access does not = good
It has been said before, and it needs to be said again.
It’s not like sharing is the highest virtue. Whether it’s good or not all depends on circumstances.
I’ve been expressing my reservations about this with lots of practicioners/friends around me. I had a great conversation 6 months ago with Hugh (working to create audio copies of texts) at a yulblog meeting, Brett (big creative commons guy), and Tracey (works with cartographers and archivists).
And Stéphane Couture just sent me this The Californian Ideology. Here’s the short version:
There is an emerging global orthodoxy concerning the relation between technology and society: the Californian Ideology.
On the West Coast, skilled workers and entrepreneurs in the hypermedia industries form the ‘virtual class’. Like the ‘labour aristocracy’ of the last century, core personnel in the media, computing and telecoms experience both the insecurities and rewards of the marketplace. The Californian Ideology reflects this ambiguity by simultaneously advocating the New Left utopia of the electronic agora and the New Right’s vision of the electronic marketplace.
However both left- and right-wing anarchists ignore the key role of taxpayers’ dollars in the creation of the PC and the Net. The exclusion of public institutions from the construction of cyberspace can only increase the fragmentation of American society into antagonistic, racially-determined classes.
Within Europe, it is now necessary for us to assert the necessity for an enlightened mixed economy - rather than to copy the dogmas of the Californian ideologues. Only then can we fully grasp the Promethean opportunities of the next stage of modernity.
I’m not sure what they’re saying about the importance of taxpayer’s dollars, but it’s a critical stance towards importing dogma without questioning it- which I deeply appreciate.
I mean, I got into this whole thing because of that wired article**, but it’s not like I just swallow the whole thing.
**can’t find a link to it - you know it - that one with the smiley face.
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This is a good place to mention that I’m feeling increasingly uncomfortable in my relationship with technology. It’s gone from feeling ambivalent, to feeling, in some ways, noxious. I’m not sure what to do about it - but I’m listening to it. I wonder if it may be significant that Ethan wrote this post now as well -considering he is so immersed in technology and has spent the last ?? years promoting concepts like access.
It makes me glad that at least part of the goal of wifidog is to render inaccessible. I haven’t thought about that enough and how we could/should implement that. I’ve got this post sitting in my draft box on forgetting that I need to put out as well as working more on the restrictive and exclusive possibilities that we have in front of us at ISF/Wifidog.
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oh yeah - btw: a part of the early inspiration for the locative + local community part of ISF and thereby of wifidog (both qualities can be properly understood as restrictive) came from julian bleekers work (wifi art cache and wifibedouin). I had the chance to publicly tell him so / thank him on a panel we were both on at the MDCN conference. My presentation was called “Priviliging the Local”.
April 14th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
hmm… access allows us to build new public institutions, outside of the constraints (and corruption) of governments.
for instance, i consider librivox a public institution; though a public institution of a new kind. ditto project gutenberg, wikipedia etc. etc.
access shifts the ability to make public institutions - away from governments, to the rest of us. of course we could do it before, but we can build new things now that we never could have previously (eg librivox).
that being said, i’ve been having a similar reaction to my computer lately. I’ve always been a bit of a luddite; though I have been drawn right into tech of late. But I’ve thought recently about just smashing my computer & leaving the internet age behind & just reading more books, and writing a couple.
on the other hand my little ibook allowed me to start librivox: that is, it’s a tool to do something I thought was worthwhile. The important thing (for me) is not to get all ga ga about tools, but about what you can do with them.
time to go for a walk in the sun.
April 14th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
?? = 13, by my count. I started working on getting internet connections for an NGO in Accra in 1993… :-) I’m not sure I’m having directly parallel feelings to yours - I believe that access is a critical issue - but I also believe it’s an artist’s choice whether to make something accessible or not. There’s a tendency sometimes to assume that restricting access is an evil thing to do - my post was an attempt to argue that sometimes it’s a critical piece of artistic intent. Doesn’t mean I’m in favor of record companies putting ludicrious DRM on CDs that musicians might want to circulate, but does mean that if an artist decided to release a disk with egregious DRM as part of an artistic statement, I’d try to consider that statement in the context of the piece…
April 14th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
What an excellent set of articles - the main + the critiques!
Shooting from the hip, i repeat that daycare is still more revolutionary than the internet! We got the internet but we ain’t got daycare!
April 18th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Wow, I think you’re spot on…and I think it’s only going to get worse as information technology increasingly infiltrates those spheres of our lives we had previously thought of as autonomous and sovereign. Y’know, stuff like spirituality, intimacy, solitude…
This is why I made the right to opt out, always and at all times, one of the cornerstones of the principles for the ethical development of ubiquitous systems I’ve advanced elsewhere. But in reading your piece - and Ethan’s lyrical discussion of DeMaria’s powerful “Lightning Field” - I almost wonder if that doesn’t quite go far enough. The “right to opt out” almost cedes too much to the assumption that everything else is “in.”
I, for one, hope the pendulum begins to swing back from Doctorovian techno-utopianism, as people get a better sense for what we’re giving away. Many of us in technology have submitted to a form of triumphalist bullying these last few years, a particularly pernicious flavor of determinism that says “Here’s the future, deal with it.” I’m not necessarily sure it’s isomorphic with this supposed “Californian consensus,” but it’s real, and I hope we’re beginning to learn how to push back against it.
April 19th, 2006 at 12:14 am
“The “right to opt out” almost cedes too much”
Yes!
“I, for one, hope the pendulum begins to swing back from Doctorovian techno-utopianism, as people get a better sense for what we’re giving away”
and Yes again!
sweet
sigh - now i’m all riled up and I should be going to bed ;-)