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18 January 2013 Mark Stallman Disputes Aaron Swartz Manifesto
From: Newmedia[at]aol.com Keith:
> Facebook has replaced that and now a brainwashed Diana McCarthy invited me to keynote the last MetaForum 15 years ago (because I had dared to challenge John Perry Barlow' s "Cyberspace" declaration) -- so where is she now? Facebook.
When I got to Budapest, one of the most interesting people I met
was Richard Barbrook. I wrote "English Ideology and WIRED Magazine"
in reply to his "Californian Ideology" (and his propensity to go off
on Hungarians and everyone else for their "national" characteristics)
-- so where is he now? The last nettime F2F event took place at the (Soros) offices of Vuk Cosic in Ljubljana -- so where is he now? Facebook (in Slovenian). When I brought up the lack of serious discussion about the impact of technology on our behaviors and attitudes on nettime many months ago, what was the reaction? Nothing. The best one-liner on the topic came from Diana -- WMD = Weapons of Mass Distraction. The best back-and-forth discussion came from Richard -- what did McLuhan actually know in the 1960s about the coming of the "network"? (Answer: Nothing and Richard misuses the term "McLuhanism" as a stand-in for whatever replaced "Fordism.") Where did these discussions happen? Facebook. When I tried to initiate a conversation on nettime regarding Vuc's plans to stage a conversation at a gallery about "where do ideas come from?" the moderators decided not to post my reply to his announcement. Twice. So, what happened in Ljubljana? Patrice showed up but no report on nettime. And, then we get this from Felix, "Yes, I totally agree, media determinism is self-defeating and my post, written sloppily, might have suggested that." Huh? What the hell does "media determinism" mean? "Self-defeating"? More "sloppiness" by referring in an *apology* to a MEME that has no meaning? I've recently been tracking down sociologists to try to figure out why they denounce "media determinism" and invented what they call "Social Construction of Technology" (SCOT), since I couldn't find an explanation in the published material. I've had conversations with two who have published books on the topic and they admitted that it was a "defensive" move meant to "protect" sociology from *outsiders* -- sound familiar (i.e. nettime protecting itself from Facebook)? Aaron Swartz was wrong (in addition to being clinically depressed and suicidal) -- INFORMATION is *not* power. As Francis Bacon made clear KNOWLEDGE is power. They are decidedly *not* the same thing. Instead of a discussion on nettime, what we get is "information wants to be free" hagiography . . . #FAIL.
> I contend that this is a variant of the socialist inversion Mythology indeed! (And, btw, since "bourgeois" simply means people who live in cities, what is "wrong" with that -- would you rather be a "pagan"?) The primary *effect* of DIGITAL technology is to encourage feedback. This is what nettime did once. Now this is what Facebook does. (And, if you don't like what I say, you can just "unfriend" me -- which, presumably because Keith doesn't "like" my comments, is exactly what he did. <g>) This is quite different from the *effect* of mass-media, which is to encourage consumption. To the extent that nettime encourages "consumption" of the same *mythology* without any FEEDBACK (which is likely what happens to any moderated list), it has remained in the earlier "analog" media modality in which "fumes" are recycled and nothing "upsetting" happens.
Mark Stahlman P.S. What Coates and Wang are doing is very important for economics, which is why I'm in touch with them (and why Keith just posted a link to their HBR "manifesto" on FB but not on nettime). Obviously, there won't be a discussion about "real-world" economics on nettime. But will there be one on Facebook?
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without
permission
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2013 22:33:14 +0100 I wish I had your talent and time for kindness, Ed. Felix has admitted that his initial post was sloppy, so he won't take offence, I hope, if I report that, when I saw it, my heart sank. I decided to leave it alone. The freedom to ignore messages is more commonplace than Facebook's detractors suppose. I never understood why some people complain about all the messages they have to ignore. It takes me next to no time at all to pass them by. I suspect that it's fear of being overwhelmed by unwanted messages or worse of being adulterated by them, fear of the unwashed masses. In any case, I haven't come here to offer empirical testimony of life in a commercial hell. It isn't a question of what it's really like down there. The problem is one of ideology, not of personalities, practices and social forces. The ideology is of course bourgeois and it is unknowingly reproduced by the bourgeoisie's detractors. That's why my heart sank. I have been trying to get the message across for decades, but it never soaks in. We all know Adam Smith's origin myth for capitalism and can easily resist it: being self-interested is universal, a part of human nature, the propensity to truck etc. Herbert Spencer's evolutionary version is more insidious. Human beings once lived in communities animated by altruism (aka the free gift), all very nice and solidary. Division of labour broke it up and markets emerged to express and coordinate our selfishness. Commercial life is less noble than the primitive utopia, but it is much more efficent. Social darwinism is just one step away. The point however is that a socialist tradition, which espouses an anti-market ideology going back to Aristotle via the medieval schoolmen, reproduces the opposition while inverting it. Marcel Mauss wrote The Gift explicitly to refute the twin postulates of bourgeois ideology. Market contracts depend on a a hidden social infrastructure and there is no such thing as a free gift. Commodities are social and gifts are interested. To be human we must be concerned with our individual self-preservation and we must learn to belong to each other in society. Some societies make that easier than others. Markets contain both these elements together and so does Christmas. There is no point therefore in socialists demonizing markets. We have to bring out the humanity in them that is obscured, marginalized and repressed by bourgeois institutions. Having spent years feeling dependent on technical wizards for internet access, Web 2.0 has been something of a liberation for me. It give me a chance to exercise my social skills without having to ask for permission first. Facebook has many faults, not least its monopoly. But I fear Apple, Google and Amazon more. It will in any case die the death before long, since the logic of command and control will alienate its users. What I have noticed, here on nettime and especially in the unlike-us list, is something like the following story. Once upon a time not long ago a internet progress was driven by a free class who shared and were untainted by commerce. Facebook has replaced that and now a brainwashed mass celebrates its gullibility and ignorance in ways that must repel all sensitive souls, if they were ever to risk contamination by joining in. I contend that this is a variant of the socialist inversion of Spencer's bourgeois myth. Any historical or sociological explanation that starts from this premise has its answers mapped out already. Empirical enquiry is redundant. Keith On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Ed Phillips <ed[at]cronos.net> wrote:
> Felix,
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:59:38 +0100 Let us honour Aaron by continuing his work, collectively. Aaron Swartz: Guerilla Open Access Manifesto (https://gist.github.com/4535453) [Manifesto omitted.]
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:58:33 +0100 Hi Ed, Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Generally, I don't think Facebook forces anything on people. It's more subtle, and it's embedded in a general, let's say, neo-liberal context. As both traditional communities and traditional hierarchies are grumbling, people are pushed, and are pulling, to create new social context for their lives. One of the tools they have at their disposal is Facebook, and whatever Facebook affects, it does so in relationship with many other forces, some of them counteracting whatever Facebook does, others amplifying it. That said, from what I can see from the outside, and from the inside in other social media networks, frames this deep human urge to find recognition and the current social pressures to build you're own networks, in very particular ways, and attaching a precise in order to jump outside one's own network of friends, and differentiating this price in relation to the "importance" of the person is a very crass way of framing things. Now, the fact that Facebook does this framing in a particular way, does not mean that people are simply accepting this and not finding other ways of using these powerful resources, but still, such suggestion of how to communicate, or, really, how to think, are powerful. Again, facebook is part of a very complex infrastructure and people move in and out of various elements of it as they see fit. I'm sure most activists of Anonymous have also facebook accounts, but they do not use it for their activities as Anonymous. Yes, I totally agree, media determinism is self-defeating and my post, written sloppily, might have suggested that. But that's not point I want to make. But the fact that there are many forces at play, doesn not mean that they are all equally strong or that they cancel each other out into some general neutrality. Felix On 01/15/2013 09:04 PM, Ed Phillips wrote: Felix,
I find myself heartened to see your thoughts in my inbox, and that has <...> -|- http://felix.openflows.com ------------------------ books out now: | *|Cultures & Ethics of Sharing/Kulturen & Ethiken des Teilens UIP 2012 *|Vergessene Zukunft. Radikale Netzkulturen in Europa. transcript 2012 *|Deep Search. The Politics of Searching Beyond Google. Studienv. 2009 *|Mediale Kunst/Media Arts Zurich.13 Positions. Scheidegger&Spiess2008 *|Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society.Polity P. 2006 *|Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks. Ed Futura / Revolver, 2005 | # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime[at]kein.org
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2013 12:35:16 -0600 Felix, I find myself heartened to see your thoughts in my inbox, and that has been the case for me for many years. But perhaps that is because I "friended" you on nettime many years ago. And because I have developed a respect for your capacities and your efforts, I actually do bother to try to make sense of what your write and I try to get at the more elusive truth of what you think and the still more elusive truth of "what is actually going on" through the lens of what you think. I'm not on Facebook in any real or active form, so I can't tell you my impression. Perhaps Keith or Ted, those who do use it, can. I can say that I see something in your second paragraph that gives me pause. I want to take issue with how that paragraph turns on "turning". Simply, does social media (i.e. Facebook) turn people into avid self-promoters and greedy quantitative collectors of friends? Does it reduce people to only glad handing and appearance management? Or does it draw out and consolidate what many people want from both the social and from media? I could have fallen asleep at my Unix terminal fifteen years ago and not have missed a whit if Facebook has merely turned the naive into self promoters and image managers. Even more detrimental than a society of self promoters and most pernicious to my mind is the sense that anyone is determined by these media. It is us who fail the media, or we get the media we deserve. Or maybe we get the "experience" of media that we deserve. One way to constructively look at actually existing social media is as a petri dish for the "consolidation of error" as old William Blake used the phrase. It is that much easier for us to talk about the way a primitive group devolves into friend collecting and spam wars, and it looks even more comic and silly now than such trends looked on Usenet. And as they try to quantify and monetize, to give a price tag to social capital, they consolidate error ever more distinctly and more farcically. But today's social media is also many people's first homesteading in the noosphere and such conversations and uses as they are capable of are available to them. I imagine that new capacities for conversation are being born in individuals every day. And I also imagine that a gorging on the use of media for self aggrandizement and narcissistic satisfaction might even be salutary for those who grow weary of it. On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 12:05:16PM +0100, Felix Stalder wrote:
> I must admit, I'm thinking about joining Facebook. It's such a
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2013 12:05:16 +0100 I must admit, I'm thinking about joining Facebook. It's such a giant social experiment. The main direction seems to be to totally obliterate the difference between advertisement and virtually all other forms of speech. In many ways, it has already achieved this, but only on a social level, turning everyone into avid self-promoters, collecting friends and likes, and more or less subtlety suggesting that everyone should think with every post "is this really the image of myself I want to present?" Now, of course, pressure to monetize this new type of advertising is mounting. There are shareholders to feed. One way to do so is to enable paying customers to bypass personal filters and enter people's private spaces directly. At this point, two price points have been suggested. $ 1 for normal people's private space, $100 for Marc Zuckerberg's. But if you accept the idea of price differentiation here, there is no reason why this could not be done more fine grained. Indeed, this can be done with infinite granularity and, of course, based on real-time algorithms. So, while now, everyone has a dynamic friend count, it's not far fetched that sooner or later, this will be accompanied by a price tag for personal communication. It's kind of like a inverted speakers fee for everyone. Yet another form of democratization by media. Athens, we are coming. Felix Friday, Jan 11, 2013 10:20 PM CET Facebook’s perfect spam laboratory What's really behind the company's scheme to charge $100 for the right to message CEO Mark Zuckerberg By Andrew Leonard http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/facebooks_perfect_spam_laboratory/ [Text of report omitted.]
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