[iDC] disagreement by deletion/addition

Paul B. Hartzog paulbhartzog at gmail.com
Thu Dec 6 17:31:18 UTC 2007


conversation starter:

Deletionism, or Disagreement by Deletion

long time ago in my naive days
Sunir Shah and I got talking about what was good about wikis.

one of the key things was:
1) disagreement by deletion
vs.
2) disagreement by addition

DbD was the old-school political philosophy of exclusive practice,
i.e. deciding who is "in" and who is "out"

DbA was the new-school of pluralization, pluralism, and conversation,
i.e. including perspectival acknowledgement as part of the process

I actually used to lecture that this was a KEY reason why wikis are
politically revolutionary, which is that by using DbA they
1) mesh with a multivocal world
2) function on inclusion instead of fragmentation (echo chamber)

Now we see the "new" spaces, turning into "old" spaces
by adopting the same rules as the old.

Question:
Is this a historical inevitability.  Will new open spaces that emerge,
ALWAYS become co-opted by the old rules systems?  Will they
ALWAYS be forced (as they scale?) to adopt the old rules?

thoughts?

-p

--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.PaulBHartzog.org
http://www.panarchy.com
PaulBHartzog at PaulBHartzog.org
PaulBHartzog at panarchy.com
PHartzog at umich.edu
--------------------------------------------------------
The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
                 --Muriel Rukeyser

See differently, then you will act differently.
                 --Paul B. Hartzog
--------------------------------------------------------


More information about the iDC mailing list