to hugh and steph
re: ulises post and worried about the effects of ISF
This post is why I argue with Steph about the tendancy that I see in his work and his practice to closely associate FLOSS with social justice groups. And it’s why I argue with Hugh about making sure that we understand the engine + motivation of that engine of the openmovement. Because if you just concentrate on the similarities and possible synergies between floss and non-profits or if you only look at the effects (short + mid-term) of the open-movement then I’m worried that we might all get bitten in the ass.
I think that technology is not a path to liberation. We have to be extremely careful of how we use it. But I think the engine of the open movement are systematizers. And their/our relationship with technology is *very* different than the rest of society. It is extremely important for them and the process through which they engage in it is very different (imo). And I for one don’t want the rest of our society to have the same relationship to technology as them.
So we have to be very careful about how far we take this engine that is fueled by something else - something that we don’t completely understand. Because it’s not just people power. it’s a people power from a certain group of people.
damn. i wish I could explain this better . . .
Alison, Benoit and I had a good discussion in the car ride home about what geeks were. What I took out of that conversation was the key being the feeling or process associated with some practice (model trains, baseball stats, coding, etc) as opposed to the type of practice.
April 5th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Well, when a blog post is adressed to me in the title, i guess i have to respond to it (sorry for my still imperfect english)
It is probably true that i have a tendancy to associate FLOSS with social justice groups and i should take care more about this, for my research. This is probably due to where i am coming from: Indymedia and radical politics. However, you probably heard me also talking about **tensions** beetween FLOSS and community groups, tensions that are mostly related to the different representations of technology, sometime confronting each other. For instance, the ethic of “free information” or “free technology” is still very far from the ethic of social justice held by many community groups.
I would however turn the question to you. Why people continuously insist that free software should not be associated with social justice? What is it so scraring about that people need to always insist on this?
Saying “technology is not a path to liberation” is for me the same as saying “technology is a path to liberation”. Can it be something beetween the two? Can “technology” be simply here, as a ressource we have to democratically build our world, and not an “engine that is fueled by something else”? In this case, i don’t see what would be the problem of associating FLOSS with social justice, or associating it with “political right activism”; public place includes many point of view.
In the last weeks, i have been working hard on the work of Gilbert Simondon, a french philosopher of technology. For him, our world is “sick” because it doesn’t recognise technical objets a having sense (like esthetical objets) and exclude them from the cultural sphere. For Simondon, this relation to technology, which put technicians and technology in another world (a one without any humanity), leads to either technophobia (hating of the stranger), or a technophilia similar to integrism by the people who feel the “cultural dimension” of technology. For Simondon, a cultural relation to technology is held by the ones who live with machines, who put together pieces and are thus aware that technology is not a finished, stabilised entity.
As you say, I see FLOSS not that much as a technology in itself than a cultural relation to technology, a one that tries to “open” the black box of technology and take part in its “internal sociability”. It is also interesting that you note that it might not be everybody who can have this relation to technology :-).
“Samuel Butler, dans son livre Erewhon-, raconte l’histoire d’un étranger de passage à Trappellune qui se fait jeter en prison parce qu’il possède une montre. Indigné par cette décision, il apprend peu à peu que des mesures draconiennes y empêchent l’introduction des machines. D’après les Trappelluniens, un simple chronomètre, par une foudroyante évolution darwinienne, pourrait engendrer des monstres qui domineraient les hommes. Les habitants n’y sont pas techniquement arriérée. C’est volontairement qu’ils ont détruit toutes les machines avancées pour ne conserver que de simples outils seuls compatibles avec la pureté de leurs moeurs.
Le monde de Nullepart créé par Butler n’est pas une utopie. C’est notre univers intellectuel dont nous avons, en effet, éradiqué toute technique, où l’on punit sévèrement ceux qui s’intéressent à l’âme des machines en les enfermant dans un monde à part, celui des ingénieurs, des techniciens et des technocrates.”
http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/livres/v_chap.html
April 5th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
academics can be so cool :-)
first - thanks for taking the time to answer. I know that you’re working on your thesis but it’s because I know you and respect your opinion that I want to get your input.
“Why people continuously insist that free software should not be associated with social justice?” Hmm - I didn’t think that many people think that. I hear about SourceAfrica and SourceAsia and Penguin Days and Communautique + Koumbit. Everyone that I hear seems to be saying the two are perfect together.
I know that you are not simplifying the relationships between the two groups - but I think it’s super important to investigate and explain those tensions a whole lot more.
I’m not sure if I believe in the word “technology” any more. So, no. I don’t believe that we can simply talk about technology. Technology to me is starting to mean a process arrested in time. A movement with emotion that somehow was stopped mid-motion and has gained physical form. So I don’t believe that we can just talk about it as a resource.
But I’m not trying to argue with me. I know that you have more in your head than you have the time to explain here. All we’re doing is showing each other some pointers about what’s in our heads about this. Which is great - but not grounds to construct an argument.
Hopefully I’ll see you at the laika 5-7’s ;-) Good luck with your thesis.
April 7th, 2006 at 9:27 am
mike if you have some time you should try to read heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology.” It’s a very dense, very difficult read, but there are some very important insights in there. Here’s a summary (which I don’t totally agree with):
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~zuern/demo/heidegger/
In this work Heidegger argues that technology is a tool to achieve certain goals; it’s main objective is to order the universe so that useful work may be done. But it’s more than that - in the modern age, technology has come to define HUMANS as a means to an end as well; as part of the ordered system that should be used to perform work - and that’s dangerous, for various reasons.
His proposed solution is to look at technology as art.
That’s a pretty short & unfair description, but you should really try to read the essay itself, or at least the summary/explanation linked above.