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Re: [ox-en] The Wealth of Networks



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Hi Stefan,
   
  I find myself agreeing with what you say.
   
  In a recent blog entry I wrote, I used the phrase, "if it was the task of modernity to focus on individuality in every social process, then the task of postmodernity is to extract relationality out of it", first deconstructively, but we are now definitely in the reconstructive phase, and this is how I see the 'architecture of participation' that is web 2.0.
   
  See http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=284 and 285 (extract below)
   
  A good way to summarize what it is about is: 'the individual in its relations', i.e. not the atomized individual, but also not the group(ware).
   
  The key to web 2.0 is to allow the individual autonomy in his relations, and everything else flows from that: 1) the browser is now the computer and the network; 2) the web is programmable and open API allow for mash-ups of different programs and data (which become independent of the program their originally embedded in); universal interoperability is the key; 3) social learning focus as social bookmarking; 4) presencing abilities to know who else is online; 5) the rating/ranking/recommendation engines and 6) the universal RSS feeds which let anyone construct his personal/relational feed.
   
  Michel
   
  EXTRACT
   
   
  This articulation, based on a autonomous self in a society which he himself creates through the social contract, has been changing in postmodernity. Simondon, a French philosopher of technology with an important posthumous following in the French-speaking world, has argued that what was typical for modernity was to ?extract the individual dimension? of every aspect of reality, of things/processes that are also always-already related . And what is needed to renew thought, he argued, was not to go back to premodern wholism, but to systematically build on the proposition that ?everything is related?, while retaining the achievements of modern thought, i.e. the equally important centrality of individuality. Thus individuality then comes to be seen as constituted by relations , from relations.
  This proposition, that the individual is now seen as always-already part of various social fields, as a singular composite being, no longer in need of socialization, but rather in need of individuation, seems to be one of the main achievements of what could be called ?postmodern thought?. Atomistic individualism is rejected in favor of the view of a relational self , a new balance between individual agency and collective communion.
  In my opinion, as a necessary complement and advance to postmodern thought, it is necessary to take a third step, i.e. not to be content with both a recognition of individuality, and its foundation in relationality, but to also recognize the level of the collective, i.e. the field in which the relationships occur.
  If we only see relationships, we forget about the whole, which is society itself (and its sub-fields). Society is more than just the sum of its ?relationship parts?. Society sets up a ?protocol?, in which these relationships can occur, it forms the agents in their subjectivity, and consists of norms which enable or disable certain type of relationships. Thus we have agents, relationships, and fields. Finally, if we want to integrate the subjective element of human intentionality, it is necessary to introduce a fourth element: the object of the sociality.
  Indeed, human agents never just ?relate? in the abstract, agents always relate around an object, in a concrete fashion. Swarming insects do not seem to have such an object, they just follow instructions and signals, without a view of the whole, but mammals do. For example, bands of wolves congregate around the object of the prey. It is the object that energizes the relationships, that mobilizes the action. Humans can have more abstract objects, that are located in a temporal future, as an object of desire. We perform the object in our minds, and activate ourselves to realize them individually or collectively. P2P projects organize themselves around such common project, and my own Peer to Peer theory is an attempt to create an object that can inspire social and political change.
  In summary, for a comprehensive view of the collective, it is now customary to distinguish 1) the totality of relations; 2) the field in which these relations operate, up to the macro-field of society itself, which establishes the ?protocol? of what is possible and not; 3) the object of the relationship (?object-oriented sociality?), i.e. the pre-formed ideal which inspires the common action. That sociality is ?object-oriented? is an important antidote to any ?flatland?, i.e. ?merely objective? network theory, on which many failed social networking experiments are based. This idea that the field of relations is the only important dimension of reality, while forgetting human intentionality . What we need is a subjective-objective approach to networks.
  In conclusion, this turn to the collective that the emergence of peer to peer represent does not in any way present a loss of individuality, even of individualism. Rather it ?transcends and includes? individualism and collectivism in a new unity, which I would like to call ?cooperative individualism?. The cooperativity is not necessarily intentional (i.e. the result of conscious altruism), but constitutive of our being, and the best applications of P2P, are based on this idea. Similar to Adam Smith?s theory of the invisible hand, the best designed collaborative systems take advantage of the self-interest of the users, turning it into collective benefit.
  

Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de> wrote:
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Hi Trebor and all!

Last month (58 days ago) trebor wrote:
The current state
of the tech economy is linked to the web-based sociomedia because they engage
the online many. The commons-based production that Benkler refers to is a huge
factor for the economy of the post-dot bomb era. What corporate 'futureneer'
O'Reilly calls Web 2.0 is not a fad. It's a novel architecture of participation
that pervades the WWW and that has to be reckoned with.

Web 2.0 is certainly a hype at the moment but nonetheless I think
there is some substance to it. Technically I see two main trends here:

* Browsers become universal frontends

Browsers more and more become an replacement for classical desktop
applications. The technology used here is called Ajax and currently
is as much a hype as Web 2.0. On the other hand it only combines a
couple of older technologies. Sometimes I think the term Ajax only
gives a name to something possible for some time now and by naming
it making it a topic.

* Stitching together applications

This is the other main trend where applications are stitched
together from (Web) services available in the Internet.

May be it can be combined in this old Sun motto "The network is the
computer" becoming true. Web services for instance are hyped for some
five years now to be a major breakthrough. So far at least in the
consumer world there were little substance to it.

In a way classical content like HTML did similar things in the static
domain which Web 2.0 starts doing in the dynamic domain. HTML links
together static resources and brings it to your desktop by browsers.
Now Web 2.0 links together dynamic resources and brings them to your
desktop - again by browsers - and gives you ways of interaction which
are new in the domain of browsers.

But yes, there is also that social aspect Trebor mentions above. May
be that's also simlar to the Web 1.0 phase of the Web. Web 1.0 made
available static resources for private persons - both, for consumption
and for production. Get a domain, put a web site on it and you are a
producer. Wikis and the like deliver this even without your own web
space. I guess this practical availability for many actually unleashed
the power of Web 1.0. Web 2.0 now starts to bring this power to
dynamic content.

Now, that most media critics think in the service of business: Where are those
who dedicate themselves to sustainable alternative models?

Oekonux of course ;-) .

But don't those engaging in thus alternative models dedicate
themselves to their sustainability at the same time?

I know, this is a
provocative claim (especially on this list) that would need some backup, but
perhaps that goes beyond the scope of my brief response. Is the attempt
for autonomy or alternative economic models done with and all endeavors are
merely hybrid? Will the few autonomous places all turn corporate anyway- online
and off?

Whether they *turn* corporate is IMHO a question of which type of
doing things delivers more quality / interesting things. If corporate
models can they will. If not they won't.

Youtube, Writely, Del.icio.us, large chunks of the blogosophere, you
name it... They all got sucked up by vulture capitalists.

Are they sucked up or isn't it more a combination of Freedom and
corporation?

May be the Free Software distributors are a similar phenomenon. They
earn money based on services around Free Software but they don't
*turn* Free Software into a corporate thing. Those which tried
(Caldera / SCO) are not successful.

So, perhaps it's time
to give up the purity thinking of autonomous zones and just acknowledge that it
all goes corporate, if only partially, anyway?

I have no problem with this. Time will sort out what works and what
not and if I'd not be confident that Free Endeavors have a large
potential I'd probably not stay here :-) .

If we accept that, then it's no
wonder that insightful media critics of our time commit themselves to what we
could call "oak panel theory," assisting the ebays and Googles of this world in
making more money by understanding that they can only do so in the cracks of a
commons that is increasingly reliant on peer production.

Isn't this how any major turn of eras comes about? The old still
exists but the new exists as well and it has niches where it is not
dependent on the old - probably because the old would contradict the
features of the new too heavily - and there are areas where it
co-exists. As well the old can co-exist with the new and use its
potential for its own purposes.

Personally today I think this is *really* how fundamental change comes
about historically. There may be something like a revolution at some
point but without that foundation being laid long before it will stay
a simple uprising with little consequences.


Mit Freien Grüßen

Stefan

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