/) -- [Contact](http://peerproduction.net/contact/) - -Journal of Peer Production - ISSN: 2213-5316 \ - All the contents of this journal are in the **public domain**. diff --git a/_queue/jopp_ten-patterns-developed-by-the-oekonux-project.md b/_queue/jopp_ten-patterns-developed-by-the-oekonux-project.md deleted file mode 100644 index 059c9d49a233fa4b330d22537965ab5ff1f1c23e..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/_queue/jopp_ten-patterns-developed-by-the-oekonux-project.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,646 +0,0 @@ -http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-1/debate-societal-transformation/ten-patterns-developed-by-the-oekonux-project/ - -· Ten patterns developed by the Oekonux project - -by Stefan Meretz. -================= - -Read also the responses by [Maurizio Teli](http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-1/debate-societal-transformation/a-practice-based-perspective/) and [Toni Prug](http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-1/debate-societal-transformation/a-note-on-evaluation-processes-for-social-phenomena-with-ambitious-claims/). -====================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================== - -**Summary\ -**\ - The Oekonux project seeks to establish a new basis for analyzing a new -historical phenomenon: the emergence of peer production, starting with -the creation of Free Software. If the initial hypotheses of Free -Software being the germ form of a new mode of production beyond -capitalism is valid, it would be necessary to develop new -epistemological patterns to be able to analyze it adequately. This -requires understanding and criticizing old analytical notions as -historical products of the outlived capitalist way of producing our -livelihood, including those which aim to be in opposition to capitalism. -In this paper I present ten patterns which have emerged from the debates -of the Oekonux Project. They demonstrate what it means to go beyond -traditional affirmative and traditional oppositional or “leftist†-patterns of analysis. Although taken from the debates in the Oekonux -Project, these have never yet been presented in such a condensed way. -Obviously not all patterns will be shared by all the participants of -these debates, because in the end these are my personal conclusions -drawn from over ten years of discussion. - -Introduction ------------- - -In this text I will try to give some introduction to the main ideas -which have been developed since the foundation of the Oekonux project in -1999. There is no fixed set of thoughts and personally I have my own -perspective on Oekonux ideas. - -Why is the Oekonux project so relevant for debates around commons-based -peer production? There are two reasons. First, Oekonux developed many of -the ideas many researchers are so familiar with many years before they -reached a wider audience. Oekonux was founded as a project of reflection -around Free Software, but from the beginning the question of -generalizing observations about Free Software to other realms of -immaterial as well as material goods was present. When Yochai Benkler -(2006) coined the term commons-based peer production it only condensed a -year-old debate into a catchy notion, but the insights itself were not -very new and sound very familiar to Oekonux participants. Consequently -the term has been adopted by the Oekonux project. - -Second, Oekonux participants have gone much further than others in -questioning the accepted way of thinking. New theses have been developed -which did not only reject traditional discourse patterns in computer -sciences, sociology, and economics, but also in emancipatory political -and theoretical approaches. Stefan Merten, the founder of Oekonux who -comes from an anarchist-marxist background, provocatively rejects -“leftist and other capitalist ideologies†(Merten 2011) for the analysis -of peer production. This sounds quite post-modern, but was meant -differently: All means of emancipation are going to be developed right -in front of our eyes, but we also have to grasp them theoretically. -Traditional leftist patterns are not able to do that, because they -adhere to the given mode of production for whose analysis they are made. - -This was an enormous provocation to many people, traditionalists on all -sides. And there have been many cultural and political clashes within -the project. But there also have been a core of people, who continuously -drove the Oekonux approach further. In the following I try to describe -some Oekonux patterns, which of course represent my interpretation of -the Oekonux debate. When I use the past when talking about Oekonux, it -is not because the project does no longer exists. It still exists, and -the Critical Studies in Peer Production journal is not the only spin-off -of the project, there have been many others, so that the focus -decentralizes to diverse projects inspired by Oekonux. - -In an interview with Joanne Richardson Stefan Merten (2001) described -Oekonux as a project to evaluate Free Software with respect to its -“potential for a different society beyond labor, money, exchangeâ€. Here, -he gives the keywords Oekonux thinking was built around. I will take and -extend them to illustrate why and how the main ideas contradict -traditional leftist thinking so much, especially when Oekonux started in -1999 (Merten 1999). - -Pattern 1: Beyond Exchange --------------------------- - -Free Software, or more generally, commons-based peer production is not -about exchange. Giving and taking are not coupled with each other. From -today’s perspective this might not be surprising, but at the beginning -of the Oekonux project it was. Still today traditional Leftist -approaches are based on the assumption that someone is only allowed to -get something, if s/he is willing and able to give something back, -because if everybody is only taking then society would perish. This -position could reference to a painful Socialist (and Christian) -tradition saying that the one who does not want to work, should not eat. -However, Free Software clearly showed that developers do not need to be -forced to do what they love to do (cf. pattern 5). - -One important approach which tried to grasp the new developments of Free -Software, although sticking with old thinking, was the “gift economy†-approach. However it is not coincidental that the correct term should be -“gift exchange economyâ€: The giver can expect to get something back, -because it is a moral duty in societies based on the exchange of gifts. -This kind of personal reciprocal duty does not exist in Free Software. -Even if a developer says that s/he wants to “give something backâ€, then -this giving is not a precondition to receive something. In general, -commons-based peer production is based on unconditional voluntary -contributions.\ - From a Leftist perspective, uncoupled giving and taking could only be -possible in a mythical land in a distant future called Communism – if at -all. But never today, because before communism is possible, an -unfriendly interphase called Socialism sticking with the exchange dogma -is necessary (cf. pattern 8). Historically, “real existing Socialism†-trying to implement this necessity failed, which will happen with all -Socialist approaches accepting the exchange dogma. - -*If one does not want to give up exchange, then capitalism is the only -option.\ -* - -Pattern 2: Beyond Scarcity --------------------------- - -It is a common misconception that material things are scarce while -immaterial things are not. It seems justified to keep material goods as -commodities while immaterial goods are required to be free. However, -this assumption turns a social property into a natural one. No produced -good is scarce by nature. Scarcity is a result of goods being produced -as commodities, thus scarcity is a social aspect of a commodity created -for a market. In the digital era this is obvious for immaterial goods, -as we can clearly see the measures to artificially make the good scarce. -Such measures include laws (based on so-called “intellectual propertyâ€) -and technical barriers to prevent free access to the good. It seems to -be less obvious for material goods, because we are used to the -non-accessibility of material goods unless we have paid for them. But -the measures are the same: law and technical barriers, accompanied by -continuous destruction of goods to keep the commodities rare enough to -obtain a suitable price on markets. - -Furthermore it seems obvious that we all depend on material goods which -may not be available in sufficient amount. Even immaterial goods depend -on a material infrastructure, at least our brains (in the case of -knowledge), which also need to be fed. This is definitely true, however, -it has nothing to do with a “natural scarcityâ€. Since all goods we need -are to be produced, the only question is, how they are to be produced in -a societal sense. The commodity form is one option, the commons form -another. Commodities must be produced in a scarce manner to realize -their price on the market. The commons good can be produced according to -the needs of the people using the given productive capacity. There might -be current limitations, but limits always have been subject to human -creativity to overcome them. - -Maybe some limitations may never be overcome, but this again is no -reason to make goods artificially scarce. In these rare cases social -agreements can be used to organize responsible use of the limited -resource or good. The commons movement learned that both rival as well -as non-rival goods can be produced as commons, but they require -different social treatment. While non-rival goods are agreed to be -freely accessible to prevent under-use, it makes sense to avoid over-use -for rival goods by finding appropriate rules or measures either to -organize sustainable use or to extend collective production and thus -availability of the rival good. - -*Scarcity is a social phenomenon which is unavoidable if goods are -produced as commodities. Often scarcity is confused with limitations -which can be overcome by human efforts and creativity.\ -* - -Pattern 3: Beyond Commodity ---------------------------- - -In her studies Elinor Ostrom found, that “neither the state nor the -market†is a successful means for commons management (1990). Based on -traditional economics she analyzed the practices of natural commons and -finally simply proved liberal dogmatics wrong. Markets are not a good -way to allocate resources, and the State is not a good way to -re-distribute wealth and manage the destructive results of markets. Best -results occur if the people organize themselves according to their -needs, experiences and creativity and treat resources and goods not as -commodities, but as common pool resources. - -This is exactly what happens in Free Software. Interestingly it took -many years to understand that Free Software is a commons and that it is -basically identical to what Elinor Ostrom and others were talking about -much earlier. One weak aspect of the traditional commons research and -the early phase of Free Software was that a clear notion of a commodity -and a non-commodity did not exist. It was the Oekonux Project which -clearly said: Free Software is not a commodity. This dictum is closely -related to the insight that Free Software is not exchanged (cf. pattern -1). - -Critics from the left argued that being a non-commodity is limited to -the realm of immaterial goods like software. From their viewpoint Free -Software is only an “anomaly†(Nuss, Heinrich 2002), while “normal†-goods in capitalism have to be commodities. This assumption, however, is -closely linked to the acceptance of the scarcity dogma (cf. pattern 2). -Moreover, it treats capitalism as a kind of normal or natural mode of -production under conditions of “natural scarcity†(as they think). This -view completely turns real relations upside down. Capitalism could only -establish itself by enclosing the commons, by depriving the people from -their traditional access to resources in order to transform them into -workers. This enclosure of the commons is an ongoing process. Capitalism -can only exist if it continuously separates people from resources by -making them artificially scarce. A commodity – as nice as it may appear -in the shopping malls – is a result of an ongoing violent process of -enclosure and dispossession.\ - The same process occurs in software. Proprietary software is a way of -dispossessing the scientific and development community from their -knowledge, experiences, and creativity. Free Software was first a -defensive act of maintaining common goods common. However, since -software is at the forefront of the development of productive forces it -quickly turned into a creative process of overcoming the limitations and -alienations of proprietary software. In a special field Free Software -established a new mode of production which is going to spread into other -realms (cf. pattern 10). - -*Goods which are not made artificially scarce and are not subject to -exchange are not commodities, but commons.* - -Pattern 4: Beyond Money ------------------------ - -Since money only makes sense for commodities, a non-commodity (cf. -pattern 3) implies that there is no money involved. Thus Free Software -is beyond money. On the other hand, there is obviously a lot of money -around Free Software: developers are paid, companies spend money, new -companies are formed around Free Software. This has confused a lot of -people, even on the left. They stick to an either-or thinking, being -unable to think these observations as a contradictory process of -parallel development in a societal period of transition (cf. pattern -10). - -Money is not a neutral tool, money can occur in different social -settings. It can be wage money, invested money (capital), profit, cash -money etc. Different functions have to be analyzed differently. In Free -Software there is no commodity form involved, so money in the narrow -sense of selling a commodity for a price does not exist. However, Eric -Raymond explained how to make money using a non-commodity: by combining -it with a scarce good. In a capitalist society where only a few goods -had broken out of the commodity realm, it is beyond question that all -other goods continue to exist as commodities. They are kept scarce and -they are combined with a priceless good. Using a perspective of -valorization this is nothing new (e.g. spreading gifts to attract -customers). Using a perspective of recognizing a germ form this way a -new mode of production starts to develop within the still existing old -model.\ - But why do companies give money if this money is not an investment in -the traditional sense, but a kind of a donation, e.g. to pay Free -Software developers? Why did IBM put one billion dollars into Free -Software? Because they were forced to do so. Economically speaking they -have to devalue one business area to save the other profit-making areas. -They have to burn money to create a costly environment for their sales -(e.g. server hardware). As the enclosure of the commons is a -precondition for capitalism, the other way around is also true. -Extending the commons in a field currently dominated by commodities -means that this field is replaced by free goods. - -However, the “four freedoms†of Free Software – use, study, change, -redistribute – (Free Software Foundation, 1996) do not speak about -“free†in the sense of “gratuitousâ€. The slogan “free as in freedom, not -in free beer†is legion. This is completely fine and does not contradict -the “beyond money†dictum, because the four freedoms do not say anything -about money. The four freedoms are about free availability, are about -abundance. Thus, the absence of money is an indirect effect. Abundant -and thus non-scarce goods cannot be a commodity (cf. pattern 2) and -cannot make any money. However, making money is not forbidden per se. - -There have been a lot of attempts to integrate the non-exchange, -non-commodity, commons-based free circulation of Free Software into the -traditional economic paradigm, which is based on exchange and commodity. -The most prominent one was the “attention economy†saying that the -producers do not exchange goods, but attention (Goldhaber, 1997). They -concluded that attention is the new currency. But this was only a -desperate attempt do cling to old terms which neither worked properly -nor delivered any new insights and thus was not relevant. Various other -similar attempts are skipped here. - -*Being beyond money directly results from not being a commodity.\ -* - -Pattern 5: Beyond Labor ------------------------ - -Free Software and commons in general is beyond labor. This can only be -understood if you grasp labor as a productive activity specific to a -certain historical form of society. Selling labor power – i.e. the -ability to work – to some capitalist who uses it to produce more value -than the labor power is worth, is unique in history. This has two -important consequences. - -First, it turns productive activity – which has always been used by -people to produce their livelihood – into alienated labor. This -alienation is not imposed by personal domination, but by structural -coercion. In capitalism humans can only survive if they pay for their -livelihood, which compels people to make money. Making money can be -either done by selling their own labor power or by buying and valorizing -the labor power of others. The result is a distorted process where -structural requirements prescribe what a person has to do (cf. pattern -6). - -Second, it creates the homo economicus, the isolated individual seeking -for maximization of his/her own utility – if necessary even at the -expense of others. Traditional economists then assert that the homo -economicus is the archetype of a human being, which confuses the -specific historical result with a natural presupposition. - -Instead of labor, Free Software is based on Selbstentfaltung. The German -notion of Selbstentfaltung is not easy to translate. On the one hand it -starts from “scratching an itch†(Eric Raymond), “doing what you really -really want†(Fritjof Bergmann), and “having a lot of fun†(the Free -Software developer). On the other hand it integrates other fellow -developers to strive for the best solution possible. This also means -high engagement, passion, and effort, not just picking the low hanging -fruits. It includes a positive reciprocity with others striving for the -same goal in a way, that the Selbstentfaltung of the one is the -precondition of the Selbstentfaltung of the others. Not by chance this -is reminiscent of the Communist Manifesto where the “the free -development of each is the condition for the free development of all†-(Marx, Engels 1848). However, in Free Software it is not a goal of a -future society, but it is an inalienable feature of the beginning new -mode of production on the way to that new free society. - -*Instead of selling one’s energy for alienated purposes, usually called -labor, Free Software is based on Selbstentfaltung which is the free -development of all the productive forces of the people.* - -Pattern 6: Beyond Classes -------------------------- - -Capitalism is a society of separations. Buying vs. selling, producing -vs. consuming, labor vs. capital, concrete vs. abstract labor, use value -vs. exchange value, private production vs. social distribution etc. -Capitalist development is driven by the contradictions between these -separated parts. Among them, labor and capital is only one -contradiction, but it seems to be the most relevant one. A person seems -to be defined by being a labor seller or a labor buyer, a worker or -capitalist. However, in fact labor and capital are not properties of -individuals, but opposite societal functions like all other separations -capitalism generates. - -Therefore, it is not true that only one side of the various separations -represents the general or progressive one. On the contrary, both parts -of a separation depend on each other. Labor produces capital, and -capital creates labor. It is an alienated cycle of a permanent -reproduction of the capitalist forms. Thus, both sides of these -separations, e.g. labor and capital, are necessary functions of -capitalism. The so called antagonism of labor and capital is in fact a -purely immanent mode of historical development of capitalism. The -working class does not represent emancipation, by no means. - -Free Software and peer production in general is not recreating classes, -it is rather beyond that mode. It represents a germ form (cf. pattern -10) of a new mode of production which generally is not based on -separations, but on integrating different personal needs, behavior and -wishes as a powerful source of development. Exploitation does not exist, -because selling and buying of labor does not exist and money can only -play a role in retro games about antiquated societies called -“capitalismâ€. - -*Selbstentfaltung as a free developing human being is the source of -societal transition towards a free society, not the class adherence.* - -Pattern 7: Beyond Exclusion ---------------------------- - -One of the most basic separations capitalism generates is the separation -of those who are inside and those who are not. This inside/outside -pattern is not a class separation (cf. pattern 6) and it is not only one -big separation. It is a structural mechanism of inclusion and exclusion -along all possible lines of society: job-owner vs. jobless, rich vs. -poor, men vs. women, people of color vs. white people, bosses vs. -subordinated, owners of means of production vs. non-owners, members of -social security vs. non-members etc. It has to be recognized as a basic -structural principle of capitalism: An inclusion of the one side implies -an exclusion of the other side. For the individual this means that any -personal progress is realized at the expense of others who stagnate or -regress. - -In general the commons are beyond the mechanism of exclusion. In Free -Software, for example, the more active people join a project the faster -and the better a goal can be achieved. Here, the relationship between -people is not structured by inclusion-exclusion mechanisms, but by an -inclusive reciprocity (Meretz 2012). The maintainer of a project tries -to include as many active people as possible, strives for a creative -atmosphere, and tries to solve conflicts in a way, that as many people -as possible can follow the “rough consensus†and the “running codeâ€. - -If a consensus is not possible the best solution is then a fork: a risky -but valid option to test different directions of development. If you -look at existing forks (e.g. between KDE and GNOME), then many of them -are working closely together or maintain an atmosphere of cooperation. -Yes, there are other examples of fights against one another. But these -non-productive forks are mainly due to alienated interests playing an -important role. Oracle tried to implement a command and control regime -after having bought OpenOffice as part of the Sun package. The fork to -LibreOffice by many important developers was an act of self-defense and -self-determination to maintain their environment of Selbstentfaltung. -They don’t want to go back into the old “labor mode†of development (cf. -pattern 5). - -*While capitalism is structurally based on exclusion mechanisms, -commons-based peer production generally creates and advances inclusion.* - -Pattern 8: Beyond Socialism ---------------------------- - -Socialism, as defined by Karl Marx in the “Critique of the Gotha -Programme†(Marx, 1875) is a commodity-producing society ruled by the -working class. Historically this was realized by the so called “real -existing Socialismâ€. There have been many critiques of real socialist -countries (lacking democracy, etc.) from within the left. Nevertheless, -a good part of the left shares the assumption that an interphase between -a free society (which may be called communism) and capitalism is -unavoidable. The general concept is that the working class holding the -power can reconstruct the whole economy according to their interests -which represent the majority of the society. In short: power comes -first, then a new mode of production will follow, in order to build a -really free society. This concept has failed historically. - -The reason for this failure is not due to internal tactical differences -and shortcomings. Instead it is due to the unrealistic concept of -qualitative historical transformation. Never in history was the question -of power placed first, it was always the new mode of production which -emerged from the old way of producing which prepared the historical -transition. Capitalism initially developed from craftsmanship in -medieval towns, then integrated manufactures, finally leading to the -system of big industry. The question of power was solved “on the wayâ€. -This does not diminish the role of revolutions, but revolutions only -realize and enhance what was already developing. The revolutions of the -Arab Spring do not create anything new, but try to realize the -potentials of a normal democratic bourgeois society.\ - This analysis of historical developments (discussed in more detail in -pattern 10) has to be applied to the current situation. Historical -transition can not be realized by taking over political power – be it by -parliament or by street actions – but by developing a new mode of -production. The criteria for being “new†can be derived from the -negation of the old mode of production: instead of commodities: commons -production, instead of exchange and mediation by money: free -distribution, instead of labor: Selbstentfaltung, instead of exclusion -mechanisms: potential inclusion of all people. However, care needs to be -taken since not all developments of capitalism are to be abolished. -Rather some continue – though in a transcended form. - -*Commons-based peer production transcends capitalism as well as -commodity-based socialism.* - -Pattern 9: Beyond Politics --------------------------- - -Since commons-based peer production is mainly about constructing a new -mode of production, it is basically a non-political movement. Here, -politics is understood as addressing the state and its institutions to -demand changes in some desired direction. Such politics are based on -interests which in capitalism are generally positioned against each -other. If a society is structured along inclusion-exclusion patterns -(see pattern 7), then it is necessary to organize common but partial -interests in order to realize them at the expense of the common partial -interests of others. In this sense commons are beyond politics, because -they basically do not operate in the realm of interests but of needs. - -It is important to distinguish between needs and interests. Needs have -to be organized in the form of interests, if the usual mode of -realization is the exclusion of the interests of others. Commons on the -other hand are based on the variety of needs of their participants, -which act as a source of creativity. The mediation of these different -needs is part of the process of peer production. Thus, it is not -necessary that participants additionally organize their needs as -interests and try to implement them politically. Instead, they achieve -this directly. - -One aspect which makes this clear is the question of hierarchies. -Usually hierarchies are part of capitalist commodity production. -Therefore, a common left topic was to reject any hierarchies to avoid -domination. This ignores the fact that hierarchies as such do not -generate domination, but rather the function hierarchies have in a given -context. In a company hierarchies express different interests, for -example the interests of workers and of the management (cf. pattern 5). -However, in a peer production project a hierarchy may express different -levels of expertise or different responsibilities, which are shared by -those who accept someone in a leading position. Being a maintainer does -not mean following different interests at the expense of project -members. Such a project would not prosper. On the contrary, a maintainer -is keen to integrate as many active and competent members as possible. -This does not avoid conflicts, but conflicts are solved on the common -base of the project’s goals. - -*Commons-based peer production does not require to articulate people’s -needs in the form of opposing interests and thus is beyond politics.* - -Pattern 10: Germ Form ---------------------- - -Last but not least, the most important pattern is the germ form or -five-step-model (Holzkamp, 1983). It is a model to understand the -concurrent existence of phenomena with different qualities. When -discussing peer production the debate is often dominated by two groups: -those who are in favor of peer production and who try to prove peer -production is anti-capitalist and those who see peer production only as -a modernization of capitalism. The challenge is to think it as both. The -germ form model accomplishes this by viewing the emergence and -development of commons-based peer production as a process of its own -contradictory unfolding in time. - -Normally applying the five-step-model is a retrospective procedure where -the result of the analyzed development is well known. By mentally -assuming the result of a transition towards a free society based on -commons-based peer-production the emergence of this result can be -reconstructed using the model. Here is a very rough sketch of the five -steps applied to the case of peer production. - -​1. Germ form: A new function appears. In this phase the new function -must not be understood as a rich germ or a seed enclosing all properties -of the final entity which only has to grow. Rather in this phase the -germ form shows only principles of the new, but it is not the new -itself. Thus, commons-based peer production is not the new itself, but -the qualitatively new aspect it shows is the need-oriented mediation -between peers (based on Selbstentfaltung, see pattern 5). During this -phase this is visible only on a local level. - -​2. Crisis: Only if the overall old system falls into a crisis can the -germ form leave its niche. The capitalist way of societal production and -mediation via commodities, markets, capital, and state has brought -mankind into a deep crisis. It has entered a phase of successive -degradation and exhaustion of historically accumulated system resources. -The recurring financial crisis makes this obvious to everyone. - -​3. Function shift: The new function leaves its germ form status in the -niche and gains relevance for the reproduction of the old system. The -former germ form is now double-faced: On the one hand it can be used for -the sake of the old system, on the other hand its own logic is and -remains incompatible with the logic of the dominant old system. Peer -production is usable for purposes of cost-saving and creating new -environments for commercial activities, but it rests upon non-commodity -development within its own activities (cf. pattern 3). Cooptation and -absorption into normal commodity producing cycles are possible (De -Angelis, 2007), and only if peer production is able to defend its own -commons-based principles and abilities to create networks on this ground -will the next step be reached. Free Software as one example of peer -production quite clearly is at this stage. - -​4. Dominance shift: The new function becomes prevalent. The old -function does not disappear immediately, but steps back as the -previously dominant function to marginal domains. Commons-based peer -production has reached a network density on a global level, so that -input-output links are closed to self-contained loops. Separated private -production with subsequent market mediation using money is no longer -required. Need-based societal mediation organizes production and -distribution. The entire system has now qualitatively changed its -character. - -​5. Restructuring: The direction of development, the backbone -structures, and the basic functional logics have changed. This process -embraces more and more societal fields which refocus towards the new -need-based mode of societal mediation. The state is stripped down, new -institutions emerge, which no longer have a uniform State character, but -are means of collective Selbstentfaltung (cf. pattern 5). New -contradictions may come up, a new cycle of development may begin. - -This is only an epistemological model, not a scheme for immediate -action. The main advantage is the possibility to escape unfruitful -either-or debates. It allows for thinking the emergence of a new mode of -production being useful for the old system while maintaining its -transcending function towards a free society as concurrent phenomena. - -*The germ form model adapted in the Oekonux context is a dialectical -conceptualization of historical transition.* - -Conclusion ----------- - -Far from being a consistent theory of historical transition towards a -free society these patterns give a fairly good impression of why they -don’t fit into any of the traditional approaches. There might be some -accordances with one approach or the other, and most of the Oekonux -participants will not agree with all of the patterns, but no single -approach could answer to all challenges at once in a consistent way. - -This is not coincidental. On the one hand the formation of a new society -can not be entirely grasped in terms of the already fully developed -society which is going to be made history. On the other hand, there are -overarching aspects which continue to exist in all societies, but which -undergo a reconfiguration. Other aspects dissolve completely. And -finally some aspects are leveraged in a way that they hardly have -anything in common with their origin. These three forms of transition – -preservation, dissolution, leverage – describe the meaning of what -G.W.F. Hegel called sublation (Aufhebung). Ten patterns of societal -transition presented in this paper try to fulfill this requirement. - -**Credits** - -Special thanks to Stefan Merten and Mathieu O’Neil for editing support. -Tomislav Knaffl gave valuable hints. - -**Works cited** - -Benkler, Y. (2006), The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production -Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press, URL: -cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth\_of\_networks/ (2011-10-10) - -De Angelis, M. (2007), The Beginning of History. Value Struggles and -Global Capital, London: Pluto Press. - -Free Software Foundation (1996), The Free Software Definition, URL: -www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html (2011-10-10) - -Goldhaber, M.H. (1997), The Attention Economy and the Net, in: First -Monday, Vol. 2, No. 4, URL: -firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/519/440 -(2011-10-10)\ - Holzkamp, K. (1983), Grundlegung der Psychologie, Frankfurt/Main, New -York: Campus. - -Marx, K., Engels, F. (1848), Manifesto of the Communist Party, URL: -marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ (2011-10-10) - -Marx, K. (1875), Critique of the Gotha Programme, URL: -marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ (2011-10-10) - -Meretz, S. (2012), The Structural Communality of the Commons, In: -Bollier, D. et al. (2012), Self-Sustaining Abundance, in print. - -Merten, S. (1999), Willkommen bei ‘oekonux’, URL: -www.oekonux.de/liste/archive/msg00000.html (2011-10-10) - -Merten, S. (2011), Leftist and other capitalist ideologies and peer -production, URL: www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg06135.html -(2011-10-10) - -Merten, S., Richardson, J. (2001), Free Software & GPL Society. Stefan -Merten of Oekonux interviewed by Joanne Richardson, URL: -subsol.c3.hu/subsol\_2/contributors0/mertentext.html (2011-10-10) - -Nuss, S., Heinrich, M. (2002), Freie Software und Kapitalismus, in: -Streifzüge 1/2002, URL: -www.streifzuege.org/2002/freie-software-und-kapitalismus (2011-10-10) - -Ostrom, E. (1990), Governing the Commons. The Evolution of Institutions -for Collective Action, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - -- [About](http://peerproduction.net/about/) -- [Issues](http://peerproduction.net/issues/) -- [Peer Review](http://peerproduction.net/peer-review/) -- [News](http://peerproduction.net/news/) -- [Contact](http://peerproduction.net/contact/) - -Journal of Peer Production - ISSN: 2213-5316 \ - All the contents of this journal are in the **public domain**. diff --git a/_queue/parodia_de_los_comunes.markdown b/_queue/parodia_de_los_comunes.markdown deleted file mode 100644 index c60ebb788a2372613b533704c372e6c5ab0b1bc9..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/_queue/parodia_de_los_comunes.markdown +++ /dev/null @@ -1,822 +0,0 @@ -tripleC 11(2): 412-424, 2013 http://www.triple-c.at - -The Parody of the Commons Vasilis Kostakis1 and Stelios Stavroulakis2 1 - -Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia, P2P Lab, -Greece, kostakis.b@gmail.com, www.p2plab.gr/en 2 P2P Lab, Greece, -sstavra@gmail.com, www.p2plab.gr/en - -## Abstract - -This essay builds on -the idea that Commons-based peer production is a social advancement -within capitalism but with various post-capitalistic aspects, in need -of protection, enforcement, stimulation and connection with progressive -social movements. We use theory and examples to claim that peer-to-peer -economic relations can be undermined in the long run, distorted by -the extraeconomic means of a political context designed to maintain -profit-driven relations of production into power. This subversion can -arguably become a state policy, and the subsequent outcome is the full -absorption of the Commons as well as of the underpinning peer-to-peer -relations into the dominant mode of production. To tackle this threat, -we argue in favour of a certain working agenda for Commons-based -communities. Such an agenda should aim the enforcement of the circulation -of the Commons. Therefore, any useful social transformation will be -meaningful if the people themselves decide and apply policies for their -own benefit, optimally with the support of a sovereign partner state. -If peer production is to become dominant, it has to control capital -accumulation with the aim to marginalise and eventually transcend -capitalism. Keywords: Peer Production, Free Software, Collaboration, -Commons, Emancipation, State Policy, Economic Theory, Partner State, -Peer Property Acknowledgement: This essay has immensely benefited from -two anonymous reviewers. We want also to thank Christos Giotitsas for -his critique. Moreover, Vasilis Kostakis would like to acknowledge -financial support received by the grants SF 014006 “Challenges to -State Modernization in 21st Century Europe†and ETF 8571 "Web 2.0 and -Governance: Institutional and Normative Changes and Challengesâ€. - -It has been claimed that an increasing number of people are now able to -manage their political, social, and productive lives through a variety -of interdependent networks enabled by the Information and Communication -Technologies (ICT) (Castells 2000, 2003; Benkler 2006; Bauwens 2005; Perez -2002). However, authors, such as Webster (2002a, 2002b), have argued -against the idea of an “information societyâ€. They emphasise the -continuities of the current age with former capitalist-oriented social -and economic arrangements (Schiller 1981, 1984, 1996; Webster 2002a, -2002b). Kumar (1995, 154) maintains that the information explosion -“has not produced a radical shift in the way industrial societies -are organized†to conclude that “the imperatives of profit, power -and control seem as predominant now as they have ever been in the -history of capitalist industrialismâ€. In addition, Berry (2008, 369) -postulates that scholars such as Benkler (2006) fail to recognise the -extent to which network forms of production “will be co-opted into -mainstream 'industrial' ways of productionâ€. Through several cases of -successful networked-based, collaborative projects such as free software -or Wikipedia, we see the emergence of new ‘‘technological-economic -feasibility spaces’’ for social practice (Benkler 2006, 31). These -feasibility spaces include different social and economic arrangements, -in contrast to what Kumar and Webster claim, where profit, power, -and control do not seem as predominant as they have been in the -history of modern capitalism. Benkler (2006) has argued that from this -new communicational environment a new social productive model, i.e., -Commons-based peer production, is emerging different from the industrial -one. Peer production, exemplified by various free software (GNU, the Linux -kernel, KDE) and free content (Wikipedia) projects, makes information -sharing more important than the value of proprietary strategies and -allows for large-scale information production efforts (Benkler 2006). In this context, peer production could -be considered an early seed form stage of a new mode of production -enabled through Internet-based coordination where decisions arise from -the free engagement and cooperation of the people. They coalesce to -create common value without recourse to monetary compensation as key -motivating factor (Bauwens 2005; Orsi 2009; Kostakis 2013). Our take is -that peer production is a social advancement within capitalism but with -various post-capitalistic aspects, in need of protection, enforcement, -stimulation and connection with progressive social movements around -Commons-oriented policy platforms. As “Commons†we understand the -cultural and natural resources, which are held in common (not owned -privately) and remain accessible to all members of a society (see Ostrom -1990; Hardt and Negri 2011; Bollier 2009). In this essay, our point of -departure is the digital Commons (knowledge, software, design) since peer -production was first noticed in the information sphere of production. We -consider the “Commons†a third sector alongside the market and the -state, which conceptualises the deep affinities amongst several forms -of collaboration and helps validate their distinctive social dynamics -as significant forces in economic and cultural production (Bollier in -Laisne et al. 2010). The term “peer production†or “peer-to-peer -production†originates from the innovative nature of peer-to-peer (P2P) -networking architecture that enabled the advent of the Internet. The -introduction of P2P architecture in the social relations of production and -exchange of goods and services is based on the idea that every networked -community, just like every networked node, becomes a “server†to -satisfy the needs of other communities, as well as a “client†to -satisfy its own. Peer production operates on a non-competitive, synergetic -basis leading to an optimal distribution of resources (Benkler 2006; -Bauwens 2005, 2009). The traditional market approach with its pricing -mechanism has mostly been unable to achieve such optimal allocations due -to productive information asymmetry whereas peer production maximises -the access to information. Contrary to the traditional economic thought, -in peer production we become witnesses of consumer/producer dichotomy's -collapse towards a new understanding in the form of the “multitude†-(Hardt and Negri 2001), “prosumers†(Toffler and Toffler 2006), -“produsers†(Bruns 2008), or “user-innovation communities†(von -Hippel 2005). Further, it has been shown (Benkler 2002, 2006; Bauwens -2005) how peer production, given certain resources, optimally exploits the -skills and abilities of the producers involving participatory ownership -structures, participatory learning and decision-making (Fuchs 2013). -Whereas the firm binds by contract only a fraction of capabilities, -which considers appropriate for realising a certain goal. In a peer -production project the motive emerges when a full set of capabilities -is accessing a given amount of resources. Peer production achieves -the optimal allocation of resources being a more productive system -for information than the market-based or the bureaucratic-state ones -(Bauwens 2005; Kostakis 2012). This article begins with a brief outline -of how the initial architecture of the Internet is being distorted -into a client-server format as observed in proprietary social networks -managed by the cognitive capitalists of the web. We, then, address -and question the main arguments in relation to “the tragedy of the -Commons†and the phenomenon of Commons-based peer production. What is -the role of the peer produced Commons in the capitalist accumulation -while the emancipatory potential of peer communities is neutralised -without affecting their productive function? To answer this question, -we discuss how the emancipatory promise of the (digital) Commons and of -peer production can evolve into a parody bringing to the fore the case -of free software. To tackle the threat of the Commons' full absorption -as well as of the underpinning peer-to-peer relations into the dominant -mode of production, we conclude by arguing in favour of a certain working -agenda for Commons-based communities. - -1. From the Tragedy to the Parody of the Commons Benkler (2006) -postulates his assumptions about the conditions for the development of -peer production, taking for granted a general stable economy. He does -not deal with the threats Commons-based peer production will face once -exposed to a hostile economic environment. An emerging question is why -the dominant socio-economic framework would resist to the building of a Commons sphere. After all, one may argue, it is within -this sphere that the Internet and many other digital technologies have -been developing. Our position is that the aforementioned statement is -partially true: The emergence of web technologies, and of the Internet -itself, has taken place in a contradictory framework. The previously -failed attempts for the adoption of ACTA/SOPA/PIPA proposals that seek to -restrict the freedom of the individuals through a global enforcement of -strict “intellectual property†standards; the efforts for a regulatory -regime with an architecture of transactions in the first place (rather -than policing the transactions afterwards) (Boyle 1997); the attempts for -surveillance and censorship by both authoritarian and liberal countries; -and “the growing tendency to link the Internet’s security problems -to the very properties that made it innovative and revolutionary in -the first place†(Mueller 2010, 160), are only some reasons that have -made scholars, like Zittrain (2008), worry that digital systems may be -pushed back to the model of locked-down devices centrally controlled -information appliances. The initial P2P architecture of the Internet, -based on the end-to-end principle, has been distorted into a client-server -format where the server has the absolute authority over the client, -who stands unprotected with limited intervention possibility (Kempf and -Austein 2004). The “addiction†of the client to assign tasks, which -concern him/her on the first place, to the supposed convenience that the -server offers is a phenomenon observed in proprietary, centralised social -networks and SaaS models (i.e., “Software as a Service†acronym; -for example, think of Facebook). This exemplifies the tendency of the -user population to neutralise and detach from issues important for their -online and offline future. Further, in this contradictory framework we -observe nuanced changes not only in the institutional design concerning -the Internet but also in the used terminology. For instance, see the -shift from “free†to just “open source†software. The term -“open source†has become related to ideas and arguments based only -on practical values, such as having powerful software (Stallman 2012). As -Stallman (2012) writes: “the two terms describe almost the same category -of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different -values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a -social movement.†The open source implies that non-free software is an -inferior solution to the practical problem at hand, whereas for the free -software advocates non-free software “is a social problem†(Stallman -2012). “If it's the same software (or nearly so), does it matter which -name you use?â€, Stallman asks to answer, “yes, because different words -convey different ideas. While a free program by any other name would give -you the same freedom today, establishing freedom in a lasting way depends -above all on teaching people to value freedom.†We attempt to move from -a strict techno-economic analysis towards a discussion of the Commons -within a turbulent, contradictory socio-economic framework. In other -words, what is the role of the Commons in the capitalist accumulation -while the emancipatory potential of peer communities is neutralised -without affecting their productive function? The capitalist system -arguably seeks to incorporate Commons-based, peer communities because -of their cost-effective advantage (low-cost labour with high quality -products). We argue that the development of P2P relations in itself, -if placed in the current socio-economic conditions, can take place -only temporarily because in the long run it will be undermined by -means designed to maintain profit-driven relations of production into -power. We call this transformation process “parody of the Commons†in -relation to what Benkler (2006) defines as “tragedy of the Commonsâ€. -In 1968, Garret Hardin first introduced the concept of the tragedy of -the Commons referring to the degradation of a finite resource used by a -group of individuals who act independently and rationally on the basis of -their self-interest. If individuals agreed to assign private management -responsibility, which would implement a protection fence around the -resource against the “rational†behaviour of all, the resource would -be safe (Hardin 1968). Elinor Ostrom (1990) understates Hardin's approach -claiming that if those, who share a certain resource, belonged to a local -community, then they would adopt the optimal solutions to serve their -interests. In certain cases the aforementioned statement cannot apply, -because of a lack of confidence amongst community members due to the high -communication costs and/or because of the small benefit from the problem -solving. However, the criteria that Ostrom (1990) articulates are also immanent in Hardin's definition as a -matter of the rational behaviour of individuals. Ostrom (1990) correctly -denotes that the resource sustainability can be achieved by adopting best -practices without the need of privatisation. What eludes both Hardin and -Ostrom is that the best practices or the technical means are defined by -those in power. There is arguably almost no possibility of implementing -measures that would not enforce the established structure. The shared -resource may not become private, but the extraeconomic support of -other privatised means in the infrastructure of the common resource -(e.g. friendly policies toward activities regardless of business plan) -could gradually eradicate the resource. Once again, the ruling agenda -defines whether the technical means can be considered best practice. -Hardin's (1968) position about salvation through privatisation has been -claimed for forests. If forests get privatised, the manager's best -interest would be to protect the wood from fire and the uncontrolled -work of woodcutters. What we have here is a category error. What -the managers protect is their fenced area rather than the forest -itself. In front of the “sacred†ownership rights there is no legal -document to guarantee that the area will remain a forest. Nowadays, -the destruction of natural environment does not occur because the -environment is a common resource. It is arguably happening because the -applied policies are designed to support means of production of private -appropriation, which exploit the common resource unconditionally. To -that point, Hardin's and Ostrom's approaches are equally unhelpful, -since their difference is related solely to the composition of the -mixture. For Hardin, more privatisation is required, whereas according -to Ostrom it should be constrained. Benkler (2006, 378) explains that -traditionally the tragedy of the Commons is described by (i) the absence -of incentives, i.e., nobody invests resources in a project since no -privatisation follows; (ii) the absence of leadership, i.e., nobody has -the appropriate authority to guide and accomplish such a project. What -Benkler says is this: Let's assume that Hardin's proposition is true: -Privatisation secures the sustainability of a resource. But how do we -get there? To begin with, what is our incentive to assume ownership or -management of a common resource, if we do not charge for its use? And -suppose that the incentive has been found: Are we capable of achieving -the sustainability goal when this capability is part of collective -intelligence? The difficulty to meet both conditions means inadequacy -of assuming responsibility, hence, the common resource has no future, -according to Hardin. Benkler (2006) states that this does not apply in -peer production: Commons-based communities manage to find their own ways. -However, counter-examples can be found against the cases Benkler brings -to the fore to support his argument. For instance, see the software -development in traditional corporate environments on projects released -under permissive free software licenses (examples include the MIT license -and the BSD licenses), which allow privatising code modifications and, -thus, do not take action against patent “treachery†(see Peren -1999; GNU 2013; Fitzgerald 2006). In that way software misses its free -component and its quality becomes questionable, since the distribution -of code's changes depends on the personal stance of the entrepreneur -who can package them up under restrictive terms. That is to say, the -programmer or the entrepreneur can shift from a permissive license to -an “end-user license agreementâ€. In addition, production shifts to -the terms with which the non-free, proprietary software is produced. -Thereby the software community experiences higher pressure and the rights -of the end users are eventually reduced. In other words, permissive free -software licenses can lead to a “tragedy†or rather a “parody -of the Commons†because of free software's allegedly emancipatory -promise. In such a scenario maximising individual freedom away from -society needs would have worse total consequences than would have resulted -by applying regulation to maximise societal freedom instead. One might -claim that code is in abundance, as an informational good with almost -zero marginal costs; however it needs improvement and maintenance, i.e., -labour hours. Hence, investing free labour hours in dead-end projects, -permissive free software licenses may trigger a parody of the Commons, -by slowing down the overall adoption pace of free software. By contrast -the copyleft licenses (for example the GPL, General Public License) -guarantee end users the freedoms to use, study, share (copy), and modify -the software. Copyleft is a method of social production as well as a -process of knowledge sharing, which makes a program or other work free, and requires all modified and -extended versions of the program to be free as well (GNU 2012). Hence, -copyleft licenses define the relations amongst the members of software -communities and in that sense they create ecologies outside or rather -in the interstices of the capitalist market. To ensure there is no -misunderstanding, we need to clarify the meaning of free software. The -“free†in free software, unlike “free†in free labour, does not -mean gratis. Free software is defined by the four freedoms the user -of that software has in order to use, study, share copies, and share -modified versions of the software. - -2. Defining the Parody of the Commons We name “parody of the Commons†-the introduction of privatisation in the management of the common -resources realised either by the assignment of ownership to individuals or -by the interference of state regulation, when capital is the prevailing -force as well as the appropriation of the financial results. Both -routes rely on the assumption of owning better information pools, -which is challenged by the current developments of liberal-democratic -societies. If Commons-based peer production does not become the dominant -mode of production, the conditions for a tragedy will be arguably met -and then the emancipatory promise of the Commons will be torn apart. It -can be claimed that the state policies have to be considered as a -parameter. We argue that the state intervention – when it legislates -enforcing or facilitating measures – actually applies Hardin's schema -following other routes. The state perceives as “public†all goods and -resources of some value and then intervenes introducing regulations for -the “common goodâ€. However, this intervention is an attack to the -public sphere and subverts communities. If a community starts to grow, -inspectors from above turn up to define specifications, procedures, -financial constraints, setting the direction for the future of the common -resource. Also they set aside the immediate interests of those who now -must obey rules set by bodies irrelevant to the local needs. The basic -idea originating to the bounded rationality principle is that regulation -cannot stop the abuse and eventually the depletion of the Commons -occurs. This approach does not adopt the position that the state is -incapable by nature or due to its size. The state policies are, most of -the times, what they are because of commitments and facilitations by the -political system to the financial sector. We define two main features -of the parody of the Commons. The first feature is the institutional -integration, which is the absorption of the proportional dividend of -every individual by a mandatory private appropriation enforced through -legislation. The applied policies cannot affect free software communities -in large scale, but they directly harm other forms of Commons as much -as any other type of industrial unit involved with the production of -any material. Individuals enter the Commons to enjoy the participatory -nature of a productive and/or creative endeavour carrying the belief -that the involvement of other members alongside with theirs builds a -sum that belongs to all and from which all benefit from. In that sum, -every contributor to a Commons-based community expects a contributory -return plus a reward for nonvoluntary work. The capital markets seriously -challenge this belief by pursuing their own agenda, based on onerous -and illegal, concerning the international law, debts that stifle the -real economy. The central or local administrations in an attempt to -fulfil financial obligations to creditors, apply policies that oblige -a whole society to transfer a large part of the national income toward -payments to creditors. Instead of re-investments for the local needs, -the society is deprived from valuable resources and assets. The state -treats Commons-based communities as any other business unit and applies -heavy non-contributory taxation. Any ambitious activity is finally -ceased and one of the first victims is the voluntary work done by the -members of peer communities. This is not an imaginary situation; it is -the reality in the Eurozone today, where the banking sector is allowed -to have an unprecedented concentration of power. The link, which makes -this situation unbearable for all, is arguably the iron fist of the -common currency. Even Germany, the most powerful economy in the Eurozone, -is turning slowly into recession (Indexmundi 2013; The Economist 2011) -while most of the cities and towns there now belong to the banks rather -than the federal state (Czuczka 2012). For the European south, there are many examples of structural reforms taking -place that damaged equally the industrial and agricultural sector in -the last 40 years. This is arguably a path to a dead-end. The second -feature is the external outsourcing, according to which, regardless of -the partners’ intentions and plans, the project is converted into a -mode of crowdsourcing/aggregation economy. In the aforementioned scenario -the peer produced use value serves certain for-profit interests no matter -if peer producers are aware of it. The owners/administrators of the web -platforms/network, i.e., the “netarchists†such as Facebook or Google -(for an overview of the concept see Bauwens 2007, 2013; Kostakis 2012) -can be considered as the web capitalists, who renounce their dependence on -information accumulation through intellectual property and become enablers -of social participation (Bauwens 2007, 2013; Kostakis 2012). They combine -open and closed elements in the architecture of their platforms to ensure -a measure of profit and control by expanding the reach of neoliberal -economy through cognitive capitalism (see Aytes 2013; Andrejevic 2013; -Bauwens 2007, 2013; Kostakis 2012). Fuchs (2013, 219-220) notes that -in proprietary-based platforms the productive labour is outsourced to -users “who work completely for free and help to maximize the rate of -exploitation [...] so that profits can be raised and new media capital -may be accumulated. This situation is one of infinitive exploitation -of the usersâ€. In a similar vein, Terranova (2013, 53) addresses the -relevance of the concept of the Commons: “as the wealth generated by -free labour is social, so should be the mode of its returnâ€. Hence, she -concludes, “social networking platforms should be deprivatized – that -is, that ownership of users’ data should be returned to their rightful -owners as the freedom to access and modify the protocols and diagrams -that structure their participationâ€. So, free labour is voluntary. In -peer production projects, the knowledge worker owns the final artefact -(which is always open to further development) of the productive process -and gains experience, knowledge, relations and/or even money (however, -monetary profit is not the key motivating factor) through it. In states -of privatisation (according to the aforementioned categorisation that -would be in the crowdsourcing/aggregation economies) free labour implies -exploitation. In addition to the social media monopolies, the development -of Apple's MacOS X is another example of external outsourcing. In short, -MacOS X is based on UNIX, software that begun as a free-shared product to -later become proprietary under different brand names and then free again -(for example, FreeBSD and NetBSD). Parts of the latter free software -components along with the mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon -University were included into NeXTSTEP operating system, which was -finally renamed into OS X. Hence, we argue that the Commons firstly -emerge as a tragedy due to long-term inertia and then evolve to a -farce or a parody. As soon as the gradual destruction is perceived -(tragedy) everybody agrees to privatise the management and in case -they do not agree, the state may force agreement in order to implement -the assignment. The common resource remains common by its name only -(parody). We argue that, unfortunately, this is a likely scenario. To -put it in software terminology, this constitutes a security hole in the -ecology of peer production, and, for the moment, no patch (i.e., solution) -has been proposed. The question, therefore, is whether the peer producers -will actually benefit from the development of P2P relations and the -production of commonly produced use value, or whether the Commonsbased -peer production phenomenon will just constitute a part of a neoliberal -Plan B, put in Caffentzis' terms (2010). Supposing peer production will -be progressively emerging as a dominant productive model upon which will -rely the prosperity of the people (see Hardt and Negri 2011; Rigi 2012; -Bauwens and Kostakis in press; Kostakis 2013), then the transcendence -of the parody is not just a theoretical issue to be dealt with. It is -rather a practical, political issue that will determine the success of the -Commons-based communities in general. Hence, it is necessary to approach -the Commons concept within the ongoing socio-economic context that is -blooming and discuss how it affects the function of the real economy. -While the triggering event of its burst was the failure of subprime -mortgages, many opinions have been voiced concerning the causes of the -2008 financial bubble. Some of technoeconomic nature (for example Perez -2009a, 2009b) and others (for instance Sowell 2010; Krugman 2009, 2012; -Stiglitz 2010), which focus more on the symptoms rather than on the inherent contradictory characteristics of the capitalist system. According -to Karl Marx (1992/1885, 1993/1983), the general pattern of the capitalist -system, which makes economic crises inevitable, is created by the combined -action of two laws of capitalist integration. The first law concerns the -tendency of profit's quota to decrease whereas the second law describes -the need for an increasing capital concentration and accumulation. These -two laws contradict each other leading the system to collapses and -crises: Capital cannot be invested when the declining rate of profit's -quota is faster than the increasing rate of capital accumulation. In -Marx's analysis, capitalism is inherently built on a Sisyphean logic -reaching always a dead-end in which the escapable policy often concerns -the partial destruction of the total capital. For a certain period of -time, capitalism –a process of “creative destructionâ€, to remember -Schumpeter (1975/1942, 1982/1939) who shares many views with Marx in the -analysis of the capitalist dynamics– may seem sustainable, introducing -innovative products and services. Williamson (1995, 1998), also, from -a different perspective reaches a similar conclusion: Every firm will -stop developing once its organisational costs surpass the organisational -costs of a smaller firm. The partial transformation of the stagnant -capital into loan capital is used as a pressure valve for overcoming -the dead-end (Marx 1992/1885; Harvey 2007, 2010; Lapavitsas 2012). -The overflow of loan capital with compound interest into international -markets along with the shift of policy decision-making from democratically -elected state governments to the banking sector firms and institutions -preserves a global debt crisis. Once the loanable capital secures its -dominant position in the market, the debt crisis becomes permanent -and is reinforced regardless of the progress in the annual economic -indices. Even a prosperous economy will start declining in the course of -time if the annual surplus is being used to serve external debts. Serving -the external debt does not necessarily mean that the debt is reduced, -it may as well increase if the interest is accumulated into capital, -thus neutralising not only the benefit of the local producers, but also -any advantage on innovation achieved by their talent and effort. This -situation occurs when the creditor and the debtor sign an unbalanced -agreement, the interest rates and spreads are unfairly high and there -is no flexibility in monetary policy. In that case, and especially in -bankrupting economies, the individuals who participate in Commons-oriented -communities may fall into the trap of a parody of the Commons. The peer -producer participates to satisfy his/her inner positive motives, interests -and needs (for instance, the need to create, learn, communicate and share) -on a voluntary basis (Benkler 2006; Hertel, Niedner and Herrmann 2003; -Lakhani and Wolf 2005). As Hertel, Niedner and Herrmann (2003, 1174) -point out, the Linux kernel community participants are driven “by -similar motives as voluntary action within social movements such as the -civil rights movement, the labour movement, or the peace movementâ€. On -the other hand, the peer producer has no idea that his/her voluntary -inputs contribute to the retention of the average profit quota's decrease, -offering the chance to capital to develop, appropriate, expand and grow. -Therefore, we argue that those who have a competitive advantage over the -P2P relations of production will benefit from the appropriation of the -commonly peer produced use value. The aforementioned is a typical case of -the transformation of the tragedy into parody, once the lack of authority, -observed in several Commons-based peer projects, gives the chance to -extra-economic means to take advantage of creative communities' inertia. - -3. The Parody of Free Software? For the economic system the accumulation -of means of production is both a functional necessity and cause for -deadlock. In the area of information sciences, computers and other -digital devices, the technical capacity of using all those devices as -means of production is at the hands of the majority. The private property -in the means of production at this economic sector for the first time is -universal and the amount of means that people own decisively influences -their potential. Today, free software, due to its technical excellence, -is being widely used by organisations that compete against the philosophy -and practice of peer communities. One of the causes is the division of -the developers' community to those who use the term “free softwareâ€, -thus, contributing to an increasing power of software communities and -to those who prefer constructs like “open source†or “shared -source†arguing in favour of the ease of free software penetration into -the world of business. The latter removed from all users, individuals or -legal entities, the ability to understand that their political freedom -that depends on the use of digital media is far more important than the -technical superiority of the free software that enables those media. -The majority of the people cannot be aware of all these, when free -software is not a corner stone of the public education system. This -shortcoming severely damages society or part of it in the face of -urgent social issues. Even the application of wide consent policies -is doomed to fail if the technical infrastructure does not deal with -immediate social problems. One may observe two heavy consequences of -the community division. The approaches closer to “open source†-are anti-pedagogical due to their axiological neutrality, thereby -cannot get promoted as educational material, while friction with free -software does not offer teachers a clear direction. Then society, -due to absence of guidance, is moving conceptually to what people -intuitively understand. That software technology is more technology and -less software, hence, a business for specialised engineers. When the new -technology of typography was invented, its high cost kept the majority -at a distance from these new means of production. In our days, when -the excuse of keeping a distance from digital media is not an option, -the misinformation, even by official sources, regarding the dynamics -of software has become epidemic. In that way, it prevents people from -finding out how to use computers for their own benefit, instead forcing -them to assign even the simplest task to computer experts. The network, -i.e., a sum of networked nodes, is actually the “real computer†since -coherence and economies of scale are both possible in the network. The -traditional state policies that give way to monopoly power cannot easily -apply here. The advocates of P2P architecture are struggling against a -coordinated international effort to control the power of peer nodes before -the majority realises the width of opportunities it offers. The chosen -policy to subvert Commons-based communities is on one hand the pressure -for signing international agreements against the freedom of Internet, -which is a typical operation of institutional integration, and on the -other the binding of users to monopoly corporations. Those corporations -charge for pre-installed proprietary technologies that come with any -newly purchased device and deprive all from basic freedoms in exchange -of a presumed ease of use. Although the “golden cage†is a syndrome -that cannot last forever, companies that develop non-free software may -estimate that one way or another it will be a source of income driven by -the power of inertia. Proprietary technologies in operating systems and -software applications have two major consequences. They keep the users -divided and helpless (Stallman 2008), deconstruct local cultures (Greve -2006a, 2006b) and increase digital illiteracy. This is a good example of -external outsourcing, which holds a more or less important role, however -the institutional integration appears to be the most appropriate way of -undermining the Commons. - -4. Overcoming the Tensions In times when the global economy is relatively -stable, the parody of the Commons can be easily avoided. There is -insignificant migration of labour power from the corporate model -towards the Commons, hence no serious pressure to apply institutional -integration and the mobility of community members practically cancels the -consequence of crowdsourcing. But in an era of economic collapse and while -mobility becomes a risk, gradually more people direct their attention to -communities, with many of them doing so for survival purposes. The state -seems to face Commons-based peer communities as ordinary economic units -subject to heavy taxation while supports “intellectual propertyâ€-based -activities. Those activities are injected into communities blocking -their growth. The hope that the multiplicity of communities will help -them rise into dominant relations of production is refuted since -the political system will allow communities to grow only if their -operations and functions become integrated to the established mode of -production. History shows that the capitalist mode of production allowed -no other form of production. The future of pre-capitalist or novel produc- -tion modes was predetermined: destruction or integration. While P2P -relations are not dominant, their dependence on a friendly economic -environment becomes imperative. A recent example where a Commons might be -commodified is the case of ERT's digital archive. ERT was the Greek state -television and radio network. It was a constituent of the public sector -and had been funded through a mandatory tax implemented into the bill of -the public electricity enterprise (DEI) for decades. In December 2007, -the launch of the effort to digitise the old ERT archives was announced, -which first delivered results a few months later. Although initially this -endeavour was considered an important step for the public availability -of a unique cultural wealth, the decision to be distributed in that -specific way was met with the opposition of several Commons-oriented -communities and civilians. According to the protesters, behind this -initiative lies an “innocent fraudâ€: The digital archive remained -in the exclusive ownership of ERT. Patented file types and video, text -and picture formats were selected to implement the digitisation while -download and further use of the material was forbidden. Further, in the -current event of ERT's dissolution as a consequence of the Greek crisis, -(at the time of this writing, August 2013, the fate of ERT's archive is -still unknown) this national cultural aggregation, created and funded by -the Greek citizens, may revert to private ownership. Already during the -summer absence of a public Greek network, private stations broadcasted -parts of the archive. The ERT case highlights the traditional concept for -state ownership of public goods: The state manages a resource on behalf -of the civilians over which they have no authority. And in turbulent -times the exploitation of the Commons, as part of “shock doctrine†-policies (see Klein 2008), more easily takes place contributing to -and catalysing the process of capital accumulation. An effective -treatment is arguably the use of means that guarantee the smooth growth -of communities. Structurally, a measure is the adoption by society of -the five maturity conditions to enter the Commons: open standards, free -software, P2P architecture, advanced learning system and communities. As -far as the political context is concerned, the parliamentary democracy, -for instance in Greece, is trying hard to secure the current status -quo by demolishing various citizens' rights and occasionally violating -constitution. One should not rest his/her hopes on the political party -system and the associated policies mainly due to three characteristics -inherent to political party policies: i) restrictions on democracy is -a policy to overcome economic crisis; ii) supranational centralism in -deciding and applying fiscal and monetary policies serves the vision -of a United Europe; iii) in a long period of depression, increased -capital borrowing is the best method to return to growth. This set -of characteristics makes this intentional absurdity evident in the -behaviour of political parties, for which the probability to adopt P2P -practices is practically zero, since this perspective requires immediate -implementation of P2P infrastructures, something which is in contrast -with the notion of “property†as it is embedded in the philosophy -of the political system. How is it possible for a political system that -defends the constitutional interpretation of “propertyâ€, to take the -lead in confiscating private properties? One possible answer is that while -the political system simply declares itself as an adherent of property, -it only defends a particular monopolising trend, a form of impersonal -appropriation against the real individuals. When Jean Monnet (1976) -declared “nous ne coalisons pas des Etats, nous unissons des hommes†-(“we are not building a coalition of states; we are creating a union of -peoplesâ€), his wish came along with the deconstruction of the national -state, conceptually prepared in various publications. The philosophical -background of that approach was clearly Manichaeistic since the bipolar -schema national-supranational is interpreted on the basis of a theocracy -that proclaims a dualism of absolute extremes. Only a few scholars, -Victor Hugo one of them, attempted to transcend the anti-dialectic -heritage of the discourse around the “ideal of a unified Europe†-(Swedberg 1994). The answer to the problem should be a type of democracy -capable to emerge from the activity of Commons-based communities and -the interactions among them. A political project at both national and -international level is required to release the healthy forces that demand -the construction of communities for the benefit of their members. Given -the estimated lengthy time period of the economic crisis as well as its -structural peculiarity, which is a combination of monetary inflexibility -and debt accumulation regardless the possible reduction of deficit, -the parody of the Commons can be eliminated only if communities adhere to -their mission: To ensure a high maturity level and make their requests -for a Commons infrastructure a government policy towards a “partner -stateâ€, i.e., democratically-run, civic institutions that protect -the common good (see Bauwens 2012; Kostakis 2012). This high maturity -level could be achieved through the establishment of a democratic legal -jurisdiction, which would impose restrictions on the exploitation of the -Commons (Kleiner 2010; Fuchs 2013; Bauwens and Kostakis in press). Peer -production might be collectively sustainable but it is not individually: -Most of the peer contributors cannot make a living and they are dependent -on wages from the capitalist market. We side with Bauwens and Kostakis -(in press) who suggest “the creation of Commons-friendly, ethical -enterprises, consisting of the commoners themselves, who also control -their own governance and have ownership. Such enterprises would be -legally structured so that theirs is an obligation to support the -circulation of the Commonsâ€. The development of the Peer Production -Licenses, introduced by Kleiner (2010) as a copyfarleft type license, -could be part of the debate. These licenses could be oriented towards -a plural form of ownership, which would include “maker ownership -(i.e. a revisiting of worker ownership for the P2P age), combined with -user ownership, i.e., a recognition that users of networks co-create -value; and eventually a return for the ethical funders that support -the enterprise†(Bauwens and Kostakis in press). In that way profit -making is allowed, but profit-maximisation would not be the driving -force of economic development. Against the capital accumulation, -which leads to the parody of the Commons-based communities' political -struggle should include the creation of an infrastructure that protects, -enables and catalyses the circulation of the Commons. In that way peer -production i) could become sustainable on the personal level as well; -ii) expand more easily to the manufacturing of tangible products building -on its conjunction with the emerging desktop manufacturing technological -capabilities (see Kostakis 2013); iii) and, thus, protect itself against -capital accumulation with the aim to marginalise, control and eventually -transcend capitalism. - -5. Conclusion We defined two main features of the parody of the Commons: -the institutional integration and the external outsourcing, according -to which the Commons-based peer production is converted into a mode of -crowdsourcing. In these conditions, we described how the Commons emerge -as a promise, then a tragedy and evolve into a parody. As soon as the -gradual destruction is perceived (tragedy) the management of the commons -resource is privatised: The common resource remains common by its name -only (parody). We argue that this is a likely scenario, particularly -damaging communities devoted to the production of tangible goods, in -the absence of free hardware and open specifications. Since information -sources as well as ICT are uniformly distributed, we claimed that the -best management is one applied by groups of conscious individuals -without orders from above. This should take place away from the -traditional perception of the market, which, despite its imperfections, -secured its place in a distant past, when the technology level could -not possibly support analogous claims. Subdivision of communities -into groups organised by a particular information-based competitive -advantage or preferential access and control delegation to the most -powerful parts cannot be possible if Commons-based communities follow -their principles. The opening of a path to such a perspective depends on -whether the majority decides to take creative control of their future. -References Andrejevic, Mark. 2013. Estranged Free Labor. In Digital -Labor. The Internet as Playground and Factory, edited by Trebor Scholz, -149-164. New York: Routledge. Aytes, Ayhan. 2013. Return of the Crowds: -Mechanical Turk and Neoliberal States of Exception. In Digital Labor. The -Internet as Playground and Factory, edited by Trebor Scholz, 79-97. New -York: Routledge. - -Bauwens, Michel. 2005. The Political Economy of -Peer Production. Ctheory Journal. Accessed July 23, -2013. http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499 Bauwens, -Michel. 2007. The Social Web and its Social Contracts: Some Notes on -Social Antagonism in Netarchical Capitalism. Re-public. Accessed -July 23, 2013. http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=261 Bauwens, -Michel. 2009. Class and Capital in Peer Production. Capital and -Class 33 (1): 121-141. Bauwens, Michel. 2012. The 'Welfare State' is -Dead – Long Live the 'Partner State'?. Aljazeera. Accessed July 23, -2013.http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/20123111423139193.html -Bauwens, Michel. 2013. Thesis on Digital Labor in an Emerging P2P -Economy. In Digital Labor. The Internet as Playground and Factory, -edited by Trebor Scholz, 207-210. New York: Routledge. Bauwens, Michel -and Vasilis Kostakis. In press. The Reconfiguration of Time and Place -after the Emergence of Peer-to-Peer infrastructures. In Technopolis: -Smart Cities as Democratic Ecologies, edited by Daniel Araya. New York: -Palgrave Macmillan. Benkler, Yochai. 2002. Coase's Penguin, or Linux -and the Nature of the Firm. The Yale Law Journal 112 (3): 369-446. -Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production -Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven/London: Yale University -Press. Berry, David. 2008. The Poverty of Networks. Theory, Culture -& Society 25 (7-8): 364-372. Bollier, David. 2009. Viral Spiral: -How the Commoners Built a Digital Re-Public of their Own. New York: -New Press. Boyle, James. 1997. Foucault in Cyberspace. Accessed -July 5, 2013. http://www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/foucault.htm Bruns, -Axel. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production -to Produsage. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Caffentzis, George. 2010. The -Future of 'The Commons': Neoliberalism's 'Plan B' or the Original -Disaccumulation of Capital?. New Formations 69 (19): 23-41. Castells, -Manuel. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. -Castells, Manuel. 2003. The Power of Identity. 2nd ed. Oxford: -Blackwell. Czuczka, Tony. 2012. Deutsche Bank Suggests Joint Municipal -Bonds, Handelsblatt Says. Bloomberg Businessweek. Accessed July 25, 2013. -http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-0820/deutsche-bank-suggests-joint-municipal-bonds-handelsblatt-says -Economist, The. 2011. Germany's Local Finances: -Hundreds of Mini-Greeces. Accessed July 25, -2013. http://www.economist.com/node/18587496 Fitzgerald, Brian. 2006. The -Transformation of Open Source Software. MIS Quarterly 30 (3): 587-598. -Fuchs, Christian. 2013. Class and Exploitation on the Internet. In Digital -Labor. The Internet as Playground and Factory, edited by Trebor Scholz, -211-224. New York: Routledge. GNU. 2012. What is Copyleft?. Accessed -July 25, 2013. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.en.html -GNU. 2013. Original BSD license. Accessed July 25, -2013. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenselist.html#OriginalBSD -Greve, Georg. 2006a. Sovereign Software: Open Standards, -Free Software, and the Internet. Accessed July 25, -2013. http://fsfe.org/activities/policy/igf/sovsoft.en.html -Greve, Georg. 2006b. On “Intellectual Property†-and Indigenous Peoples. Accessed July 25, 2013. -http://fsfe.org/activities/wipo/iprip.en.html Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The -Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162 (3859): 1243-1248. Hardt, Michael -and Toni Negri. 2001. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. -Hardt, Michael and Toni Negri. 2011. Commonwealth. Cambridge: Belknap -Press of Harvard University Press. Harvey, David. 2007. The Limits to -Capital. London: Verso. Harvey, David. 2010. The Enigma of Capital: -And the Crises of Capitalism. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. -Hertel, Guido, Sven Niedner, and Stefanie Herrmann. 2003. Motivation of -Software Developers in Open Source Projects: an Internet-Based Survey -of Contributors to the Linux Kernel, Research Policy 32 (7): 1159-1177. -Indexmundi. 2013. Germany Economy Profile 2013. Accessed July 25, 2013. -http://www.indexmundi.com/germany/economy_profile.html Kostakis, -Vasilis. 2012. The Political Economy of Information Production -in the Social Web: Chances for Reflection on our Institutional -Design. Contemporary Social Science 7 (3): 305-319. - -Kostakis, Vasilis. 2013. At the Turning Point of the Current -Techno-Economic Paradigm: CommonsBased Peer Production, Desktop -Manufacturing and the Role of Civil Society in the Perezian -Framework. tripleC-Communication, Capitalism & Critique 11(1): -173-190. Kempf, James and Rob Austein, eds. 2004. The Rise -of the Middle and the Future of End-to-End: Reflections on the -Evolution of the Internet Architecture. Accessed July 25, 2013. -http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3724 Klein, Naomi. 2008. The Shock -Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Picador. Kleiner, -Dmytri. 2010.The Telekommunist Manifesto. Amsterdam: Institute of -Network Cultures. Krugman, Paul. 2009. The Return of Depression -Economics and the Crisis of 2008. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & -Company. Krugman, Paul. 2012. End This Depression Now!. New York, NY: -W. W. Norton & Company. Kumar, Krishan. 1995. From Post-industrial to -Post-modern Society. Oxford: Blackwell. Laisne, Jean-Pierre, Aigrain, -Philippe, Bollier David and Tiemann, Michael. 2010. 2020 FLOSS Roadmap -3rd edn. Accessed July 25, 2013. http://www.2020flossroadmap.org/. -Lakhani, Karim, and Robert Wolf. 2005. Why Hackers Do What they Do: -Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects, -in: J. Feller, B. Fitzgerald, S. Hissam and K. Lakhani, eds. Perspectives -on Free and Open Source Software. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lapavitsas, -Costas, ed. 2012. Financialisation in Crisis. Leiden: Brill. Marx, -Karl. 1992/1885. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy: Volume -Two. London: Penguin. Marx, Karl. 1993/1983. Grundrisse: Foundations -of the Critique of Political Economy. London: Penguin. Monnet, -Jean. 1976. Mémoires. Nous ne Coalisons pas des Etats, Nous Unissons -des Hommes. Paris: Fayard. Mueller, Milton. 2010. Networks and States: -The Global Politics of Internet Governance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. -Orsi, Cosma. 2009. Knowledge-Based Society, Peer Production and the Common -Good. Capital and Class 33 (1): 31-51. Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing -the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. -Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peren, Bruce. 1999. Open -Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution. Sebastopol, CA: O' -Reilly Media. Perez, Carlota. 2002. Technological Revolutions and -Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages. Cheltenham: -Edward Elgar Pub. Perez, Carlota. 2009a. Technological Revolutions -and Techno-Economic Paradigms. Cambridge Journal of Economics -34 (1): 185-202. Perez, Carlota. 2009b. The Double Bubble -at the Turn of the Century: Technological Roots and Structural -Implications. Cambridge Journal of Economics 33 (4): 779-805. Rigi, -Jakob. 2012. Peer to Peer Production as the Alternative to Capitalism: A -New Communist Horizon. Journal of Peer Production. Accessed July 25, 2013. -http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue1/invited-comments/a-new-communist-horizon/ -Schiller, Herbert I. 1981. Who Knows: Information in the Age of the -Fortune 500. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Schiller, Herbert I. 1984. Information -and the Crisis Economy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Schiller, Herbert -I. 1996. Information Inequality. New York: Routledge. Schumpeter, -Joseph. 1975/1942. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: Harper -and Row. Schumpeter, Joseph. 1982/1939. Business Cycles. Philadelphia, -PA: Porcupine Press. Sowell, Thomas. 2010. The Housing Boom -and Bust: Revised Edition. New York, NY: Basic Books. Stallman, -Richard. 2008. Free Software in Ethics and Practice. Accessed July 25, -2013. http://archive.org/details/Richard.Stallman.Manchester.2008 -Stallman, Richard. 2012. Why Open Source -Misses the Point of Free Software. Accessed July 25, -2013. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html -Stiglitz, Joseph. 2010. Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the -Sinking of the World Economy. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Co. -Swedberg, Richard. 1994. The Idea of 'Europe' and the Origin -of the European Union-A Sociological Approach. Zeitschrift -für Soziologie 23 (5): 378-387. Accessed July 25, 2013. -http://zfsonline.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/index.php/zfs/article/viewFile/2871/2408 -Terranova, Tiziana. 2013. Free Labor. In Digital Labor. The Internet -as Playground and Factory, edited by Trebor Scholz, 33-57. New York: -Routledge. Toffler, Alvin, and Heidi Toffler. 2006. Revolutionary -Wealth. New York, NY: Knopf. - -von Hippel, Eric. 2005. Democratizing Innovation. Cambridge, MA: -MIT Press. Webster, Frank. 2002a. Theories of the Information -Society. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Webster, Frank. 2002b. The -Information Society Revisited. In Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping -and Social Consequences of ICTs, edited by Leah Lievrouw and Sonia -Livingstone, 22-33. London: Sage. Williamson, Oliver. 1985. The -Economic Institutions of Capitalism. New York, NY: Free Press. -Williamson, Oliver. 1995. Organization Theory: From Chester Barnard -to the Present and Beyond. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. -Zittrain, Jonathan. 2008. The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop -it. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. - -About the Authors Vasilis Kostakis is a political economist and -founder of the P2P Lab. Currently he is serving as a research fellow -at Tallinn University of Technology as well as at P2P Foundation. -Stelios Stavroulakis is a computer scientist and software engineer -interested in distributed information systems with a particular focus -on free software and open standards and a general awareness of social -and environmental issues. He is a collaborator of P2P Lab. - - diff --git a/_revision/free-network-definition.markdown b/_revision/free-network-definition.markdown deleted file mode 100644 index e3cc1f08b848ab0403d621f9e83864353c4efc08..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/_revision/free-network-definition.markdown +++ /dev/null @@ -1,159 +0,0 @@ -The fundamental dialectic of our struggle is this: will we be enslaved by our -technology, or liberated by it? - -La dialéctica fundamental de nuestro conflicto es ésta: ¿seremos esclavizados -por nuestra tecnologÃa, o liberados por ella? - -It was in cognizance of this notion, and in service to our collective freedom -that the Free Software Movement was born. It is in this spirit that we aim here -to define exactly what it means to say that a network is free. We hope that -the existence of this definition will help illuminate the path to a more just -world. - -Fue en la apreciación de esta noción, y en servicio de nuestra libertad -colectiva, que el Movimiento del Software Libre nació. Es en este espÃritu -que aquà tratamos de definir exactamente lo que significa que una red es -libre. Esperamos que la existencia de esta definición ayude a iluminar el -camino hacia un mundo más justo. - -Our intention is to build communications systems that are owned by the people -that use them, that allow participants to own their own data, and that use -end-to-end encryption and cryptographic trust mechanisms to assure privacy. We -call such systems 'free networks' and they are characterized by the following -five freedoms: - -Nuestra intención es construir sistemas de comunicación que son de la gente que -los usa, que permiten a los participantes ser dueños de sus propios -datos, y que usan encriptación de punta a punta y mecanismos de confianza -criptográficos para garantizar la privacidad. Llamamos a tales sistemas 'redes -libres' y están caracterizados por las siguientes cinco libertades: - -* Freedom 0) The freedom to participate in the network. - - Freedom 0 regards your right to organize cooperative networks. - - Conventional networks are characterized by a distinction between provider - and user. This mode of organization encourages network operation in the service - of self-interest. The provider builds and owns the infrastructure, and the user - pays for access. In a free network, however, nodes connect to one another, - rather than to a single, monolithic provider. By nature of its design, a free - network is owned by those that make use of it. Participants act as providers - and users as the same time, and growth is auto-distributed by treating any - profits as investment. In this way, those that join the network are able to - become owners. This mode of organization encourages network operation in the - service of the common good. - -* Libertad 0) La libertad de participar en la red. - - La libertad 0 trata sobre tu derecho de organizar redes cooperativas. - - Las redes convencionales se caracterizan por una distinción entre proveedor - y usuario. Este modo de organización promueve la operación de la red en - servicio del interés propio. El proveedor construye y posee la - infraestructura y el usuario paga por el acceso. En una red libre, sin - embargo, los nodos se conectan entre sÃ, en vez de a un único proveedor - monolÃtico. Por la naturaleza de su diseño, una red libre es poseÃda por - aquellos que le dan uso. Los participantes actúan como proveedores y usuarios - al mismo tiempo, y el crecimiento es distribuido automáticamente al tratar - cualquier ganancia como inversión. De esta forma, aquellos que se unen a la - red son capaces de volverse propietarios. Este modo de organización promueve - que la operación de la red sea al servicio del bien común. - -* Freedom 1) The freedom to determine where one's bits are stored. - - Freedom 1 regards your right to own the material stores of your data. - - Conventional networks encourage (if not force) their participants to store - their data in machines which are under the administrative auspices of an - external service provider or host. Most folks are not able to serve data from - their homes. Participants ought to be free to store their own data (so that it - is under their care) without sacrificing their ability to publish it. - -* Libertad 1) La libertad de determinar dónde son guardados los bits propios. - - La libertad 1 trata sobre tu derecho de poseer el almacenamiento material de - tus datos. - - Las redes convencionales promueven (si no fuerzan) que sus participantes - almacenen sus datos en máquinas que están bajo la protección administrativa - de un proveedor de servicio o alojamiento externos. La mayorÃa de la gente no - es capaz de servir datos desde sus casas. Los participantes deben ser libres - de almacenar sus propios datos (a fin de que estén bajo su cuidado) sin - sacrificar su habilidad para publicarlos. - -* Freedom 2) The freedom to determine the parties with whom one's bits are shared. - - Freedom 2 regards your right to control access to your data. - - Data mining and the monetization of sharing has become common practice. - Participants should be free to chose those with whom they would like to share a - given piece of information. Only someone who owns their own data can fully - exercise this freedom, but it is an issue regardless of where the relevant bits - are stored. - -* Libertad 2) La libertad para determinar con quiénes son compartidos los bits - propios. - - La libertad 2 trata sobre tu derecho a controlar el acceso a tus datos. - - La minerÃa de datos y la monetización del compartir se ha vuelto una práctica - común. Los participantes deberÃan ser libres de elegir a aquellos con quienes - les gustarÃa compartir una determinada información. Sólo alguien que posee - sus propios datos puede ejercitar completamente esta libertad, pero es un - problema sin importar dónde estén guardados los bits relevantes. - -* Freedom 3) The freedom to transmit bits to one's peers without the prospect - of interference, interception or censorship. - - Freedom 3 regards the right to speak freely with your peers. - - Information flows in conventional networks are routinely and intentionally - intercepted, obstructed, and censored. This is done at the behest of corporate - and state actors around the world. In a free network, private communications - should remain unexamined from the time they enter the network until the time - they reach their destination. - -* Libertad 3) La libertad para transmitir bits a un igual sin el prospecto de - interferencia, interceptación o censura. - - La libertad 3 trata sobre el derecho de hablar libremente con tus pares. - - Los flujos de información en las redes convencionales son rutinaria e - intencionalmente interceptadas, obstruidas y censuradas. Esto se hace a - instancias de actores corporativos y estatales alrededor del mundo. En una - red libre, las comunicaciones privadas deberÃan permanecer sin examinar desde - el momento en que entran a la red hasta el momento en que llegan a su - destino. - -* Freedom 4) The freedom to maintain anonymity, or to present a unique, trusted - identity. - - Freedom 4 regards your right to construct your own identity - - There is increasing pressure to forbid anonymity, and yet trustworthy - communications remain rare. While it is essential to liberty that individuals - be able to remain anonymous in the online public sphere, it is also essential - that they be able to construct and maintain persistent, verifiable identities. - Such identities might bear a legal name, a common name, or an avatar that masks - one's corporeal self – individuals could have many such identities, and switch - between them at will. Clear delineation between anonymous, pseudonymous, and - onymous actors would enable all of us to better asses the trustworthiness of - others on the network. - -* Libertad 4) La libertad para mantener el anonimato, o presentar una identidad - única y confiable. - - La libertad 4 trata sobre tu derecho a construir tu propia identidad - - Hay una creciente presión para prohibir el anonimato, y sin embargo las - comunicaciones confiables permanecen escasas. Mientras que es esencial - para la libertad que los individuos puedan mantenerse anónimos en la esfera - pública online, también es esencial que sean capaces de construir y mantener - identidades persistentes y verificables. Tales identidades podrán mostrar un - nombre legal, uno común, o un avatar que enmascara nuestro ser corpóreo - los - individuos pueden tener muchas de tales identidades, y cambiar entre ellas a - voluntad. Una clara delineación entre actores anónimos, pseudónimos y - ónimos[^NdT] nos permitirÃa a todos evaluar mejor la confiabilidad de otros - en la red. - -[^NdT]: WTF! diff --git a/_revision/hacelocracia.markdown b/_revision/hacelocracia.markdown deleted file mode 100644 index e726018bcd77ccd4809adf4b2afe9ae7bb03d7dc..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/_revision/hacelocracia.markdown +++ /dev/null @@ -1,107 +0,0 @@ -# La Hacelocracia - -Tomado de la [Wiki de Noisebridge][0] y liberado bajo [CreativeCommons -Atribucion-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0][1]. - -En general cuando alguien quiere hacer algo o hacer un cambio importante en -Noisebridge, lo menciona en una reunión y pasa por nuestro [Proceso de -consenso][2]. La mayor parte de las veces muchos de nosotros no tenemos ganas -de pasar una semana determinando si todos estamos de acuerdo con alguna cosa -pequeña o mundana, por lo que tenemos la Hacelocracia. La Hacelocracia tiende -a funcionar siempre que nuestra única regla sea respetada, ser excelente con -los demás. - -Hacelocracia significa: - -> Si querés que algo se haga, hacelo, pero sé excelente con los demás mientras -> lo hacés. - -Una parte importante de ser excelente es documentar tus cambios. Escribà una -nota en el [Log de cambios][3] de Noisebridge o dejala sobre lo que hayas hecho -hacelocráticamente. Dejar números de contacto resulta especialmente importante -si querés que la gente te contacte sobre el cambio que hiciste. El reto -principal de la hacelocracia no es la posibilidad de revertir los cambios, sino -en asumirse responsable. - -## Casos de uso - -### Versión corta - -* Pepe pregunta en general si a alguien le parece que el [bicicletero][] sea - rosado. A nadie le molesta. - -* Pepe pinta el bicicletero de rosa. - - -### La versión siendo excelente con los demás - -* Pepe pinta el bicicletero de rosa. - -* Pepa no cree que el bicicletero que ayudó a construir tenga que ser rosado. - -* Pepa discute amigablemente con Pepe sobre por qué Pepe pensó que estaba bien - pintarlo de ese color. Pepe se da cuenta que la otra gente con la que - comparte el espacio también tiene sentimientos. - -* Pepe y Pepa decidan pintar el bicicletero de azul. - - -### La versión de lo que pasa normalmente - -* Pepe pinta el bicicletero de rosa. - -* Noisebridge es tan grande que siempre hay alguien con una opinión sobre algo - (en general siempre es alguien que no participa activamente del espacio o que - no está casi nunca), asà que Pepa se enoja con Pepe y lo amenaza de muerte. - A Pepa no le gusta el rosa y ya que no tiene un trabajo y está pasando la - mayor parte de su tiempo en Noisebridge, es como su segundo hogar y quiere - que se maneje como a ella le gusta. - -* Pepa y Pepe se gritan en la lista de discusión, molestando a cientos de - personas. - -* Durante la semana siguiente, Pepe convierte a Noisebridge en un lugar de - discusión sobre lo turra que es Pepa y cómo los demás deberÃan decirlo en la - lista de discusión. - -* Pepa le da el número y la dirección de Pepe a [#bantown][4]. - -* Pepe pasa el resto del mes siguiente diciéndole a todo el mundo que va - a dejar o dejó de participar en Noisebridge, o alguna combinación de las dos. - -* Pepa, en venganza porque Pepe revierte constantemente sus cambios en la wiki, - caga sobre la mesa de electrónica, como demostración para aquellos (todos) - que no han dejado de hablarle a Pepe. - -* Pepe cena con Pepa y después de un rato de chamuyar terminan en la casa de - Pepa. La mañana siguiente se despierta en la cama de Pepa, sintiéndose - culpable. Ninguna ducha lo hará sentirse limpio. - -En este punto una de dos cosas pasa: - -* Los amigos de Pepe y Pepa se conocen, por lo que sin darse cuenta terminan - emborrachándose juntos en un bar y hacen las paces, llorando en los hombros - del otro sobre la pérdida de tiempo que es Noisebridge. - -* El drama continúa hasta que alguien se rinde y sigue con lo suyo. Nadie se - acuerda cómo fue que empezó esta batalla épica. - - -### Notas - -* La Hacelocracia funciona la mayor parte del tiempo. Cuando no, es una cagada. - -* Escribà una nota (con tu nombre o nick) explicando lo que hiciste. - -* Si alguien te pide amablemente que lo dejes como estaba, sé amable también - y cambialo. - -* Si alguien te forrea sobre algo que cambiaste, sé amable y cambialo. Si tenés - que lloriquear hacelo después de restaurar lo que cambiaste. - -[bicicletero]: http://bicicletero.hackcoop.com.ar -[0]: https://www.noisebridge.net/index.php?title=Do-ocracy&oldid=28180 -[1]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ -[2]: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Consensus_Process -[3]: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/ChangeLog -[4]: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bantown diff --git a/_revision/jopp_caring-about-the-plumbing.md b/_revision/jopp_caring-about-the-plumbing.md deleted file mode 100644 index 62fb297e3f2246cb8520ec37d1f9b599063a4cf0..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/_revision/jopp_caring-about-the-plumbing.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,958 +0,0 @@ -http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-1/peer-reviewed-papers/caring-about-the-plumbing/ - -· Caring about the plumbing: On the importance of architectures in -social studies of (peer-to-peer) technology - -**Francesca Musiani** - -*Study an information system and neglect its standards, wires, and -settings,\ - and you miss equally essential aspects of aesthetics, justice, and -change.*\ - - Susan Leigh Star (1999, p. 339) - -1. Introduction ---------------- - -“Peer-to-peer is plumbing, and most people don’t care about plumbing,†-pointed out some years ago Dan Bricklin, the father of the first -spreadsheet VisiCalc, in a seminal book about peer-to-peer (P2P) -technology’s potential as a “disruptive†technology (Bricklin, 2001 in -Oram, 2001, p. 59). The “most people†Bricklin refers to in this -citation are, of course, end users of the popular first-generation P2P -file-sharing applications, like Napster, that were experiencing their -hour of glory at the dawn of the 21st century. - -Indeed, Bricklin may have been right in his assessment of the first P2P -file-sharing applications’ success: likely, it owes more to the -suitability of such tools to rapidly find a song and obtain it, than to -their underlying peer-to-peer architecture in itself. Yet, this argument -raises new and interesting methodological questions for scholars of -social studies of networking technologies, be they used for -communication, sharing, or production purposes. To what extent may -Bricklin’s perception of indifference towards architecture apply not -only to a majority of users of Internet-based services, but to these -scholars, as well – and why, instead, it is important for them to -“careâ€? - -This article discusses the relevance, for scholars working on social -studies of network media, of addressing elements of application -architecture and design as an integral part of their subject of study. -By discussing an ongoing research on “alternative†or “legitimate†-(Verma, 2004) applications of P2P networking models, the article argues -that social studies of network media need to “care about the plumbing,†-or as Susan Leigh Star has effectively put it, “surface invisible work†-(1999, p. 385) underlying networked practices, uses and exchanges – as -an integral part of the “processes of constitution, organization, and -change of […] the network society†(Castells, 2000, p. 693). - -In doing so, the article proposes to acknowledge how Internet-based -services’ current trajectories of innovation increasingly suggest that -particular forms of distribution and decentralization (or their lack), -impact specific procedures, practices and uses. As Barbara van Schewick -has recently suggested, architectures should be understood an -“alternative way of influencing economic systems†(2010, p. 3), indeed, -the very fabric of user behavior and interaction. Most notably, the -status of every Internet user as a consumer, a sharer, a producer and -possibly a manager of digital content is informed by, and shapes in -return, the technical structure and organization of the services (s)he -has access to: their mandatory passage points, places of storage and -trade, required intersections. This article is a call to study the -architecture of networking applications as a “relational property, not -as a thing stripped of use†(Star & Ruhleder, 1996, p. 113), “as part of -human organization, and as problematic as any other†(Star, 2002, p. -116). It suggests that such an approach provides an added value to the -study of those communities, groups and practices that, by leveraging -socio-technical dynamics of distribution, decentralization, -collaboration and peer production, are currently questioning more -traditional or institutionalized models of content creation, search and -sharing. - -2. Architectures, fieldwork and methods: fleshing out the invisible -------------------------------------------------------------------- - -The architecture of a network or an application is its underlying -technical structure (van Schewick, 2010), designed according to a -“matrix of concepts†(Agre, 2003): its logical and structural layout, -consisting of transmission equipment, communication protocols, -infrastructure, and connectivity between its components or nodes.[1] The -choice of taking architectures, artifacts transparent to end users by -fiat of their creators, as the starting point – or at least as an -important and integral part – of a study of practices and uses with -network media raises a number of challenges, as well as great promise. - -As Barbara van Schewick points out, the compartmentalization of -disciplines may have led in the past to a general understanding of -architectures as artifacts that are “relevant only to engineersâ€, and as -such, should be exclusively left to their purview (2010, p. 2). However, -in relation to network media, software, code and cyberinfrastructure -studies have recently taken up the challenge of interdisciplinarity -(e.g. Fuller, 2008), drawing on past endeavours in the field of -sociology of technology and science, exploring the social and political -qualities of infrastructures (e.g. Star, 1999). In addition, some -authors experimenting at the intersection of computer science, -sociology, law and science & technology studies (STS) explore innovative -methodological approaches to architectures, working on the integration -of architectures and practices in their analyses. These bodies of work -will now be addressed in some more detail. - -**2.1. Disciplines and layers**\ - Literature in computer science and computer engineering has, perhaps -quite obviously, paid a great deal of attention to architectures of -Internet-based applications and networks: their definition (Schollmeier, -2002; Schoder & Fischbach, 2003 ; Shirky et al., 2001), their technical -advantages and disadvantages in a comparative perspective (e.g. -client/server vs. peer-to-peer architectures, Verma, 2004, p. 11-16) and -their application to specific projects serving a variety of uses (Oram, -2001, p. 67-159); these “purely†technical aspects of such systems are -seldom addressed in relation to their societal, relational and -organizational properties (Taylor & Harrison, 2009, p. 113-115). In some -cases of highly publicized, debated applications – as it has been the -case for some P2P systems – engineers have at times sought to present a -technical perspective on the limits and advantages of specific -architectures within at-large political and public debates (Auber, 2007; -Le Fessant, 2006, 2009). Other scholars, interested in the metrology of -networks, seek to model interactions by means of large-scale graphs, so -as to study patterns of information propagation, the robustness of -networks, the forms of exchange and sharing (e.g. Aidouni et al., 2009). -Their aim is to build measuring tools that are better adapted to the -ever-increasing size and complexity of networks, and more able to face -the increasing inadequacy of traditional statistical and sampling -methods to account for the magnitude of this scaling process (Baccelli, -2005). - -On the other hand, as of today, an important number of works in economic -and social sciences has sought to explore the practices of sharing, -cooperation and interaction facilitated or enabled by online -environments: it is the case of many contributions exploring new forms -of organization, contribution and collaboration, like social networks -(e.g. Boyd, 2004; Cardon, 2008) or online communities (Auray, 2011), be -they composed of fans (Hellekson & Busse, 2006), contributors to wiki -projects (Reagle, 2010), or specialized professionals (Lock, 2006). - -The body of work on the law of network technologies has extensively -addressed, on its hand – again, perhaps unsurprisingly – the dynamics of -file-sharing practices by means of direct-exchange networking -technologies, and has focused the debate on the ways in which innovative -networking practices may be assimilated, by analogy, to mechanisms of -remuneration and compensation similar to those in place for material, -private copies (e.g. Gasser & Ernst, 2006). As pointed out by Mélanie -Dulong de Rosnay (2005, 2007), as of now, only a comparatively small -number of works has been devoted to the ways in which law can take into -account the objects and sources of value (such as metadata and personal -data) produced by new technical configurations. - -**2.2. Towards an integration of architectures and practices: the STS -legacy\ -**Some examples in recent literature open very interesting paths by -undertaking the next step in the experimentation with -interdisciplinarity. These authors, coming from a variety of different -backgrounds, approach architectures in innovative ways by integrating -the link between architectures and practices in their analyses. - -Perhaps the most notable attempt in this direction is constituted by the -work, carried out during the last fifteen years by Susan Leigh Star and -colleagues within the field of STS, on infrastructures as constantly -evolving socio-technical systems, informed not only by physical elements -invisible to the end user, but also by factors such as social -organization and knowledge sharing (Star & Ruhleder, 1996; Neumann & -Star, 1996; Star, 1999; Star, 2002; Star & Bowker, 2006) Through her -“call to study boring things,†Star effectively conveys the idea that -architectural design choices, technical specifications, standards and -number sequences are no less important to the study of information -systems because they are “hidden mechanisms subtending those processes -more familiar to social scientists†(Star, 1999, p. 337). As she writes -in a seminal article on the ethnography of infrastructure: - -It takes some digging to unearth the dramas inherent in system design -creating, to restore narrative to what appears to be dead lists. […] -Much of the ethnographic study of information systems implicitly -involves the study of infrastructure. Struggles with infrastructure are -built into the very fabric of technical work […]. However, it is easy to -stay within the traditional purview of field studies: talk, community, -identity, and group processes, as now mediated by information -technology. […] Study an information system and neglect its standards, -wires, and settings, and you miss equally essential aspects of -aesthetics, justice, and change (Star, 1999, p. 337-339). - -This “relational†approach brings about considerable changes in methods, -as the scope of the fieldwork enlarges to include arenas where the -shapes of architecture and infrastructure are observed, deconstructed, -reconstructed, and decisions are made about codes, standards, -bricolages, reconfigurations (Star & Bowker, 2006, p. 151-152), where -the scholar undertakes a combination of “historical and literary -analysis, traditional tools like interviews and observations, systems -analysis, and usability studies†(Star, 1999, p. 382). - -Emergent bodies of work such as software studies, critical code studies -and cyberinfrastructure studies (Manovich, 2001; Fuller, 2008; Marino, -2006; Ribes & Lee, 2010) owe a lot to the STS approach, seeking, as Matt -Kirschenbaum (2003) puts it, to balance “the deployment of critical -terms like ‘virtuality’ […with] a commitment to meticulous documentary -research to recover and stabilize the material traces of new mediaâ€. The -materiality of software, code, and so-called virtual elements of the -Internet user’s experience is reaffirmed, and the relationship between -these layers (or “levelsâ€, as defined by Mark Marino) explored: - -Meaning grows out of the functioning of the code but is not limited to -the literal processes the code enacts. Through CCS, practitioners may -critique the larger human and computer systems,from the level of the -computer to the level of the society in which these code objects -circulate and exert influence (Marino, 2006). - -**2.3. Architectures: social, legal, political\ -**On the side of computational and quantitative sociology, David Hales -and colleagues seek to explore features of particular groupings that he -calls “virtual tribesâ€, such as dynamic formation and dissolution -overtime, cooperation, specialization, reputation systems, and -occasional antagonist behavior; he considers that a thorough -understanding of such phenomena is a necessary precondition for the -construction of robust and resilient software systems, both today and in -the future (Hales, 2006; Marcozzi & Hales, 2008; Hales, Arteconi, -Marcozzi & Chao, 2008). - -Information studies scholar and Internet pioneer Philip Agre explores on -his side the relationship between technical architecture and -institutions, notably the difference between “architecture as politics†-and “architecture as a substitute for politics†(Agre, 2003). He argues -that technologies “often come wrapped in stories about politicsâ€, and -while these stories may not explain the motives of the technologists, -they are indeed useful to account for the energy that makes a technology -an inherently social one, and projects it into the larger world (p. 39). -Defining architectures as the matrixes of concepts (e.g. the distinction -between clients and servers) designed into technology, and institutions -as the matrixes of concepts that organize language, rules, job titles, -and other social categories in particular societal sectors, Agre -suggests that the engineering story of rationally distributed -computation and the political story of institutional change through -decentralized architecture are not naturally related. They reconfigure -and evolve constantly, and for these reconfigurations and evolutions to -share a common direction, they need work: - -Decentralized institutions do not imply decentralized architectures, or -vice versa. The drive toward decentralized architectures need not serve -the political purpose of decentralizing society. Architectures and -institutions inevitably coevolve, and to the extent they can be -designed, they should be designed together. […] Radically improved -information and communication technologies do open new possibilities for -institutional change. To explore those possibilities, though, -technologists will need better ideas about institutions (Agre, 2003, p. -42). - -At the crossroads of informatics, economics and law, Barbara van -Schewick has recently put forward the idea that the architecture of the -Internet, and of the applications running on it, is relevant to -economics. Her work seeks to examine how changes, notably design -choices, in the Internet’s architecture (that she defines operationally -as the “underlying technical structure†of the network of networks) -affect the economic environment for innovation, and evaluates the impact -of these changes from the perspective of public policy (2010, p. 2). -According to van Schewick, this is a first step towards filling a gap in -how scholarship understands innovators’ decisions to innovate and the -economic environment for innovation: after many years of research on -innovation processes, we understand how these are affected by changes in -laws, norms, and prices; yet, we lack a similar understanding of how -architecture and innovation impact each other (p. 2-3). Perhaps, van -Schewick suggests, this is due to the intrinsic appeal of architectures -as purely technical systems: - -Just as the architecture of a house describes its basic inner structure, -the architecture of a complex system describes the basic inner structure -of the system — its components, what they do, and how they interact to -provide the system’s functionality. That such a technical structure may -have economic consequences at all is a relatively recent insight. Most -people still think of architectures as technical artifacts that are -relevant only to engineers. Thus, understanding how the Internet’s -architecture affects innovation requires us to think more generally -about how architectures affect innovation (van Schewick, 2010, p. 4). - -Traditionally, she concludes, policy makers have used the law to bring -about desired economic effects. Architecture de facto constitutes an -alternative way of influencing economic systems, and as such, it is -becoming another tool that actors can use to further their interests (p. -389). - -Along the same lines, within a large-scale project investigating how the -corpus of Requests for Comments (RFCs) of the Internet Engineering Task -Force provides indications on the ways in which the Internet’s technical -designers understood and engaged with law and policy issues, Sandra -Braman has most recently (2011) explored how the core problem in the -Internet’s technical design was to build structures that not only -tolerated, but actually facilitated change. By addressing the ways in -which change and stability themselves were conceptualized by Internet -designers, Braman argues that undertaking research on architectural « -design for instability » as applied to the Internet provides insight not -only into the Internet itself, but into its social, legal and technical -relations with other information and communication technologies (ICTs). - -Drawing on pioneering works such as those of Yochai Benkler on sharing -as a paradigm of economic production in its own right (2004) and of -Lawrence Lessig on “code as law†(2002), the relationship between -architecture and law is further explored by Niva Elkin-Koren (2002, -2006); a common trait of her works is its underlying perspective on -architecture as a dynamic parameter, and she treats it as such while -studying the reciprocal influences of law and technology design in -information and communication systems. Elkin-Koren argues that the -interrelationship between law and technology often focuses on one single -aspect, the challenges that emerging technologies pose to the existing -legal regime, thereby creating a need for further legal reform; thus, -she notes how juridical measures involving technology both as a target -of regulation and as a means of enforcement should take into account -that the law does not merely respond to new technologies, but also -shapes them and may affect their design (Elkin-Koren, 2006). - -3. What architecture for the future Internet (-based services)? ---------------------------------------------------------------- - -The Internet’s current trajectories of innovation are making it -increasingly evident by the day: the evolutions (and in-volutions) of -the “network of networksâ€, and at a broader level of electronic -communications, are likely to depend in the medium-to-long term on the -topology and the organizational/technical model of Internet-based -applications, as well as on the infrastructure underlying them (Aigrain, -2011). - -The development of services based on distributed architectures is -currently affirming itself as one of the Internet’s most important axes -of transformation. The concept of distribution is somehow shaped and -inscribed into the very beginnings of the Internet – notably in the -organization and circulation of information fluxes – but its current -topology integrates this structuring principle only in very limited ways -(Minar & Hedlund, 2001). The limits of the “classic†urbanism of the -Internet, which has been predominant since the beginning of its -commercial era and its appropriation by the masses, are becoming evident -with regards to phenomena such as the widespread success of social media -(Schafer, Le Crosnier & Musiani, 2011). While Internet users have -become, at least potentially, not only consumers but also distributors, -sharers and producers of digital content, the network of networks is -structured in such a way that large quantities of data are centralized -and compressed within specific regions of the Internet, at the same time -when they are most suited to a rapid re-diffusion and re-sharing in -multiple locations of a network that has now reached its full -globalization. - -**3.1. Architectures and the Internet’s “social valueâ€**\ - The current organization of Internet-based services and the structure -of the network that enables their functioning, with its mandatory -passage points, places of storage and trade, required intersections, -raises many questions, both in terms of the optimized utilization of -storage resources, and of the fluidity, rapidity and effectiveness of -electronic exchanges. Other interrogations, on the security of exchanges -and on the stability of the network, must also be added to these issues: -a series of malfunctions and breakdowns with important consequences at -the global level [2] draw our attention on questions of security and -data protection, inherent to the Internet’s current structure. - -These questions impact largely the balance of powers between users and -network providers, and reach questions of net neutrality. To what extent -can network providers interfere with specific uses? Can the network be -optimized for specific uses? As Barbara van Schewick points out, by -enabling users to use the Internet in the way that creates the most -value for them, changes in architecture are not only likely to impact -the value of the Internet for users, but also to increase or diminish -the Internet’s overall value to society: - -But the social value of architectures […] goes beyond that. The Internet -has the potential to enhance individual freedom, provide a platform for -better democratic participation, foster a more critical and -self-reflective culture, and potentially improve human development -everywhere. The Internet’s ability to realize this potential, however, -is tightly linked to features — user choice, non-discrimination, -non-optimization (van Schewick, 2010, p. 387), - -that may be achieved in different ways by designing its underlying -architecture in different ways. Resorting to decentralized architectures -and distributed organizational forms, then, constitutes a different way -to address some issues of management of the network, in a perspective of -effectiveness, security and digital “sustainable development†(better -resource management), and of maximization of its value to society. - -This idea is further explored by Michel Bauwens (2005) who, proposing a -vision of the P2P model that is based on but goes beyond computer -technology, puts forward a P2P theory as a “general theory†of -collaborative and direct human interaction, an emerging, pervasive and -inherently social phenomenon that may be profoundly transforming the way -in which society and human civilization is organised. - -**3.2. The peer-to-peer model: a return to the past, a promise for the -future**\ - Since the inception of the Internet, the principle of decentralization -has governed the circulation of transmissions and communications on the -“network of networks†(Aigrain, 2011). However, the introduction of the -World Wide Web in 1990 has progressively and widely led to the diffusion -of “client-server†architecture models; the most widespread and diffused -Internet-based services (social networks, instant messaging tools, -digital content storage services…) are based upon technical and economic -models in which end users ask for information, data, services to “farms†-of powerful servers, stocking information and/or managing network -traffic (van Schewick, 2010, p. 70). Even if traffic on the Internet -functions on the generalized distribution principle, it has now taken -the form of concentration around servers delivering access to content. -Yet, this modality of organization for structure and services, in and on -the network, is not the only possible one – and while being the most -widespread, it is maybe not the most effective. Thus, the search for -alternatives is currently in progress (Aigrain, 2010, 2011; Moglen, -2010). - -Peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture is reclaiming its place among these -alternatives. It is a computer network model structured in such a way -that communications and/or exchanges take place between nodes having the -same responsibility within the system. The dichotomy between server -(provider of the service) and client(s) (requesters of the service), -typical of the client-server model, is replaced by a situation where -every client becomes a server as well, where all peers have a resource -and all peers request it (Schollmeier, 2002). - -The P2P model is not per se innovative in the history of the Internet. -Indeed, the original Internet was fundamentally designed as a -peer-to-peer system, before the network started being populated by an -ever-increasing number of end users, and became the device through which -millions of consumer clients communicated with a “relatively privileged†-set of servers (Minar & Hedlund, 2001, p. 4). Yet, as the quantity and -quality of bandwidth increased, home computers became more powerful, and -domestic users progressively diversified their activities beyond -browsing the Web and trading emails, the conditions were set for another -change – or, perhaps, a reversion, with “machines in the home and on the -desktop are connecting to each other directly, forming groups and -collaborating to become user-created search engines, virtual -supercomputers, and file systemsâ€. So, while noticing the “many specific -problems where the Internet architecture has been strainedâ€, application -developers often find themselves looking back to the Internet of twenty -years ago when considering how best to solve a problem (Minar & Hedlund, -2001, p. 3; Figueiredo et al., 2008). - -P2P architecture embraces the decentralization principle by harnessing -the network in a different way than client-server applications. In this -architecture, users ask for services to a cluster of servers of limited -capacity; unless there is the possibility to add further servers at any -time, a critical point in data transmission for and to all users may be -eventually reached depending on additional clients joining the network -(and, in extreme conditions, turn into denial-of-service situations). In -P2P architecture, users are not only exploiting a resource (be it -bandwidth, storage space, computing power) but are providing it, as well -– so that, if the request to which the system must respond augments, the -total capacity of the system increases, too. P2P systems may also -present advantages in terms of stability and endurance, as the -distributed nature of the system improves its overall strength and -avoids its complete invalidation in case one of the nodes fails to -perform as expected or disconnects from the system. Indeed, the -effectiveness of P2P as a distribution model is strictly linked to its -“plumbingâ€: the repartition of computing power and bandwidth among all -components of the system, which changes the distributive structure and -the allotment of costs by increasing bandwidth use at the level of the -network, not of the server(s) (Elkin-Koren, 2006, p. 21-23). - -In the course of their relatively short history, P2P systems have often -been considered as a threat to the interests of the industries of -digital content, as their main use by the public has been the -unauthorized sharing of materials covered by intellectual property -rights, notably copyright. More specifically, this reputation has been -forged in the first years 2000, with the advent of exchange and sharing -practices at the global scale, concerning millions of users – the most -emblematic case being that of Napster and its sixty millions of sharers, -a service functioning on a centralized P2P architectural model, that was -shortly followed by hybrid and purely decentralized versions. Shortly -after the explosion of these “renewed†P2P technologies, attempts have -also been made to find economic models promoting this means of exchange -within the current legal framework, but they have generally proven -unsatisfactory [3]. - -The crucial role that such considerations have had in shaping the -controversial status of P2P technologies vis-à -vis the media and the -public may have led researchers to some pitfalls, as well. A -reductionist interpretation of the “P2P effectâ€, often underplayed as a -proxy for illegality, should be avoided – a perspective that is -particularly evident, Niva Elkin-Koren remarks (2006), in the juridical -literature on P2P and law. Also, social scientists should watch out for -the traps that P2P, a model with strong a priori connotations of -equality and decentralization, may set up. As noted by Philip Agre, it -is particularly easy in the case of P2P to juxtapose architecture to the -stories of institutions, individuals and groups, assuming that one -determines the other – but this may lead to a misleading shortcut: - -In the case of P2P technologies, the official engineering story is that -computational effort should be distributed to reflect the structure of -the problem. But the engineering story does not explain the strong -feelings P2P computing often evokes. The strong feelings derive from a -political story, often heatedly disavowed by technologists but -widespread in the culture: P2P delivers on the Internet’s promise of -decentralization. By minimizing the role of centralized computing -elements, the story goes, P2P systems will be immune to censorship, -monopoly, regulation, and other exercises of centralized authority. This -juxtaposition of engineering and politics is common enough, and for an -obvious reason: engineered artifacts such as the Internet are embedded -in society in complicated ways […] the case of P2P computing (is good) -to analyze the relationship between engineering and politics—or, as I -want to say, between architectures and institutions. […] The P2P -movement understands that architecture is politics, but it should not -assume that architecture is a substitute for politics (Agre, 2003, p. -39-42). - -P2P-based socio-technical systems may be better analyzed and understood -with an approach that addresses, studies, explores architecture as the -very fabric of those interactions and examines how these shape, in -return, subsequent negotiations and redesigns of the system. Scholars -interested in networking technologies of communication and exchange need -to “learn to read these invisible layers of control and access. In order -to understand how this operates, however, it is necessary to -‘deconstruct’ the boring, backstage parts […], to disembed the -narratives it contains and the behind-the-scenes decisions […], as part -of material information science culture†(Star, 2002, p.110). - -4. When architectures matter: the many faces of P2P systems ------------------------------------------------------------ - -This article has sought to discuss the relevance, for social scientists -interested in network media and systems, of paying analytical attention -to elements of application architecture and design, as a core feature of -their subject of study. In particular, by discussing P2P technology as a -technical networking model and a dynamic of social interaction that are -inextricably intertwined, it has endeavored to illustrate the potential -and challenges of this approach when addressing issues of transformation -and sustainability of the current Internet model. While the primary -purpose of the article has been to discuss the foundations of a -methodological perspective, and not to delve into the field by its means -[4], this last section introduces – as both a conclusion and an overture -– some elements on how I have actually taken architectures into account -in my methodology when addressing an often underplayed, yet promising -area of innovation within the field of Internet-based services: that of -“alternative†or “legitimate†applications of peer-to-peer networks. - -**4.1. “Alternative†P2P and Internet-based services**\ - A critical examination of different models of technical architectures, -in terms of their impact on Internet-based cooperation and production -practices – a better understanding of what the “plumbing†is about – -makes it possible to single out a growing number of P2P applications, -under-represented and somewhat hidden by the media buzz and the trials -engendered by the illegal sharing of musical files (Laflaquière, 2005). - -In recent years, mostly since 2004, many projects and applications have -seen the light, that propose alternatives – built on decentralized or -P2P-based architectures – to Web-based online services occupying an -important place in the daily life of Internet users. The uses entailed -by such tools include information search and retrieval, sharing, and -communication. Thus, these projects are positioning themselves with -respect to services proposed by actors every Internet user is well -acquainted with, such as Google, Facebook, Picasa. By harnessing the -potential of P2P and of decentralization, the developers of such -projects aim at satisfying the same needs from the point of view of the -end user (who continues to search keywords, network with friends, share -pictures with them), but building the application on a different -architectural model or technical platform. A move that has potentially -long-reaching implications vis-à -vis the service provider’s status, its -access to information, and the material locations in which storage and -sharing operations of user-created content are conducted. - -The analysis of how the integration of architecture and practices is -enacted in “alternative†P2P applications appears especially useful when -studying up-and-coming experiments with the decentralization of storage -and search services with a social networking component. This -investigation has been at the core of my PhD dissertation, currently in -the writing phase, parts of which have been published in previous papers -(Musiani, 2010a, 2010b, 2011). These applications reveal their -specificities with respect to both their centralized counterparts -(serving the same purpose, but underlying a different architecture) and -file-sharing P2P networks. The attention to the “plumbing†allows to -delve into dynamics of articulation between local and global dimensions -in a distributed application; of sharing of disk space and bandwidth as -the cornerstone of a socio-economic model for P2P; of deployment of -technical uncertainty and social opportunity at the “edges†of the -network, where under-utilized resources, both human and material, can be -leveraged. - -**4.2. A pragmatic approach to P2P architectures**\ - Thus, the elaboration of case studies on “alternative†P2P applications -– when it becomes an exploration of the ways and means in which the -opportunity of change is constituted with P2P – entails a plural -approach, that follows on one hand the innovators, trying to identify -their strategies in the construction of the technologies, as well as -their valors, cultures and imaginaires of reference, and on the other -hand, the role played, where possible, by the first users of the -systems. The objective is threefold: retracing and breaking down, in -developers’ and users’ narratives, the actions and dynamics that -represent at once P2P technology and the changes it purports; following, -by means of onsite and online ethnography, how P2P innovators manage the -economic, political and social “relapses†of technical changes -development processes; tracing how discussions and controversies that -take place on technical forums between developers and users, and among -users themselves, progressively shape directions of mobilization for and -by means of P2P. - -For all these reasons, it proves useful to avoid considering “P2P†as a -pre-defined object. Adopting a pragmatic approach, the starting point -for the fieldwork becomes the observation that, in the ICTs domain, -currently exists a variety of research projects and applications that, -in different manners and for different purposes, take up with a “P2P -technology†that is defined in a transversal way as a decentralised, -legal, private, social and user-centered alternative. A name and five -adjectives that become the entry points into the fieldwork, of which to -observe the (re)configurations and (re)compositions in the hands of the -actors and the shaping of the systems.\ - An empirical inquiry carried out by means of this approach helps -identifying “liveâ€, and in a manner transversal to the different cases, -uses and technologies “in the making†(Callon, 1987; Callon & Latour, -1990), trying to obtain a common vision of the directions of -appropriation of P2P technologies. What I have called a “real-time -sociology of innovationâ€, with which I have experimented during my PhD, -proves a viable method to apprehend variable, multi-dimensional -situations, and attempt to draw some conclusions on their possible -developments and applications. At the same time, there is a need to -address the more ideological and utopian dimension of these -“alternatives†– that which speaks of an Internet ideal of -decentralization and autonomy – that is taken as a subject of inquiry, -to try and show how it leads to ways of doing things, explains choices, -validates assumptions. Along these lines, and once again following an -STS-based tradition, the observation of transformations, passages, -negotiations, modifications of objects, and of the moments where these -are put on “trial†beyond the scheduled phases of development, are of -special importance. - -A particularly stimulating aspect of this approach is the consideration -of how law and rights take shape with the P2P alternative, in the -pursuit of three objectives. Firstly, in order to successfully define -the “legality†of such services, strictly linked to their constantly -evolving architecture that is often only partially accounted for in -written juridical documents. Secondly, to try and give instruments of -analysis able to rise above a conception of the relationship between law -and technology that all too often focuses on one aspect: the fact that -emerging technologies pose challenges to existing legal regimes, -creating a need for reform of these regimes. Thirdly, so that the -objects and the resources enabling P2P, and being produced by P2P, may -be fully conceived and treated as means of definition and protection of -the rights of users of Internet-based services.\ - In short, the acknowledgment of the importance of architectures calls, -in the specific case of the study of “alternative†P2P for -Internet-based services, for a process of methodological readjustment. -It implies delving into the technical functioning of direct transmission -of data between machines of a decentralized network, perhaps including -mechanisms of file fragmentation, encryption and maintenance, and take -it as a core feature (even if not necessarily the cause) of the types of -exchanges taking place within a service, of their effectiveness, of -their directness. It implies addressing the total or partial removal of -technical “intermediaries†(Elkin-Koren, 2006) in online networking and -sharing activities, as a structuring dynamic in new-generation -participative instruments. It means understanding where in the “fringes -and materialities of infrastructures†(Star, 2002, p. 107) a password is -stored, a file is indexed and encrypted, a download starts and ends, so -as to understand how new dynamics for the protection of personal -liberties and rights are taking hold – or are endangered. In short, -learning to read the “invisible layers†of P2P-based socio-technical -systems is as much a challenge as it is an opportunity to explore -collaborative practices carried out in, on and through them, and to -observe how these practices in-form the architecture in return, the -sharing of resources it entails, its medium- and long-term -socio-technical sustainability. - -However, in a connected world where more applications than ever want to -use the network, send packets, consume bandwidth – thereby placing new -strains and tensions on the Internet’s architecture – social scientists -need to accept the challenge just as much as the technical people who -are working on the future topology of the “network of networksâ€. It is, -likely, one of the most promising ways to shed new light on dynamics of -content creation, sharing, publishing and management, that are shaping, -and being shaped by, the future Internet – one of the best ways to -contribute to its future sustainability. - -5. Conclusions. The “lower layersâ€, a key for the sociology of networks ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - -“Caring about the plumbingâ€; “[f]inding the invisible work […] in the -traces left behind by coders, designers, and users of systems†(Star, -1999); the inclusion of the lower layers in the analysis – this article -has wished to suggest – means doing a sociology of networks that is not -afraid of its subject of study. - -A consequence of this approach is a specific attention to an aspect of -networks that is not only very discreet, but even invisible to the eyes -of the users: their architecture. Of course, we remain social -scientists: this interest in architectures derives from the hypothesis -that particular forms of distribution call for specific procedures, -particular uses, peculiar “user portraitsâ€. In doing so, one is able to -flesh out how some attributes of technology, of which users often lack a -direct knowledge or awareness, are bound to fully influence and inform -issues that are often crucial for uses and practices, such as the -treatment and physical location of data, the management of computing -resources, the shape and results of their queries to search engines. - -In the specific context of P2P, this article is also an invitation to -further pursue the renovation of academic (and political) debates on -what are currently very lively, but “alternativeâ€, processes of content -creation, search and sharing. Considering the architectural dimension -helps to overcome today’s prevailing paradigm when taking P2P as a -subject of study, that which, even when it focuses on forms of -organization in or by means of P2P dynamics, opts for a reduction of P2P -to the uses it entails and makes possible, one among them in -particular.\ - The link between the ways in which P2P applications take shape – -notably evolutions of their technical architecture – and their possible -influences on practices, relations and rights still remains quite -under-explored. Yet, the shaping of links, nodes, mandatory transit -points, information propagation protocols – in one word, their -architecture – tell us social scientists many things about the -specificities and promises of P2P-based applications, the challenges -they face, the opportunities they may present for the medium-term -evolution of the Internet model. - -[1] The IEEE Standard for Architectural Description of -Software-Intensive Systems (IEEE P1471/D5.3) defines [technical] -architecture as ‘the fundamental organization of a system embodied by -its components, their relationships to each other and to the environment -and the principles guiding its design and evolution’ (Bredemayer & -Malan, 2001). - -[2] E.g., respectively, Twitter’s repeated outages and the controversy -over the service’s long-term sustainability (see Pingdom, 2007: Twitter -had about six fully days of downtime in 2007, due to server overload and -the service’s failure to scale according to user demand), and the 2008 -worldwide YouTube paralysis (see Bortzmeyer, 2008: the lack of access to -the popular video streaming website was due to a massive routing of BGP -requests by Pakistan Telecom, aimed at blocking the diffusion of some -contents in the country). - -[3] As is the case for “Peer Impactâ€, a 2005-born pay-for-download file -sharing service running on a BitTorrent-like peer-to-peer distributions -system while maintaining centralized control of verification and -authorization of downloads. - -[4] Something I attempt to do in other venues: see Musiani 2010 and -2011. - -**Francesca Musiani** is based at the Centre de Sociologie de -l’Innovation, MINES ParisTech, Paris, France. This work is supported by -a grant of the French National Agency for Research (ANR), Programme -CONTINT-Contenus et Interactions, Project ADAM-Architectures distribuées -et applications multimédias. - -**Works cited** - -Aigrain, P. (2010). Declouding Freedom: Reclaiming Servers, Services and -Data. In 2020 FLOSS Roadmap (2010 Version/3rd Edition), retrieved -November 28th, 2011,from -https://flossroadmap.co-ment.com/text/NUFVxf6wwK2/view/ - -Aigrain, P. (2011). Another Narrative. Addressing Research Challenges -and Other Open Issues session, PARADISO Conference, Brussels, 7–9 Sept. -2011. - -Agre, P. (2003). Peer-to-Peer and the Promise of Internet Equality. -Communications of the ACM, 46 (2), 39-42.\ - Aidouni, F., Latapy, M. & Magnien, C. (2009). Ten Weeks in the Life of -an eDonkey Server. IEEE International Symposium on Parallel & -Distributed Processing (IPDPS), 2009, 1-5. - -Auber, O. (2007, March 19). Le Net, un bien commun: Quel projet -politique pour le réseau? Club de l’Hyper-République. Retrieved March -29, 2011, from -http://hyperrepublique.blogs.com/public/2007/03/quel\_projet\_pol.html - -Auray, N. (2011, forthcoming). Information Communities and Open -Governance: Boundaries, Statuses and Conflicts. In E. Brousseau, M. -Marzouki, C. Méadel (Eds.), Governance, Regulations and Powers on the -Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - -Baccelli, F. (2005, December 16). Internet : modéliser le trafic pour -mieux le gérer. Interstices. Retrieved March 29, 2011, from -http://interstices.info/jcms/c\_12842/internet-modeliser-le-trafic-pour-mieux-le-gerer - -Bauwens, M. (2005). P2P and Human Evolution: Placing Peer to Peer Theory -in an Integral Framework. Integral Visioning. Retrieved March 29, 2011, -from http://www.integralworld.net/bauwens2.html. - -Benkler, Y. (2004). Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence -of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production. The Yale Law Journal, -114 (2), 273-358. - -Boyd, D. (2004). Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networks. -Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems. Vienna, ACM, April -24-29, 2004. - -Bortzmeyer, S. (2008, February 25). Le Pakistan pirate YouTube. Blog de -Stéphane Bortzmeyer. Retrieved March 31, 2011, from -http://www.bortzmeyer.org/pakistan-pirate-youtube.html. - -Braman, S. (2011). Designing for Instability: Internet Architecture and -Constant Change. Media In Transition 7 (MIT7) Unstable Platforms: the -Promise and Peril of Transition, Cambridge, MA, May 13-15, 2011. - -Bredemayer, D. & R. Malan (2001). Architecture Definitions. Retrieved -September 5, 2011, from -http://www.bredemeyer.com/pdf\_files/Definitions.pdf. - -Bricklin, D. (2001). The Cornucopia of the Commons. In A. Oram (Ed.), -Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies (pp. -59-63). Sebastopol, CA : O’Reilly. - -Callon, M. (1987). Society in the Making: The Study of Technology as a -Tool for Sociological Analysis. In W. Bijker, T.P. Hughes and T. Pinch -(Eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions -in the Sociology and History of Technology (pp. 83-103). Cambridge, MA -and London: The MIT Press. - -Callon, M. et B. Latour (Eds., 1990), La science telle qu’elle se fait, -Paris : La Découverte. - -Cardon, D. (2008). Le design de la visibilité. Un essai de cartographie -du web 2.0. Réseaux, 2008/6 (152), 93-137. - -Castells, M. (2000). Toward a Sociology of the Networked Society. -Contemporary Sociology, 29 (5), 693-699. - -Dulong de Rosnay, M. (2005). Image et droit, là où la technique s’en -mêle… Documentaliste – Sciences de l’information, 42 (6), 405-411. - -Dulong de Rosnay, M. (2007). La mise à disposition des Å“uvres et des -informations sur les réseaux: régulation juridique et régulation -technique, Unpublished PhD dissertation, Université Panthéon-Assas, -Paris, France. - -Elkin-Koren, N. (2002). It’s All About Control: Rethinking Copyright in -the New Information Landscape. In N. Elkin-Koren & N. W. Netanel (Eds.), -The Commodification of Information (pp. 415-431). The Hague, -Netherlands: Kluwer Law International. - -Elkin-Koren, N. (2006). Making Technology Visible: Liability of Internet -Service Providers for Peer-to-Peer Traffic. New York University Journal -of Legislation & Public Policy, 9 (15), 15-76. - -Figueiredo, R. J., Boykin, P. O., St. Juste, P. and Wolinsky, D. (2008). -Social VPNs: Integrating Overlay and Social Networks for Seamless P2P -Networking. Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE 17th Workshop on Enabling -Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises. Washington, -DC: IEEE Computer Society. - -Fuller, M. (2008, Eds.). Software Studies: A Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: The -MIT Press. - -Gasser, U. & Ernst, S. (2006, December). European Union Copyright -Directive Best Practice Guide: Implementing the EU Copyright Directive -in the Digital Age. University of St. Gallen Law & Economics Working -Paper No. 2007-01; Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2006-10. -Retrieved March 29, 2011, from -http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract\_id=952561. - -Hales, D. (2006). Emergent Group-Level Selection in a Peer-to-Peer -Network. Complexus, 2006 (3): 108-118. - -Hales, D., Arteconi, S., Marcozzi, A. & Chao, I. (2008). Towards a Group -Selection Design Pattern. In F. Meyer (Eds.), The European Integrated -Project “Dynamically Evolving, Large Scale Information Systems (DELIS)†-Proceedings of the final workshop. Barcelona, February 27-28, 2008. - -Hellekson, K. & Busse, K. (Eds., 2006). Fan Fiction and Fan Communities -in the Age of the Internet. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. - -Kirschenbaum, M. (2003). Virtuality and VRML: Software Studies after -Manovich. Electronic Book Review. Retrieved November 28th, 2011, from -http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/morememory - -Laflaquière, J. (2005). Les “autres†applications des technologies -Peer-to-Peer. Multitudes, 2 (21), 59-68. - -Le Fessant, F. (2006). Peer-to-peer: comprendre et utiliser. Paris: -Eyrolles. - -Le Fessant, F. (2009). Un point de vue technique sur la loi Internet et -Création. Retrieved March 29, 2011, from http://fabrice.lefessant.net. - -Lessig, L. (2002). The Future of Ideas. New York: Vintage Books. - -Lock, J. V. (2006). A New Image: Online Communities to Facilitate -Teacher Professional Development. Journal of Technology and Teacher -Education, 14 (4), 663-678. - -Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT -Press. - -Marcozzi, A. & Hales, D. (2008). Emergent Social Rationality in a -Peer-to-Peer System. Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 11 (4), 581-595. - -Marino, M. C. (2006). Critical Code Studies. Electronic Book Review. -Retrieved November 28th, 2011, from -http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology - -Minar, N. and Hedlund, P. (2001). A Network of Peers – Peer-to-Peer -Models Through the History of the Internet. In A. Oram (Ed.), -Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies (pp. -9-20). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly. - -Moglen, E. (2010). Freedom In The Cloud : Software Freedom, Privacy and -Security for Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing. ISOC Meeting, New York Branch, -5 February 2010. - -Musiani, F. (2011). Privacy as Invisibility: Pervasive Surveillance and -the Privatization of Peer-to-Peer Systems. tripleC, 9(2): 126-140. - -Musiani, F. (2010a). When Social Links Are Network Links: the Dawn of -Peer-to-Peer Social Networks and Its Implications for Privacy. -Observatorio, 4 (3), 185-207. - -Musiani, F. (2010b). Ménager le droit à la vie privée, entre anonymat et -connaissance de l’identité: les débuts des réseaux sociaux en -pair-à -pair, Terminal, 105: 107-116. - -Neumann, L. & Star, S. L. (1996). Making Infrastructure: the Dream of a -Common Language. In J. Blomberg, F. Kensing, & E. Dykstra-Erickson -(Eds.), Proceedings of the PDC ’96 (pp. 231-240). Palo Alto, CA: -Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. - -Oram, A. (Ed., 2001). Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive -Technologies, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.\ - Pingdom staff writer (2007, December 19). Twitter Growing Pains Cause -Lots of Downtime in 2007. Royal Pingdom (blog of Pingdom). Retrieved -March 31, 2011, from -http://royal.pingdom.com/2007/12/19/twitter-growing-pains-cause-lots-of-downtime-in-2007/ - -Reagle, J. (2010). Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia. -Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.\ - Ribes, D. & Lee, C. P. (2010). Sociotechnical Studies of -Cyberinfrastructure and e-Research: Current Themes and Future -Trajectories. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 19, 231-244. - -Schafer, V., Le Crosnier, H., & Musiani, F. (2011). La neutralité de -l’Internet, un enjeu de communication. Paris: CNRS Editions/Les -Essentiels d’Hermès. - -Shirky, C., Truelove, K., Dornfest, R., Gonze, L., & Dougherty, D. -(Eds., 2001). 2001 P2P networking overview. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly. - -Schoder, D. & Fischbach, K. (2003). Peer-to-peer prospects. -Communications of the ACM, 46 (2), 27–29. - -Schollmeier, R. (2001). A Definition of Peer-to-Peer Networking for the -Classification of Peer-to-Peer Architectures and Applications. -Proceedings of the IEEE 2001 International Conference on Peer-to-Peer -Computing (P2P2001) (pp. 101-102), Linköping, Sweden, August 27-29, -2001. - -Star, S. L. (1999). The Ethnography of Infrastructure. American -Behavioral Scientist, 43 (3), 377-391. - -Star, S. L. (2002). Infrastructure and ethnographic practice: Working on -the Fringes. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 14 (2), -107-122. - -Star, S. L. & Bowker, G. (2002). How To Infrastructure. In Lievrouw, L. -A. (Ed.), Handbook of New Media (pp. 151-162), London: Sage. - -Star, S. L., and Ruhleder, K. (1996). Steps Toward an Ecology of -Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces. -Information Systems Research, 7, 111-133. - -Taylor, I. & Harrison, A. (2009). From P2P to Web Services and Grids: -Evolving Distributed Communities. Second and Expanded Edition. London: -Springer-Verlag. - -van Schewick, B. (2010). Internet Architecture and Innovation. -Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. - -Verma, D. (2004). Legitimate Applications of Peer-to-Peer Networks. -Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. - -- [About](http://peerproduction.net/about/) -- [Issues](http://peerproduction.net/issues/) -- [Peer Review](http://peerproduction.net/peer-review/) -- [News](http://peerproduction.net/news/) -- [Contact](http://peerproduction.net/contact/) - -Journal of Peer Production - ISSN: 2213-5316 \ - All the contents of this journal are in the **public domain**. diff --git a/_revision/jopp_changing-the-system-of-production.md b/_revision/jopp_changing-the-system-of-production.md deleted file mode 100644 index 4cb22c1aeffa5ed3c5cdc091ac85306a825efbf8..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/_revision/jopp_changing-the-system-of-production.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,393 +0,0 @@ -http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-1/invited-comments/changing-the-system-of-production/ - -Changing the system of production -================================= - -By Jean Zin ------------ - -The economic and financial crisis, serious as it may be, will not -provoke the end of capitalism which has weathered worse. But if an exit -from capitalism has begun, it is for other reasons, which are more -profound and more durable, and which are linked to our entry into the -digital era and immaterial labor. It is these new productive forces -which question the very basis of industrial capitalism, such as payment -for wage labor or exchange value. - -It is for material reasons, connected to the reproduction of productive -forces, that the production system is forced to change radically, just -as it is for reasons connected to material reproduction that this system -will have to integrate ecological limits, by favoring the relocalisation -of the economy. If the exit from the society of wage labor has already -started, it is for the moment to our detriment, through the destruction -of welfare protections and the explosion of precariousness. Social -struggles will as always be necessary to conquer new rights and to -reorient this new system towards our emancipation and a more sustainable -economy. Nothing will happen by itself. - -It is in any case within this material framework that our action can be -decisive, far from any utopia or value subjectivism. “New technologies†-occupy here a central place, comparable with the steam engine. However, -it’s not only the materialism of reproduction and of techniques which it -is necessary to take into account, but also the flows which constitute -production as a whole system. To abandon capitalist productivism and its -industrial model, neither isolated initiatives nor partial measures will -suffice; the new productive relationships and new arrangements must -operate as a system (of production, distribution, circulation) by -ensuring their reproduction. - -What is a system of production? -------------------------------- - -The systemic crisis concretely expresses everything that materially -connects us to the rest of the world, whether we like it or not. -Political economy itself was born from the inflation caused by the -influx of gold from the Americas at the end of XVIth century, as noted -at the time by Jean Bodin, demonstrating the influence of remote events -which are completely independent from us. Mercantilism initially tried -to respond to this kind of “natural catastrophy†by accumulating as much -precious metals as possible, but the intensification of world trade -which ensued was already reinforcing interdependencies. It was necessary -to wait until 1758 for Doctor Quesnay to show, with his “economic -tableâ€, the analogy between economic circuits and the circulatory -system, connecting social classes and distant parts in a totality which -makes elements interdependent. Later, others attempted to reduce -economic flows to their thermodynamic equilibriuum (theories of balance -and of market self-regulation). To the contrary, one can consider that -Marx’s principal contribution will have been to show that production was -indeed organized as a system combining production, reproduction and -circulation, a system with its own dynamic (based on profit and -innovation), its specific relations of production (wage labor) adapted -to productive organization as well as to the stage of technical -development. Capitalism differentiated itself from feudalism as well as -from a predatory economy by being a mode of production determined by -circulation, industrial investment and waged work. - -That production and reproduction inevitably compose a system does not -mean that there is only one system, albeit a dominant one! It is vital -to understand the fact that we belong to a plurality of systems, -effective totalities which determine us materially more than we -determine them, but in the gaps between which we can function. Indeed, -against the contemporary individualistic gospel, a system is defined by -the relatively independent operations of the elements which constitute -it. No isolated individuals can fail to be integrated into a system on -which they depend and which constrains them, like the transport system. -The concept applies beyond the realm of production, up to the ecosystems -exhibiting interdependencies between species and flows of matter, of -energy and of information which run through them. In his marvellous book -“The Macroscopeâ€, Joel de Rosnay (1979) applied systems theory to the -economy as well as to the biosphere, leading to what he called an -ecosocialism. Thinking in a global manner does indeed means thinking in -terms of systems, circuits, flow, interdependencies, organisation, -division of functions, coordination, etc, where autonomy and -self-organization play in any case an irreplaceable role of adjustment. - -The totalitarian tendency of markets, with their liberal theories which -do not recognize any value to non-commercial phenomena, has driven the -fact that we belong to different systems of production into the -background. However, it is a fact that there is no such thing as an -economy which is not a mixed economy, a plural economy, where at the -very least domestic, public and commercial exchanges coexist. This is -precisely what made it possible for capitalism to emerge from the free -cities on the margins of the feudal system, just like today a new -alternative system based on relocalistion should emerge. - -What is important to understand is that it is useless to want to leave a -system of production if one is unable to propose a viable alternative -system. It is therefore crucial to be effective, and to not propose -simple correctives, even less to lecture people about the error of their -ways. We need new rules, new social relations, new modes of distribution -and exchanges which must not only connect together but also have an -internal dynamism and a synergy with the techniques employed. It is a -question of viability, of durability and of reproduction, where ecology -obviously becomes the central concern. These interdependences strongly -constrain what is feasible but are not sufficiently taken into account, -unfortunately, by those who want to change the system (it is not enough -to take control of it to change its operations), nor by those who simply -want to correct it with norms and laws. - -Capitalism as productivism --------------------------- - -Of course all systems are not equal, being distinguished by their means -and ends. However a system does not become dominant because of its good -intentions but because of its material effectiveness, of its capacities -of reproduction and expansion, according to a broadly Darwinian logic -(which should not be confused with a reductive Social Darwinism). What -made capitalism successful was its productivism which renders profit -dependent on the improvement of productivity resulting from to -investments and innovations, which in turn rely on technological and -scientific advances to lower the price of goods. This positive feedback -loop, a true snowball effect, lies at the root of the takeoff of -economies and of the “virtuous circle of growthâ€, a galloping -industrialization which must be paid a high price in terms of -inequalities, poverty and pollution. - -The reasons for the success of an invasive organism or of an overly -voracious predator inevitably turns back against it when it has -colonized all the available living space. Though Africa remains to be -exploited, we can say that capitalism has reached its ecological limit -with globalisation, which does not leave it with an outside. The problem -is that it cannot stop its race towards growth. We can say that -capitalism initially imposed itself through its productivity but has -lasted thanks to the consumer society, which is of course ecologically -unsustainable. Material degrowth is thus unavoidable, but it is not -enough to declare this is the case, nor to exhibit voluntarism in the -reduction of our consumption and working time in order to hope to -significantly reduce a productivism which is at the core of a -growth-dependent capitalism. We really need to change the system! In -order to achieve this, we should not go backwards but instead take -advantage of the immaterial economy, which can help with material -degrowth, and especially to draw on the productive forces which enter in -contradiction with the very bases of capitalism. - -Indeed, capitalism is first and foremost industry. Wage-labor is a kind -of temporary slavery (subordination) but the fact of paying work -according to time spent (machine time) is essential to separate workers -from their products and to appropriate the surplus value obtained by the -improvement of the productivity of capitalistic investments. However, -immaterial labour can be characterised by its non-linearity, as -production is not proportional to time spent. This is what opposes it to -physical labour, as information is opposed to energy. In the same way, -the more labour is skilled, incorporating training time, the less it is -reducible to immediate work, just like the work time of the virtuoso is -not confined to the concert. For all these reasons, the remuneration of -time spent becomes inapplicable (much as in the artistic field) -requiring a posterior assessment, based on results. This would seem to -result in the abolition of the separation between workers and their -products, which they could all the more claim their share of now that -they possess their own means of production with their personal -computers. Except that it is very difficult to evaluate the contribution -of everyone in performances which are mainly global and collective. So, -not only does wage labour measured against working time become -completely inappropriate in the age of information, being progressively -replaced by project contracts and outsourcing, but it is the measure of -value itself which becomes problematic (people speak of a “crisis of -measureâ€). The commodity therefore loses its status of exchange value to -the benefit of a pure opportunity value (or of prestige, of brand, or -speculation), which is often quite ephemeral and which has only a -distant connection to its reproduction value (except perhaps when it is -on sale). - -“As soon as work, in its immediate form, has ceased to be the main -source of wealth, working time ceases and must cease to be its measure, -and exchange value thus ceases also to be the measure of use value.†-(Marx, Grundisse II, pp. 220-221). - -Changing eras -------------- - -It is not only capitalism’s industrial bases that are weakened, digital -costlessness directly attacks intellectual property rights, its infinite -capacity for reproduction providing immediate access to all works, an -access that no-one will want to give up. This endangers cultural -industries (and they certainly complain enough about it) who will need -to reinvent themselves. It is on these grounds that one finds the -strongest opposition of digital culture to the capitalistic logic, to -old media, to music and movie corporations. The issue of downloading -divides the generations and unleashes freedom-killing reactions which -oppose themselves to technical reproduction capacities inherent to -digitisation and networks! The end of the industrial model does -represent the end of the system of capitalist production, of wage labour -and of the commodification of culture and life. Of course, for the -moment, in the absence of another system more suited to immaterial -production, this contradiction of the new productive forces and of -former relations of production is translated into additional and -ever-more unbearable stress borne by an ever-increasing share of -employees, with the rise of precariousness and the regression of -welfare. For the moment the old system is trying to maintain itself -through untenable laws that attempt to match technological innovation by -fiercely maintaining obsolete property rights. These are contradictions -on which it is possible to rely; productive forces that can be mobilised -to build a new system of production. - -Make no mistake, neither the crisis, nor the ecological limits, nor our -good intentions, will be enough to overcome capitalism, but only digital -technologies, now at the heart of production, as well as the immaterial -labor that pushes the reorientation of the economy towards human -development. This does not mean that things will happen by themselves, -nor necessarily to our advantage if we do not vigorously defend our -rights, but it is what conjures and enables a new system of production -with new relations of production. Admitting the central place of -digitality therefore assumes a crucial importance in the determination -of a strategy for a future-oriented political ecology in the age of -information. - -If digital technologies were not sustainable, as some environmentalists -contend, this would not imply their disappearance but would only reserve -them to an elite as well as to production processes. However, it seems -rather that these technologies are spreading at an until-now unheard-of -speed, including in the poorest countries which have little -infrastructure. It is all the more urgent to reduce their consumption -and to make them more sustainable because it is certain that we cannot -continue on the current slope, nor rely on the market to take into -account environmental issues that most of the time translate into an -increase in costs (there is no energy shortage, the problem is that -fossil fuels, oil and coal, are too abundant and their prices were too -low so far, thus constituting an obstacle to renewable energy). - -Even if the battle is not won in advance, there is nothing here that -seems out of reach, as digitality is one of the essential bases of -ecological consciousness and global regulation. In addition -dematerialisation can make a decisive contribution to a necessary -material degrowth in many areas. Thus, we know that digital networks can -facilitate relocalisation thanks to their capacity for decentralisation, -which have long been implemented in corporations. No future ecology can -do without, which implies caring about their sustainability, reducing -waste and guiding them towards energy efficiency. - -Creating a system ------------------ - -We have evoked most of the elements of a surpassing of capitalism in the -era of information, ecology and human development: the new relocalised -and immaterial production system will primarily have “to be a system†-and adapt to the new productive forces, to new technologies as well as -to the material constraints of reproduction and thus to environmental -constraints. This has nothing to do with moral or even purely political -approaches proposing laws and norms, which are indeed often necessary. -We must insist on the fact that we need to go back to causes and not -only worry about the most conspicuous effects. This means that we must -address the question on the side of production more than on that of -consumption, on the side of the system more than on that of the -individual, on the side of offer more than on that of demand, on the -side of the quality of the work more than on that of the quantity -produced. We need to convince ourselves that the simple degrowth of -waste and of commodification cannot change the productivist logic of -capitalism, any more than the reduction of working time. Leaving -productivism means first leaving the waged society dependent on -consumption and on a profit-driven capitalist production. - -It is not enough to declare something or to take one’s desires for -reality, but it is vital to get the context right and to understand the -stakes, which have only been sketched here. These stakes already -strongly constrain an exit from capitalism which has already started but -is still far from constituting an alternative. We must start from what -is, from the “actual movement which abolishes the current state of -thingsâ€, from ongoing experiments, which should be constituted as a -complete and operational production system to become a real alternative. -No isolated initiative or partial measure can replace this. - -André Gorz was probably the first to present a coherent representation -of a new relocalised system of production in the era of information, -ecology and human development, by gathering in “Misère du présent†-(1997) the various initiatives and proposals where the seeds of the -future could be perceived. In fact, these proposals had already been -defended for some time by Jacques Robin and the Transversales journal, -without being quite connected together. They were replaced in the early -1990s by the reduction of working time (“réduction du temps de travail†-or RTT), a strategy that would show its limits with the establishment of -the 35h working week which increased wage flexibility.[1] Not only was -André Gorz one of the main theorists of RTT but he was firmly opposed to -the guaranteed wage, which was a rising claim in social movements -despite its apparently utopian nature. The category of “third sector†-was also ambiguous, and “plural currencies†a little too fuzzy. Yet by -bringing together and defining these mechanisms (guaranteed income, -local currency, self-managed workers unions), André Gorz allowed a great -step forward to be made, not so much in terms of the alternative’s -credibility (these measures still seem too exotic and minuscule in -relation to the immensity of the task) but rather for his success in the -constitution of a new articulation between production, distribution, and -exchanges. I have done little more than focus on the systemic coherence -and combine these mechanisms with the libertarian municipalism of -Bookchin – though it is far from a detail to anchor relocalisation in -municipal democracy. - -The most difficult to admit remains the fact that there are only local -alternatives to globalised commerce. However, by definition, there can -only be relocalisation at the local level, and thus we can start right -away, even if these actions only makes sense inasmuch as they are -integrated into alternative circuits and a Global Justice perspective. - -It is impossible to describe in detail this post-capitalism which -refutes too-simple solutions such as nationalisation of the economy or -the collective ownership of means of production, leaving relations of -production and the productivism of the system unchanged. To repeat, none -of the isolated measures are determining in itself, only their -combination is. It is indeed at all levels that the potentialities of -digitality must be put to use, that small circuits need to be favoured -and the rules of the game changed in international exchanges (fair -trade, alternative circuits), in national redistribution systems and in -local life. The point really is to change the world in its totality and -to build a new system of production, but contrary to totalitarian -utopias, there can be no question of abolishing the plurality of systems -and lifestyles. It is necessary to fight against authoritarian policies, -and all kinds of green fascisms, in order to defend our autonomy and to -continue the fight for our emancipation. We locate ourselves in a plural -and free economy, where capitalism will thus not disappear any more than -industry but should employ less and less wage earners in an increasingly -automated and relocalised production. - -The point is to extract the maximum number of workers from dependency on -profit-oriented production as well as alienated work (without claiming -to abolish all alienation). Rather than everyone becoming civil -servants, the point is to give to everyone the means of autonomy and of -choosing their life (including a more natural life), replacing a good -share of commercial leisure by self-developing activity; this should as -a consequence radically modify consumption, without feedback effects -(contrarily to the strategies aiming to reduce consumption). The point -is to leave behind waged work in favour of autonomous work, immaterial -work, chosen work, which does not only mean supporting digital -creativity but also local services, artistic activities, and even -revitalising crafts and small-scale subsistence agriculture. For that -one needs at the same time a guaranteed income, which allows autonomous -work, municipal co-operatives to practise an activity and be associated -with other autonomous workers, and finally local currencies to ensure -more outlets to local production without closing oneself to the outside. - -The least one can say is that all these concepts are neither familiar -nor credible, being a thousand miles from ordinary representations and -even unacceptable ideologically for the majority, which does not prevent -them from materially imposing themselves all over the world. In any -case, new relations of production which create a system and are adapted -to the digital era do represent the condition for a less productivist -relocalised economy. This is the framework in which our future should be -conceived. This does not mean that this would be enough to resolve all -problems! Numerous measures are necessary to regulate capitalism, make -agriculture more sustainable and cities more livable, but without -falling into techno-utopianism, we should make sure our understanding of -our era and our goals are accurate. So, whether we like it or not, it -will be necessary to make use of the potentialities of telework, of -teleconferences, of teleshopping and even of 3D printers (or perhaps of -future digital personal fabricator) which can not only stimulate -personal creativity but especially facilitate the obtaining of spare -parts for repairs, or of any other small object, by eliminating material -transport. This will undoubtedly not save us, it’s only a small portion -of the solution, but we will need to accept it (like eating less red -meat) and without forcing anybody! - -None of the instruments in our possession can be neglected but what -needs to be insisted on, is on the need for a systemic approach and a -general coherence. We need a global approach taking into account all the -dimensions of our life. Our capacity to make a correct diagnosis and to -come up with the right answers will be more crucial than our good -intentions. If it is necessary to fight for an emancipating ecology, the -room for maneuver is indeed very weak, even if it still exists, between -technical, ecological and systemic constraints. In any case, these -modest instruments could prove rather quickly extremely useful if the -monetary system breaks down, but the good news is that the municipal -character of the bases of this new system of production allows its -advantages to be tested immediately, here and now, as long as local -conditions lend themselves to it. - -[1] In 2000 in France under the Jospin government – Ed. - -**Works cited**\ - Gorz, A. (1997) Misères du present, richesse du possible. Paris: -Galilée.\ - Rosnay, de, J. (1979). The Macroscope: A New World Scientific System. -New York: Harper & Row. [Originally published 1975] - -This article originally appeared in [EcoRev](http://ecorev.org/), 33: -44-51 (2009). - -**Translation:**Mathieu O’Neil - -- [About](http://peerproduction.net/about/) -- [Issues](http://peerproduction.net/issues/) -- [Peer Review](http://peerproduction.net/peer-review/) -- [News](http://peerproduction.net/news/) -- [Contact](http://peerproduction.net/contact/) - -Journal of Peer Production - ISSN: 2213-5316 \ - All the contents of this journal are in the **public domain**. diff --git a/_revision/reescribiendo-hacking-the-spaces.markdown b/_revision/reescribiendo-hacking-the-spaces.markdown deleted file mode 100644 index 7964abdd5f913228c637f429cc64694f8fdb6b3b..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/_revision/reescribiendo-hacking-the-spaces.markdown +++ /dev/null @@ -1,261 +0,0 @@ -Reescribiendo el Hackeando los espacios -======================================= - -Johannes Grenzfurthner, Frank Apunkt Schneide y usuarios de hackerspaces.org - -Una proclama crÃtica, de lo que fue, es y será un hackerspace (o hacklab, para -el caso) - -Hackerspaces 1 // Historia --------------------------- - -La historia de los llamados hackerspaces se remonta al momento en que el -movimiento de contracultura se encontraba por alcanzar un estado de madurez. En -la década posterior en que los hippies intentaron establecer nuevas formas de -relacionarse social, polÃtica, económica y ecológicamente, una gran cantidad de -experiencias fueron realizadas referentes a la construcción de nuevos espacios -en los que vivir y trabajar. Estos eran considerados nichos para revivir y -rescatar a personas del monótono estilo de vida en que la sociedad burguesa -conducÃa los espacios cÃvicos, desde los jardines de infantes hasta los -cementerios, para resultar exactamente iguales, y reproducir su orden -patriarcal y económico. - -Las polÃticas de establecer espacios abiertos fueron pensadas como -declaraciones explÃcitas que confrontaban una sociedad capitalista (y en el -Este: un comunismo autoritario) cuya propia estructura, propósito y modo de -funcionamiento se consideraba en términos generales como alienante, para tomar -control de, y para modificar sus relaciones y necesidades básicas humanas. AsÃ, -la fallada revuelta de los sesentas sobrevivió y floreció en las sombras de un -omnipresente estilo de vida burgués. - -La idea de cambio fue conjurada desde lo alto de los sueños nebulosos -lisérgicos y discursos patéticos para conseguir los sueños de uno y/o tener los -pies en tierra firme -para ser des-obamizado, si se quiere. Esta conversión -ganó su fama debido al sueño hippie macro-polÃtico ("TenÃa mucho que soñar -anoche" como el tÃtulo de una clásica canción de sicologÃa pop de 'The Electric -Prunes' sonando) se deterioró completamente. Los hippies aprendieron que el -cambio social y polÃtico requiere más que simplemente unir el mantra de los -carteles, canciones pop y fantasÃas de drogas que estaban promoviendo. - -El mundo real era muy duro como para ser impresionado por un puñado de sucios -burgueses marginados que mantra-cionaban acerca del cambio. El imperativo -capitalista del mundo real era demasiado efectivo para cambiar realmente. Y aún -asÃ, cuando todo finalizó en 1972, algunas de las personas involucradas aún no -se rendÃan ni se entregaban al sistema para desaparecer en la integración, por -consiguiente lanzando tácticas de micro-polÃtica. En lugar de tratar de -transformar el viejo mundo en uno nuevo, la gente comenzó a construir pequeños -nuevos mundos dentro del viejo mundo. Compusieron espacios abiertos donde las -personas pudieran reunirse y probar diferentes formas de vivir, trabajar, tal -vez amar, y lo que sea que hace la gente cuando quieren hacer algo. - -Es necesario darle una mirada al desarrollo histórico de los movimientos -polÃticos y su relacionamiento con los espacios y la geografÃa: la revolución -estudiantil de 1969 fue conducida por la idea de recuperar los lugares y -establecer una sicogeografÃa distinta entre el laberinto de la ciudad a través -de la desviación. Del mismo modo, el movimiento autónomo de la década del -setenta que cobró vida en Italia y luego influenció personas en paÃses de habla -alemana y los PaÃses Bajos sobre la apropiación de los espacios, ya sea para -centros juveniles autónomos como para la apropiación de las ondas de radio -piratas. - -En consecuencia, los primeros hackerspaces se adaptan mejor en un mundo de -topografÃa contracultural, que consta de casas ocupadas, cafés alternativos, -cooperativas agrÃcolas, empresas de gestión colectiva, comunas, centros de -cuidado infantil no autoritarios, y asÃ. Todo esto estableció una estrecha red, -para un estilo de vida alternativo en el corazón de las tinieblas burguesas. - - -Hackerspaces 2 // Presente --------------------------- - -Los hackerspaces brindaron lugares donde la gente podÃa ir a trabajar en un -ambiente no-represivo relajado y tranquilo (al menos, tanto como cualquier tipo -de espacio o entorno dentro de la sociedad capitalista puede ser llamado -no-represivo, relajado y tranquilo). Sociológicamente llamados 'terceros -espacios', son espacios que rompen con el esquema dual de la estructura -espacial burguesa, con lugares para vivir y lugares para trabajar (más lugares -para actividades recreativas). - -Representan un camino integrador que se niega a aceptar un estilo de vida -formado mediante tal estructura. Esto significa que pueden llegar a formas de -trabajo cooperativo y no-represivo, por ejemplo, en problemas técnicos que -pueden resultar en soluciones nuevas e innovadoras. Y allà es exactamente donde -'Vida Equivocada' de Adorno podrÃa caer en exceso. El sistema capitalista es -una entidad altamente adaptable por lo que no sorprende que espacios y modos de -vida alternativos proveyeran ideas interesantes que pudieran ser ordeñadas y -comercializadas. - -Ciertas caracterÃsticas estructurales producto de este movimiento 'indie' -fueron repentinamente muy aclamadas, aplicadas y reproducidas en laboratorios -de desarrollo capitalistas. Estas cualidades se adaptan mejor a la tendencia en -que -finalizando los setentas- la sociedad burguesa comenzó a actualizarse y -relanzarse usando las experiencias adquiridas a través de los proyectos -contraculturales. La corriente principal cosechó el conocimiento obtenido en -estos proyectos y lo aplicó. La normalización de la disidencia. Oh, sÃ. - -AsÃ, la revuelta de los sesentas y todas las micro-revoluciones que le -siguieron resultaron una especie de refresco periódico. Como sistema, el -capitalismo está siempre interesado en librárse de sus antiguos rasgos -opresivos que pueden bloquear su evolución y perfeccionamiento en conjunto. -Como un ejemplo: el eco-capitalismo se puso de moda, y resultó muy eficaz en la -generación de "buenas riquezas" capitalistas y "buenos sentimientos" -capitalistas. Hoy en dÃa los hackerspaces, funcionan en forma distinta de como -lo hacÃan inicialmente. Cuando el primer hackerspace se formó siempre habÃan -claras distinciones (un "antagonismo") entre "nosotros" (las personas -resistiendo) y "ellos" (las personas controlando). - -Cierta gente no querÃa vivir y trabajar dentro del esquema de trabajo burgués -clásico y se negó a ser parte de su proyecto ideológico y polÃtico, por algunas -muy buenas razones. La alteridad de los espacios en ese entonces era -determinada por la consistencia de una cultura dominante burguesa sobre la base -de un orden dualista de guerra frÃa mundial. Una vez más demostraron ser los -terceros espacios de una clase diferente: ni el Estado ni el capitalismo de -libre comercio. Y siendo estructural e ideológicamente diferentes de los que -habÃan sido una importante declaración y postura polÃtica. En una sociedad de -fácil distincción entre las categorÃas principal y clandestina, cada actividad -llevada a cabo en el espacio abierto del tipo clandestino, es un paso en la -dirección equivocada. - -La misma práctica de hacer uso un personal de estructuras alternativas viene -con la seguridad de estar del lado bueno. Pero la sociedad pos-guerra frÃa -estableció un orden diferente que afectaba profundamente la posición de los -hackerspaces. Mientras que por un lado se fortaleció y se tornó más represivo, -el sistema (uno listo!) aprendió a tolerar cosas que son distintas (de camino a -su integración o asimilación) y a entender que siempre han sido los bordes de -la normalidad donde la nueva sustancia creció. Ordeñando cultura cubierta. -Antes de eso, la intolerancia abierta y seguidamente la brutal opresión llevada -a cabo contra los espacios contraculturales únicamente los hizo más fuertes y -su necesidad más evidente (al menos donde la sociedad no tuvo éxito en su -aplastamiento). - -AsÃ, las formas de vida alternativas se aplicaron idealmente como un -rejuvenecimiento de lo que era viejo, aburrido, conservador e impotente para -progresar y adaptarse en el constantemente cambiante presente burgués. Nuevas -formas de resolver problemas técnicos (y estéticos) se cocinaron en la -clandestinidad y los burgueses cazadores de talento observaron de cerca para -ocasionalmente seleccionar esto o aquello, tal como pasó en el campo de la -música pop con el tan llamado rock alternativo de los noventas. Corriente -alternativa, ahoi![^1] - -Por otro lado, los noventa marcaron el triunfo de la democracia liberal, tal -como Slavoj Žižek escribe: - -> La caÃda del Muro de BerlÃn el 9 de noviembre de 1989 marcó el inicio de la -> "feliz década de 1990". De acuerdo a Francis Fukuyama, la democracia liberal -> ha, en principio, ganado. La era es generalmente vista como finalizada tras -> el 9/11. Como sea, parece que la utopÃa debió morir dos veces: el colapso de -> la utopÃa polÃtica liberal-demócrata del 9/11 no afectó la utopÃa económica -> del mercado global capitalista, que ahora ha llegado a su fin. - -Es por tanto muy irónico que los geeks y nerds, mientras observan la muerte de -la liberal-democracia en su forma polÃtica (libertades civiles concedidas a fin -de mantener la paz social) asà como en su forma económica (crisis) se vuelven -defensores liberal-demócratas de una ideologÃa que ya ha fallado. Sin las -lÃneas de demarcación polÃtica de una sociedad de una guerra frÃa, los -hackerspaces cambian cada tanto aún sin ser notado. La agenda polÃtica fue -multiplicada por problemas individuales que los techno nerds intentaron -resolver en una agradable atmósfera sin miedo, estados no agresivos donde la -agresividad del mercado fue suspendida; donde uno puede hablar de problemas y -desafÃos técnicos y creativos y desafiarse cortésmente con personas con ideas -afines. - -Como tal, el enfoque polÃtico se desvaneció en el camino a pequeños talleres -paraÃsos frikis. La micro-polÃtica falló en la misma escala y en el mismo -alcance que los antiguos proyectos macro-polÃticos fueron pulverizados por la -irreversibilidad del capitalismo. La idea de tener una revolución (de cualquier -tipo) fue domesticada en un reformismo de buena limpieza, y las únicas -revoluciones que yacÃan delante eran semi-revoluciones tecnológicas de internet -y sus brotes de red social. Sin las antiguas agendas polÃticas los hackerspaces -se convirtieron en pequeños lugares que en realidad no hacen diferencias -fundamentales. - -Comparable a la caÃda de las casas okupas obteniendo un estado de legalidad y -convirtiéndose en nuevos proyectos de vivienda burguesa donde los bohemios -urbanos copados viven sus vidas alternando continuamente entre el mundo del -arte, lo clandestino, negocios de IT, y agencias de publicidad. Este puede no -ser el caso para todos los hackerspaces que existen hoy en dÃa, pero deberÃa -notarse que esto le ocurre a la mayorÃa. Y mientras por un largo tiempo el -esquema macro-polÃtico funcionó bastante bien para proporcionar la diferencia -inherente que se habÃa únido a todas las actividades realizadas en los -hackerspaces (incluso a las cosas más triviales como soldaruras, lecciones de -alfarerÃa, o clases de malabares), es lo que falta ahora. - -Debido a esta deficiencia los hackerspaces ya no pueden ser formados y -politizados en una escala más amplia. Esto claramente significa que cualquier -cosa que debamos hacer: nuestras comunidades de hackerspaces permanecen -restringidas; nada más que el fluido de nutrientes para la crÃa de recursos -humanos. (¡Soylent Google está hecho de personas!) - -Hackerspaces 3 // Futuro ------------------------- - -Entonces, -¿Qué se puede hacer al respecto?- Realmente, no es muy difÃcil -encontrar algo sobre lo que protestar. Vigilancia, lo que sea. Utilizar el -prefijo "anti" no es un problema. Usar la regla 76 -Siempre y cuando se pueda -pensar en eso, se puede estar en contra de eso. Pero eso es demasiado simple. -Nunca antes en la historia de la sociedad burguesa todo ha estado tan jodido -como lo está ahora. Pero lo que falta en todas las prácticas que ocurren en los -hackerspaces es una teorÃa concisa de a qué se parece la sociedad burguesa y -qué deberÃa ser atacado por nosotros construyendo y manteniendo espacios -abiertos dentro de esa sociedad. - -El hermoso enfoque alternativo que compartimos deberÃa basarse en una teorÃa, a -ser leÃda: una agenda polÃtica que le de cierto glamour revolucionario a lo que -realizamos a diario creando artilugios técnicos, tendiendo redes por el mundo, -o utilizando nuestra tecnologÃa y habilidades de programación. Para alcanzarlo -realmente necesitamos un sentido más explÃcito y un entendimiento de la -historia de lo que estamos haciendo, de los acercamientos polÃticos y de las -demandas que se hicieron hace mucho tiempo y aún están allÃ, escondidas en lo -que hacemos ahora mismo. - -Para comenzar nos gustarÃa organizar ciertos talleres en los hackerspaces donde -podamos aprender acerca de la filosofÃa, historia y otros aspectos que -necesitamos recobrar en nuestras vidas. La teorÃa es un conjunto de -herramientas para analizar y deconstruir el mundo. Además, la necesitamos para -reflejar y entender lo que los hackerspaces de hoy hacen bajo el "benevolente" -control de un cierto grupo de mayormente hombres blancos trabajadores técnicos -nerds hábiles con las manos. Y que dan forma a una práctica en ellos mismos que -destina a la mayorÃa de los hackerspaces actuales. (Resulta difÃcil comprender -que existen hackerspaces en algunas partes de los Estados Unidos que no tienen -un solo miembro Afro-Américano o Latino. Pero nos gustarÃa mantener nuestra -presunción europea para nosotros mismos. - -Debemos observar a nuestra pero-que-tan-multicultural escena hacker en Europa y -preguntarnos a nosotros mismos si los hackers de origen inmigrante de TurquÃa o -los estados del norte de Ãfrica están representados en números que uno puede -esperar de su porcentaje de la población. O, simplemente, contar con la -representación de la mujer y ver si tienen el 50% de los miembros. - -Por lo tanto, nos encontramos con que los hackerspaces de hoy están excluyendo -una gran cantidad de grupos étnicos y sociales que no parecen encajar o tal vez -se sienten asÃ, y tienen miedo por el dominio del hombre blanco nerd, sus (tal -vez) bromas sexistas o excluyentes, o cualquier cosa que pueda ser aportado por -ellos. O tal vez no tienen las habilidades adecuadas para comunicarse y/o -cooperar con los grupos de chicos geek (o al menos pueden pensar lo -contrario). - -Lo que se necesita es la inclusión no-represiva de todos los grupos marginados -por la sociedad burguesa tal como ha sido la intención de los primeros -hackerspaces en la historia de la contracultura. Si aceptamos la idea marxista -que la misma naturaleza de la polÃtica eÅ›tá siempre en el interés de los que -actuan, las polÃticas de los hackerspaces son por ahora en el interés de -hombres blancos de clase media. Esto tiene que cambiar. - -Bueno, eso es todo por ahora. Empecemos a trabajar en esto y veamos qué pasarÃa -si cambiamos los de alguna manera aburridos hackerspaces del presente en -algunas glamorosas fábricas de una impredecible libertad para todos nosotros, -incluso aquellos que no encajan en el clásico esquema nerd. Cambiemos a los -nerds. Hagamoslos un mejor espacio. Para vos y para mà y para toda la raza -humana. - -Agradecimiento a Jens Ohlig por los comentarios y consejos. Gracias a Melinda -Richka por la severidad gramática. - -http://www.monochrom.at/english/ -http://www.monochrom.at/hacking-the-spaces/ - -[^1]: "Ahoi" - Seguramente significa "Ahoy", el saludo original telefónico sugerido -por Alexander Graham Bell, remplazado por "Hola" - -N. del T. ☠♥☠. Agradecimiento a los hermanos de QuilmesLUG por tanta buena -onda. diff --git a/_revision/telnik.bib b/_revision/telnik.bib deleted file mode 100644 index 871012ad84a73feb7496b3ede774a4d1af4b82ff..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/_revision/telnik.bib +++ /dev/null @@ -1,274 +0,0 @@ -@ARTICLE{bell-1960, - author = "Bell, Daniel", - title = "The Subversion of Collective Bargaining", - year = "1960", - month = "March", - publisher = "Commentary Magazine" -} - -@ONLINE{charter-sf, - author = "Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge 2.0.1", - title = "Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge ‘Introduction’", - url = "http://fcforum.net/charter_extended" -} - -@ONLINE{dablade-2006, - author = "DaBlade", - title = "Richard Stallman Interview", - publisher = "P2Pnet News", - url = "http://www.p2pnet.net/story/7840", - month = "feb", - year = "2006" -} - -@ONLINE{iww-sf, - author = "Industrial Workers of the World", - title = "Preamble to the IWW Constitution", - publisher = "Industrial Workers of the World: A Union for All Workers", - url = "http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml" -} - -@ONLINE{khayati-1966, - author = "Khayati, Mustapha", - title = "Captive Words: Preface to a Situationist Dictionary", - publisher = "Translated by Ken Knabb, International Situationiste 10 (1966). Situationist -International Online", - url = "http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/index.html", - year = "1966" -} - -@ONLINE{kretschmer-sf, - author = "Kretschmer, Martin", - title = "Music Artists’ Earnings and Digitisation: A Review of Empirical Data from Britain and Germany", - publisher = "Bournemouth University Eprints", - url = "http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/3704/1/Birkbeck_06_04_final.pdf" -} - -@ONLINE{kretschmer-2006, - author = "Kretschmer, Martin", - title = "Empirical Evidence on Copyright Earnings", - year = "2006", - publisher = "DIME, September 2006", - url = "http://www.dime-eu.org/files/active/0/Kretschmer.pdf" -} - -@BOOK{landauer-2010, - author = "Landauer, Gustav", - title = "Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader", - publisher = "Edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn", - year = "2010", - publisher = "Oakland: PM Press" -} - -@CONFERENCE{lessig-2006, - author = "Lessig, Lawrence", - title = "Presentation at Wizards of OS 4: Information Freedom Rules", - publisher = "International Conference (September 14-16, 2006)", - address = "Berlin, Germany", - year = "2006" -} - -@BOOK{macmillan-2007, - author = "Macmillan, Fiona", - title = "New Directions in Copyright Law", - publisher = "Edward Elgar Publishing", - address = "Cheltenham, UK", - year = "2007" -} - -@ONLINE{mandel-1981, - author = "Mandel, Ernest", - title = "Historical Materialism and the Capitalist State", - publisher = "Traducido al inglés por Juriaan Bendian", - url = "http://www.scribd.com/doc/20878564/Mandel-Ernest-Historical-Materialism-and-the-Capitalist-State", - year = "1981" -} - -@INBOOK{marx-1859, - author = "Marx, Karl", - chapter = "Preface", - title = "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy", - publisher = "Marxists Internet Archive", - url = "http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm", - year = "1859" -} - -@BOOK{manifesto-1848, - author = "Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick", - title = "Manifesto of the Communist Party", - publisher = "Marxists Internet Archive", - url = "http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/", - year = "1848" -} - -@BOOK{mill-1848, - author = "Stuart Mill, J.", - title = "Principles of Political Economy with some of their Application to Social Philosophy", - year = "1909", - publisher = "Library of Economics and Liberty", - url = "http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP.html" -} - -@ONLINE{miller-2004, - author = "Miller, Ernest", - title = "Woody Guthrie on Copyright", - publisher = "Copyfight July 27, 2004", - month = "jul", - year = "2004", - url = "http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2004/07/27/woody_guthrie_on_copyright.php" -} - -@ARTICLE{oreilly-2007, - author = "O’Reilly, Tim", - title = "What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software", - publisher = "Munich Personal RePEc Archive, MPRA Paper \#4578 (2007-11-07)", - url = "http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/4578/1/MPRA_paper_4578.pdf", - year = "2007" -} - -@BOOK{proudhon-1890, - author = "Proudhon, {P}ierre-{J}oseph", - title ="What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government", - publisher = "Project Gutenberg", - url = "http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/360", - year = "1890" -} - -@BOOK{ricardo-1815, - author = "Ricardo, David", - title = "An Essay on Profits", - publisher = "Faculty of Social Science", - url = "http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/ricardo/profits.txt", - address = "McMaster University", - year = "1815" -} - -@BOOK{ricardo-1821, - author = "Ricardo, David", - title = "On Principles of Political Economy and Taxation", - year = "1821", - publisher = "Library of Economics and Liberty", - url = "http://www.econlib.org/library/Ricardo/ricPCover.html" -} - -@BOOK{seuss-1956, - author = "Dr. Seuss", - title = "If I Ran the Circus", - publisher = "Random House", - year = "1956", -} - -@ARTICLE{joost-2009, - author = "Smiers, Joost and van Schijndel, Marieke", - title ="No Copyright and No Cultural Conglomerates Too: An Essay", - publisher = "Institute of Network Cultures", - address = "Amsterdam", - url = "http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/theoryondemand/titles/no04-imagine-there-are-is-no-copyright-and-no-cultural-conglomorates-too/", - year = "2009" -} - -@INBOOK{stallman-2010, - author = "Stallman, Richard", - chapter = "Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism", - title = "Free Software, Free Society: The Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman", - publisher = "GNU Operating System", - url = "http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html", - year = "2010" -} - -@INBOOK{thorstein-2010, - author = "Thorstein, Veblen", - chapter = "Chapter 4: Conspicuous Consumption", - title = "The Theory of the Leisure Class", - publisher = "Europaeischer Hochschulver- lag GmbH \& Co KG. Originally published in 1899", - address = "Bremen, Germany", - year = "2010" -} - -@ONLINE{tucker-1926, - author = "Tucker, Benjamin", - title = "State Socialism and Anarchism: How far they agree, and wherein they differ", - publisher = "The Anarchist Library. Originally published in Benjamin Tucker, Individual Liberty (Vanguard Press, 1926)", - address = "New York", - url = "http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/tucker2.html", - year = "1926" -} - -@ONLINE{un-2007, - author = "United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics -Research", - title = "Richest 2\% Own Half the World’s Wealth", - publisher = "update.unu.edu 44 (Diciembre 2006-Febrero 2007). Para más información ver: United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) en \url{http://www.wider.unu.edu/events/past-events/2006-events/en_GB/05-12-2006/_files/78079217418699128/default/wider-wdhw-press-release-5-12-2006.pdf}", - url = "http://update.unu.edu/issue44_22.htm", - year = "2007" -} - -@ONLINE{wikipedia-web20, - title = "Web 2.0", - author = "Wikipedia.org", - year = "2010", - url = "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0" -} - -@INBOOK{keynes-2002, - author = "Keynes, John Maynard", - chapter = "Chapter 2: The Postulates of the Classical Economics", - title = "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money", - publisher = "Marxists Internet Archive. Originally published in Cambridge: Macmillan Cambridge University Press (1936).", - url = "http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch02.htm", - year = "2002" -} - -@BOOK{cohen-1988, - author = "Cohen, Gerald", - title = "History, Labor and Freedom: Themes from Marx", - publisher = "Oxford University Press", - address = "Oxford", - year = "1988" -} - -@BOOK{cohen-2009, - author = "Cohen, Gerald", - title = "Why Not Socialism?", - publisher = "Princeton University Press", - address = "New Jersey", - year = "2009" -} - -@ONLINE{developer-2006, - author = "developerWorks", - title = "developerWorks Interviews: Tim Berners-Lee", - publisher = "developerWorks 22 de agosto de 2006", - url = "http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int082206txt.html", - month = "ago", - year = "2006" -} - -@ONLINE{graham-2005, - author = "Graham, Paul", - title = "Web 2.0", - url = "http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html", - month = "nov", - year = "2005" -} - -@ONLINE{graham-2005a, - author = "Graham, Paul", - title = "What Business Can Learn From Open Source", - url = "http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html", - year = "2005", -} - -@ONLINE{moglen-2003, - author = "Moglen, Eben", - title = "The dotCommunist Manifesto", - year = "2003", - url = "http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/dcm.html" -} - -@ONLINE{keizer-sf, - author = "Keizer, Gregg", - title = "Apple Wins Court Victory Over Mac Clone Maker", - url = "http://www.pcworld.com/article/182218/Apple_Wins_Court_Victory_Over_Mac_Clone_Maker_Psystar.html?tk=rss_news", - publisher = "PC World" -} diff --git a/cite2md.rb b/cite2md.rb deleted file mode 100644 index ff74f30a8bd91ef08f13a3b4a37f956c35a93528..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/cite2md.rb +++ /dev/null @@ -1,55 +0,0 @@ -# convierte citas LaTeX en Markdown -# mandown estaria bueno para esto pero no funciona en ruby 1.9 -# licencia: GPLv3 -# autor: Nicolás Reynolds <fauno@kiwwwi.com.ar> -# gem install bibtex-ruby citeproc-ruby -require 'bibtex' -require 'citeproc' - -bib = BibTeX.open('_revision/telnik.bib') -#citere = /\\cite{([^}]+)}/ -citere = /\[\^([a-z][^\]]+)\]/ - -ARGV.each do |f| -# Leer todo el texto - text = File.read(f) - -# Obtener todas las citas únicas - cites = text.scan(citere).uniq - -# maruku agrega un <hr> a las notas al pie - #text << "\n\n## Bibliografia\n" - -# recorrer todas las citas - cites.each do |c| - citeref = "" - - puts "Procesando #{c}" - -# puede haber varias citas en un mismo \cite{} - c[0].split(', ').each do |k| - -# Una nota al pie con el nombre del bib - citeref << "[^#{k}]" - -# La nota al pie con la referencia bibliografica - citenote = "[^#{k}]: " - citenote << CiteProc.process(bib[k.to_sym].to_citeproc, :style => :apa) - -# Saltar dos espacios - citenote << "\n\n" - -# Agregar la nota al final del texto -# text << citenote - puts citenote - end - -# Cambiar los \cite{} por las referencias -# text.gsub!(/\\cite{#{c[0]}}/, citeref) - end - -# Devolver el texto -# puts text -# puts citenote - -end