sharing, essence of things, technological determinism, economic determinism, and neoliberalism
Hello everyone, this is a late contribution to the very interesting debate between Roberto and Martin on abundance, free culture, information exceptionalism, and the essence of things. I am responding to Roberto's call for others to jump in to break the deadlock. I found myself strangely in the middle, agreeing with Roberto on some issues and with Martin on others. I share Martin's reservations about free culture. As long as we have not found a way to pay for the labour of cultural workers while all the rest of economic activity maintains the status quo this is a dangerous road to travel (I wont't go into this any further as this is another issue). I side with Roberto on the difference between digital and material things and their implications for human behaviour. And I find myself sitting on the fence when it comes to the economic implications of this difference. For sure it is important to make a distinction between the material and the digital side of the information economy (see Patrick's clarification on the two sides of cyberspace on 4.1.2011) Roberto writes (1.1.2011): 'I assert that the differences between the agricultural, industrial and information modes are of primary importance. These differences arise from the very nature of the goods involved in each mode, and the differences propagate to the level of social relations, including the thinking of people involved in the production of such goods....' 'In short, you cannot ignore the nature of the different goods themselves (living, non-living material, non-material) when considering what kind of social relations are appropriate for particular goods...' 'The point is you cannot ignore the nature of the different types of goods, because their nature often determines or significantly influences the way the goods can be produced and the social relations that arise out of such production modes.' Martin responds (1.1.2011) 'I find it reductionistic, simplistic and in denial of the material base. It relies upon the export of the costs - the externalities - of that production, and is as such very close to neoliberal thinking...' 'In political philosophy terms I consider the primary and deterministic view on "production process" and "thing in question" somewhere between crude marxism (as I said earlier, but this is probably an idiosyncratic error, since I don't really know much about marxism) and neoliberalism: void of social relations around it and disregarding externalities. At any rate: the shaping of social relations have been subjected to the essence of a thing - so if we can generate a list of essential shareability properties, then all we need is a computer to calculate degrees of sharing? No need for politics, no need for dialogue: the thing determines. What a horrible vision and logical conclusion.' 'I do not want to envisage a world in which the essential properties of a thing determine whether it is shareable or not. It sounds so mechanic and reductionistic.' In a response to Michel Martin (same day a bit later) explains further: 'Therefore, in some situation, for argument's sake, it might also be more easy to share a car than it is to share a poem digitally. It all depends on access and configuration of society.' Let's start with this last quote. I would question this statement. Can you give an example to make this claim work? Provided someone has access to a digital device (computer, mobile etc.) and access to the internet it will always be easier to share a poem than to share a car. And if access to digital technology and to digital networks doesn't exist there is no point discussing this. Sharing the poem digitally is easier than sharing a car because the sharer of the poem can keep the poem, whereas the sharer of the car has to give away the car. The sharing of a poem is obviously a form of communication and social interaction with respect to the message and the meaning of the poem, but the act of sharing does not rely on any social interaction at all. It is a one-way street. Under normal circumstances nobody would negotiate with a possible sharer whether to send the poem or not. They just do it. In contrast car sharing needs social interaction and those who engage with car sharing, say within a household on a long term basis, have probably all experienced how this can bring about social conflicts. This is the difference: If material and biological things (cars and mangos) are being shared they do not just get multiplied. Sharing a car means not having access to the car all the time, sharing a mango with someone else means that both can only eat half of the mango. This form of sharing usually involves the notion of sacrifice and most anthropologists would argue that it is precisely this sacrifice that produces an intensification of social relationships, a strengthening of social ties. The sharing of digital 'things' does not involve any sacrifice. Digital things just get multiplied. So if we share a poem digitally we do share it in an abstract way, we share the meaning of the poem, we share our taste in poetry and literature, but we do not share the file. For this reason one could argue that the term sharing is in fact very problematic, even misleading, for digital 'things'. It seems that sharing, like stealing, has entered the language of digital practises due to mere ideological reasons. Both terms are used to justify new forms of social practices morally. Sharing is good, stealing is bad. But copying is neither good nor bad, neither sharing nor stealing, it is just copying, multiplying. A very sad example of the social implications of digital sharing can found in a story published by the Telegraph a few days ago. ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8241015/Facebook-friends-mock...). A 42 year old woman in the UK posted a message on facebook to her 1048 friends on Christmas day, announcing that she will commit suicide and that she has just swallowed the pills. Her message was widely discussed in her network and led to 148 responses where her 'friends' discussed the statement and the former breakdown of this women's relationship. But nobody bothered to call her, call the police, or go over to her place, even though many of her friends discussing her post lived very local. So she died. It's a story we probably won't find in Clay Shirky's next book appraising the positive implications for social media on human relationships. I am mentioning this story cause I don't think it is far fetched to assume that this woman would still be alive had she 'shared' her intentions not on a digital network, but with somebody in a 'real' encounter. As stated above, the sharing of material and biological things is harder to do compared to the sharing of digital things, but because it is harder is has different implications for the quality of social interactions. With respect to 'sharing' in the digital realm and its implications for social interaction I would distinguish between two form of 'sharing', which draws on a distinction by Bruno Latour, between intermediaries and mediators. Intermediaries transport messages (content, code, meaning) without transforming them. Mediators transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry. So the sharing as intermediary refers to a pure dissemination of content (e.g. file-'sharing'), whereas the sharing as mediator refers to, say mailing lists, blogs etc. This form of 'sharing' is exchange and/or collaboration. The first form of digital 'sharing' is about distribution, the latter about exchange, creation and production, and obviously this form of sharing has always existed; it is not at all specific to the digital age. Sharing as distribution has another social quality than sharing as creation and collaboration. It is a lower form of social interaction and produces less communication, weaker ties, less room for conflicts etc. In my view it does make sense to carve out different qualities of sharing, as these qualities are closely connected to the material and digital worlds in which they exist as social practices. If this is true it does also make sense to analytically distinguish between the properties of digital and material things and consequently to claim that these properties determine or at least facilitate rather specific forms and qualities of social relationships. I concede that this might be simplistic and mechanic but it helps in terms of understanding differences which in my view are important ones. This surely is neither a crude marxist nor a neo-liberal position. It is plainly a position usually associated with technological determinism. As most people would put Marx in the camp of technological determinism, one could call this position a Marxist, or alternatively one associated with McLuhan or with actor-network theory, among many others one could refer to. It is certainly not a neo-liberal position as it does not make any statements with respect to the realm of economics. My point really is that we have to be careful to distinguish between technological and economic determinism. For the latter things do indeed get much more complicated due to the material externalities of 'digital' things and due to the different forms of digital sharing (distributing and creating). Roberto does make a connection between different properties of things (biological, material, digital) and different modes of production. Even though I do not agree at all with the claim of biological abundance in the 21st century world we live in, I find this connection rather interesting. Is it neo-liberal per se to speak about an informational mode of production and to distinguish this mode from an industrial or an agricultural mode of production? I have my doubts. It would only be a neoliberal position if the material externalities of digital production and distribution would be denied, which nobody does. What makes this debate so complicated is that it is still impossible to evaluate in any way the relevance of (and the impact for) these material externatities for this digital mode of production. best wishes, andreas
Hi Andreas, I do not use informational mode of production myself as it is quite vague. I think the issue is that based on the differential characteristics of information as a good, it can still be produced in several ways, i.e. in a old-style capitalist mode, where information are commodities and are kept artificially scarce, or in a new capitalist mode which recognizes that information does not need to be commoditized itself. At the same time, this new modality is also the seed form of a new 'peer production mode', if it can extend itself to the material basis. The issue is that current peer production models have both immanent features, reinforcing the current system, and transcendent features, both in terms of changing the current system but remaining 'capitalist', and containing features which transcend the capitalist mode. This is why I usually prefer to consider peer production as a seed form, needing further extension and transformation, rather than as a full mode. At present, peer production of immaterial goods cannot fully reproduce itself without use of the pre-existing mode. This requires peer production communities to think and strategize around the extension of the 'transcending' aspects of their current practices. One cannot speak of a mode of production, without these broader social relations, but one can of course speak of modalities of production that take into account the specifics of the goods considered, Michel On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 10:02 PM, Andreas Wittel <[email protected]>wrote:
Hello everyone,
this is a late contribution to the very interesting debate between Roberto and Martin on abundance, free culture, information exceptionalism, and the essence of things. I am responding to Roberto's call for others to jump in to break the deadlock. I found myself strangely in the middle, agreeing with Roberto on some issues and with Martin on others.
I share Martin's reservations about free culture. As long as we have not found a way to pay for the labour of cultural workers while all the rest of economic activity maintains the status quo this is a dangerous road to travel (I wont't go into this any further as this is another issue). I side with Roberto on the difference between digital and material things and their implications for human behaviour. And I find myself sitting on the fence when it comes to the economic implications of this difference. For sure it is important to make a distinction between the material and the digital side of the information economy (see Patrick's clarification on the two sides of cyberspace on 4.1.2011)
Roberto writes (1.1.2011):
'I assert that the differences between the agricultural, industrial and information modes are of primary importance. These differences arise from the very nature of the goods involved in each mode, and the differences propagate to the level of social relations, including the thinking of people involved in the production of such goods....' 'In short, you cannot ignore the nature of the different goods themselves (living, non-living material, non-material) when considering what kind of social relations are appropriate for particular goods...' 'The point is you cannot ignore the nature of the different types of goods, because their nature often determines or significantly influences the way the goods can be produced and the social relations that arise out of such production modes.'
Martin responds (1.1.2011)
'I find it reductionistic, simplistic and in denial of the material base. It relies upon the export of the costs - the externalities - of that production, and is as such very close to neoliberal thinking...' 'In political philosophy terms I consider the primary and deterministic view on "production process" and "thing in question" somewhere between crude marxism (as I said earlier, but this is probably an idiosyncratic error, since I don't really know much about marxism) and neoliberalism: void of social relations around it and disregarding externalities. At any rate: the shaping of social relations have been subjected to the essence of a thing - so if we can generate a list of essential shareability properties, then all we need is a computer to calculate degrees of sharing? No need for politics, no need for dialogue: the thing determines. What a horrible vision and logical conclusion.'
'I do not want to envisage a world in which the essential properties of a thing determine whether it is shareable or not. It sounds so mechanic and reductionistic.'
In a response to Michel Martin (same day a bit later) explains further:
'Therefore, in some situation, for argument's sake, it might also be more easy to share a car than it is to share a poem digitally. It all depends on access and configuration of society.'
Let's start with this last quote. I would question this statement. Can you give an example to make this claim work? Provided someone has access to a digital device (computer, mobile etc.) and access to the internet it will always be easier to share a poem than to share a car. And if access to digital technology and to digital networks doesn't exist there is no point discussing this.
Sharing the poem digitally is easier than sharing a car because the sharer of the poem can keep the poem, whereas the sharer of the car has to give away the car. The sharing of a poem is obviously a form of communication and social interaction with respect to the message and the meaning of the poem, but the act of sharing does not rely on any social interaction at all. It is a one-way street. Under normal circumstances nobody would negotiate with a possible sharer whether to send the poem or not. They just do it. In contrast car sharing needs social interaction and those who engage with car sharing, say within a household on a long term basis, have probably all experienced how this can bring about social conflicts.
This is the difference: If material and biological things (cars and mangos) are being shared they do not just get multiplied. Sharing a car means not having access to the car all the time, sharing a mango with someone else means that both can only eat half of the mango. This form of sharing usually involves the notion of sacrifice and most anthropologists would argue that it is precisely this sacrifice that produces an intensification of social relationships, a strengthening of social ties.
The sharing of digital 'things' does not involve any sacrifice. Digital things just get multiplied. So if we share a poem digitally we do share it in an abstract way, we share the meaning of the poem, we share our taste in poetry and literature, but we do not share the file.
For this reason one could argue that the term sharing is in fact very problematic, even misleading, for digital 'things'. It seems that sharing, like stealing, has entered the language of digital practises due to mere ideological reasons. Both terms are used to justify new forms of social practices morally. Sharing is good, stealing is bad. But copying is neither good nor bad, neither sharing nor stealing, it is just copying, multiplying.
A very sad example of the social implications of digital sharing can found in a story published by the Telegraph a few days ago. ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8241015/Facebook-friends-mock...). A 42 year old woman in the UK posted a message on facebook to her 1048 friends on Christmas day, announcing that she will commit suicide and that she has just swallowed the pills. Her message was widely discussed in her network and led to 148 responses where her 'friends' discussed the statement and the former breakdown of this women's relationship. But nobody bothered to call her, call the police, or go over to her place, even though many of her friends discussing her post lived very local. So she died. It's a story we probably won't find in Clay Shirky's next book appraising the positive implications for social media on human relationships. I am mentioning this story cause I don't think it is far fetched to assume that this woman would still be alive had she 'shared' her intentions not on a digital network, but with somebody in a 'real' encounter.
As stated above, the sharing of material and biological things is harder to do compared to the sharing of digital things, but because it is harder is has different implications for the quality of social interactions.
With respect to 'sharing' in the digital realm and its implications for social interaction I would distinguish between two form of 'sharing', which draws on a distinction by Bruno Latour, between intermediaries and mediators. Intermediaries transport messages (content, code, meaning) without transforming them. Mediators transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry. So the sharing as intermediary refers to a pure dissemination of content (e.g. file-'sharing'), whereas the sharing as mediator refers to, say mailing lists, blogs etc. This form of 'sharing' is exchange and/or collaboration. The first form of digital 'sharing' is about distribution, the latter about exchange, creation and production, and obviously this form of sharing has always existed; it is not at all specific to the digital age. Sharing as distribution has another social quality than sharing as creation and collaboration. It is a lower form of social interaction and produces less communication, weaker ties, less room for conflicts etc.
In my view it does make sense to carve out different qualities of sharing, as these qualities are closely connected to the material and digital worlds in which they exist as social practices. If this is true it does also make sense to analytically distinguish between the properties of digital and material things and consequently to claim that these properties determine or at least facilitate rather specific forms and qualities of social relationships. I concede that this might be simplistic and mechanic but it helps in terms of understanding differences which in my view are important ones. This surely is neither a crude marxist nor a neo-liberal position. It is plainly a position usually associated with technological determinism. As most people would put Marx in the camp of technological determinism, one could call this position a Marxist, or alternatively one associated with McLuhan or with actor-network theory, among many others one could refer to.
It is certainly not a neo-liberal position as it does not make any statements with respect to the realm of economics. My point really is that we have to be careful to distinguish between technological and economic determinism.
For the latter things do indeed get much more complicated due to the material externalities of 'digital' things and due to the different forms of digital sharing (distributing and creating). Roberto does make a connection between different properties of things (biological, material, digital) and different modes of production. Even though I do not agree at all with the claim of biological abundance in the 21st century world we live in, I find this connection rather interesting.
Is it neo-liberal per se to speak about an informational mode of production and to distinguish this mode from an industrial or an agricultural mode of production? I have my doubts. It would only be a neoliberal position if the material externalities of digital production and distribution would be denied, which nobody does. What makes this debate so complicated is that it is still impossible to evaluate in any way the relevance of (and the impact for) these material externatities for this digital mode of production.
best wishes,
andreas
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Hi Michel, thanks for your comments. Very useful, I will reply here to both of your responses. I do agree, as you suggest in your first response, that there is always a multitude of determinations at work and that it is best to avoid or bracket this topic where we can. As long as we analyse relations between technologies, economies, and people*on a micro-level *, we can indeed carve out these co-productions and co-dependencies, where different factors and forces are at work at the same time. For ecample Raymond Williams' critique of McLuhan's technodeterminism is very correct: all technologies are produced socially, thus people produce the things and technologies they need and want to make their life better, ergo: it is nonsensical to say that things determine the actions of people. Similar Bruno Latour's famous analysis of the hotel key, which is desinged in a way that people want to get rid of it before they leave the hotel. It is designed on purpose so big, they don't want to forget to hand it back to the reception desk. *On a marco-level* or for a historical analysis however things get much more complicated as we have to find words which will represent transformations in the best possible way. And quickly we are back different 'determination camps' again. See below. On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 6:19 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]>wrote:
Hi Andreas, I do not use informational mode of production myself as it is quite vague.
Neither do I. I have used the term 'digital mode of production' to distinguish it from a material mode of production. The problem that you outline below is of course still valid. Digital mode of production is still vague with respect to emerging social and economic forms. It is also a simplication due to the material externalities of the virtual.
I think the issue is that based on the differential characteristics of information as a good, it can still be produced in several ways, i.e. in a old-style capitalist mode, where information are commodities and are kept artificially scarce, or in a new capitalist mode which recognizes that information does not need to be commoditized itself. At the same time, this new modality is also the seed form of a new 'peer production mode', if it can extend itself to the material basis. The issue is that current peer production models have both immanent features, reinforcing the current system, and transcendent features, both in terms of changing the current system but remaining 'capitalist', and containing features which transcend the capitalist mode. This is why I usually prefer to consider peer production as a seed form, needing further extension and transformation, rather than as a full mode. At present, peer production of immaterial goods cannot fully reproduce itself without use of the pre-existing mode. This requires peer production communities to think and strategize around the extension of the 'transcending' aspects of their current practices.
With peer production you have made a choice for the primacy of the social and a specific form of social organisation. Fair enough, but you have made a choice that puts technologies in second place. This is my question: Does anybody believe the new interest in issues around peer production and the commons would have happend anyway, even without the developments of digital technologies over the past 20 years? Peer productions has always existed. Various forms of commons and cooperatives have always existed. But the new interest in these issue is due to the digital, networked, and distributed technologies, and their capabilities to open up new forms of social action.
One cannot speak of a mode of production, without these broader social relations, but one can of course speak of modalities of production that take into account the specifics of the goods considered,
Of course not, and nobody using Marxist theory would for get about the wider social relations. For Marx, mode of production is always both, technologies and social relations (class relations, power relations, property relations etc.). Anyway, this is a mere intellectual problem. There are more pressing issue at the moment with respect to building the stuff we talk about. I just wanted to respond to the neoliberal tag. best andreas
iDear Andreas, you write: <With peer production you have made a choice for the primacy of the social and a specific form of social organisation. Fair enough, but you have made a choice that puts technologies in second place. This is my question: Does anybody believe the new interest in issues around peer production and the commons would have happend anyway, even without the developments of digital technologies over the past 20 years? Peer productions has always existed. Various forms of commons and cooperatives have always existed. But the new interest in these issue is due to the digital, networked, and distributed technologies, and their capabilities to open up new forms of social action.> This is well put, and for me the one of the key arguments put forward by my own P2P Theory is indeed, yes, technogical affordances matter tremendously (that does not mean they come out of nothing themselves though, but once there, they are a very important factor in determing social realities), and create new possibilities that did not exist previously. So my answer would be that peer production has been enabled by technology and would not exist on the scale we know, without it. That does not mean that societies without it have no emancipatory possibilities, but they would be different ones. Digital technologies affording 'peer production' create distinct possiblities for emancipation through autonomous distributed physical and virtual production. On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 8:01 PM, Andreas Wittel <[email protected]>wrote:
Hi Michel,
thanks for your comments. Very useful, I will reply here to both of your responses.
I do agree, as you suggest in your first response, that there is always a multitude of determinations at work and that it is best to avoid or bracket this topic where we can.
As long as we analyse relations between technologies, economies, and people * on a micro-level*, we can indeed carve out these co-productions and co-dependencies, where different factors and forces are at work at the same time.
For ecample Raymond Williams' critique of McLuhan's technodeterminism is very correct: all technologies are produced socially, thus people produce the things and technologies they need and want to make their life better, ergo: it is nonsensical to say that things determine the actions of people. Similar Bruno Latour's famous analysis of the hotel key, which is desinged in a way that people want to get rid of it before they leave the hotel. It is designed on purpose so big, they don't want to forget to hand it back to the reception desk.
*On a marco-level* or for a historical analysis however things get much more complicated as we have to find words which will represent transformations in the best possible way. And quickly we are back different 'determination camps' again. See below.
On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 6:19 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]>wrote:
Hi Andreas, I do not use informational mode of production myself as it is quite vague.
Neither do I. I have used the term 'digital mode of production' to distinguish it from a material mode of production. The problem that you outline below is of course still valid. Digital mode of production is still vague with respect to emerging social and economic forms. It is also a simplication due to the material externalities of the virtual.
I think the issue is that based on the differential characteristics of information as a good, it can still be produced in several ways, i.e. in a old-style capitalist mode, where information are commodities and are kept artificially scarce, or in a new capitalist mode which recognizes that information does not need to be commoditized itself. At the same time, this new modality is also the seed form of a new 'peer production mode', if it can extend itself to the material basis. The issue is that current peer production models have both immanent features, reinforcing the current system, and transcendent features, both in terms of changing the current system but remaining 'capitalist', and containing features which transcend the capitalist mode. This is why I usually prefer to consider peer production as a seed form, needing further extension and transformation, rather than as a full mode. At present, peer production of immaterial goods cannot fully reproduce itself without use of the pre-existing mode. This requires peer production communities to think and strategize around the extension of the 'transcending' aspects of their current practices.
With peer production you have made a choice for the primacy of the social and a specific form of social organisation. Fair enough, but you have made a choice that puts technologies in second place. This is my question: Does anybody believe the new interest in issues around peer production and the commons would have happend anyway, even without the developments of digital technologies over the past 20 years? Peer productions has always existed. Various forms of commons and cooperatives have always existed. But the new interest in these issue is due to the digital, networked, and distributed technologies, and their capabilities to open up new forms of social action.
One cannot speak of a mode of production, without these broader social relations, but one can of course speak of modalities of production that take into account the specifics of the goods considered,
Of course not, and nobody using Marxist theory would for get about the wider social relations. For Marx, mode of production is always both, technologies and social relations (class relations, power relations, property relations etc.).
Anyway, this is a mere intellectual problem. There are more pressing issue at the moment with respect to building the stuff we talk about. I just wanted to respond to the neoliberal tag.
best andreas
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dear michel, This is well put, and for me the one of the key arguments put forward by my
own P2P Theory is indeed, yes, technogical affordances matter tremendously (that does not mean they come out of nothing themselves though, but once there, they are a very important factor in determing social realities), and create new possibilities that did not exist previously. So my answer would be that peer production has been enabled by technology and would not exist on the scale we know, without it. That does not mean that societies without it have no emancipatory possibilities, but they would be different ones. Digital technologies affording 'peer production' create distinct possiblities for emancipation through autonomous distributed physical and virtual production
Yes, this analysis works for me too. best, Andreas
super!! On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 3:24 AM, Andreas Wittel <[email protected]>wrote:
dear michel,
This is well put, and for me the one of the key arguments put forward by my
own P2P Theory is indeed, yes, technogical affordances matter tremendously (that does not mean they come out of nothing themselves though, but once there, they are a very important factor in determing social realities), and create new possibilities that did not exist previously. So my answer would be that peer production has been enabled by technology and would not exist on the scale we know, without it. That does not mean that societies without it have no emancipatory possibilities, but they would be different ones. Digital technologies affording 'peer production' create distinct possiblities for emancipation through autonomous distributed physical and virtual production
Yes, this analysis works for me too. best, Andreas
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On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 3:24 PM, Andreas Wittel <[email protected]> wrote:
dear michel,
This is well put, and for me the one of the key arguments put forward by my own P2P Theory is indeed, yes, technogical affordances matter tremendously (that does not mean they come out of nothing themselves though, but once there, they are a very important factor in determing social realities), and create new possibilities that did not exist previously. So my answer would be that peer production has been enabled by technology and would not exist on the scale we know, without it. That does not mean that societies without it have no emancipatory possibilities, but they would be different ones. Digital technologies affording 'peer production' create distinct possiblities for emancipation through autonomous distributed physical and virtual production
Yes, this analysis works for me too. best, Andreas
It's also kind of interesting to note that there is no evidence I can think of where any humans existed without some form of technology at any period in time.
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participants (3)
-
Andreas Wittel -
Michel Bauwens -
Samuel Rose