[iDC] Online Sociability and the Politics of Care

[Trebor Scholz]

Dear all,

What follows is a short report about yesterday's panel "Out-Cooperating
the Empire" with Christoph Spehr, Andrej  Grubaic, Brooke Lehman , and
Jim Fleming at The Left Forum at Cooper Union was productive, relaxed
and in good spirit. Our discussion picked up more and more energy
throughout the almost 2 hours of exchange.

You can listen to audio recordings of the panel at:
<http://collectivate.net/journalisms/2006/3/13/online-sociability-and-
the-politics-of-care.html> There are also links and images here.

The title of the panel was inspired by what I called "out-collaboration"
in relation to contributions to the free encyclopedia Wikipedia.  
Some hundred thousand volunteers added one million entries to Wikipedia
(as of last week) while Britannica's pay service entails some 250.000
articles. We are well aware and can live with (and jointly fix) the
problems with Wikipedia. Christoph asked what an offline community based
on the experiences of Wikipedia would look like. People care about it.
They care for the project and want it to succeed. In a similar way you
cannot organize your block without caring for your neighbor. (The
politics of care.) Take online sociability as inspiration for offline
group formation.  

Christoph gave a brief introduction before showing a part of his video
"On Rules and Monsters." Andrej linked the idea of cooperation back to
Kropotkin's notion of mutual aid and suggested a look back in American
history to find moments of free cooperation. Jim talked about the book
"The Art of Free Cooperation" that Geert Lovink and I will publish with
Autonomedia soon. He also looked at the idea of applying models inspired
by open source software development to government and the cultural
sector.  

Is there cooperation outside of the Empire? Are there new structures in
the old society? Where is the "unseen monster of cooperation"? Where are
the networked counter-institutions: institutions of people's own making,
mutual aid networks, and help networks? The panel agreed that working
together is by no means an exclusively subversive behavior. The
corporate battle cry is "Cooperate or Die!" Brooke emphasized that even
"alternative" sharing is nothing all that special : "Sharing is what we
do." Many pertinent questions came up in the conversation that followed.

What are seeds of alternative economies in the societal underwood? How
can the online many identify their cooperative endeavors as
revolutionary? A professor in the audience and I recounted our
experiences with students who were laying on the floor laughing when we
talked about "anti-piracy" campaigns by the music industry. Paying for
music just seemed outright ridiculous to most students. However, they
certainly don't think of their actions as "revolutionary" or
"subversive." They simply know that it is illegal but that they get away
with it. (Can 57 million people downloading music illegally be all
criminals?) Christoph pointed to a conference in Frankfurt with the
title "If you are downloading mp3s, you are downloading communism." But
students who are largely not even left-identified, would certainly find
this idea absurd. They share with personal rather than collective gain
in mind. Sharing is really a by-product here. The question of anonymity
was raised in the audience. How can we be accountable, and thus foster
trust within online groups while at the same time defend online
anonymity as a value. (Internet2 with its IPv6.0 refers to this as
"access management.")

In the United States, more and more people live in the socially
isolating context of American suburbia. Can sociable web media help
here? Or, do they merely lead to online connectedness while the much
needed face-to-face meetings don't take place? Dara Greenwald who
co-facilitated the panel described interactions in the computer labs of
RPI where students are busy interacting in online games but have no time
for a good old face-to-face dinner. She also pointed to Tad Hirsch's
project "Speak Easy."

How does race and gender impact the efficacy of these
cooperation-enhancing web tools? To what extent does a lack of media
literacy and media authorship skills as well as missing access to the
Internet prevent people from contributing t participatory online
environments? Is online sociability a playground only for white, middle
class males? How can we discuss the potentials of social networked tools
without getting romantic or cynical. Christoph pointed out that no one
tool should be associated with revolution. He also emphasized the
importance of conflict and negotiation of rules for cooperation. I
pointed to Warschauer's findings about technology and social inclusion
as well as Coyne's reflections on the web-based gift economy. I also
discussed Putnam's "Bowling Alone" and the fact that civic participation
in the US is on the decline while online self-help forum blossom.
Christoph was critical of the so called gift economy in the commons and
referred to it as "gift industry." I commented on the hilarity with
which the term "gift" is used in American culture (think: free gift). We
discussed problems with "free culture" such as hierarchies of exchange
that open up within the gift economy. I emphasize the issue of property
as central to the discussion of the commons. Each file contributed to
archive.org, for example, turns its property value by falling under a
GNU or CC license. The commons is split between the fenced-in, gated
communities and the unregulated terrains in which peer production
(Benkler) does take place. Perhaps an approach that looks at parallel
economies rather than revolution is more realistic in the US.  

How can social online tools become locations of any kind of resistance
if any potentially interesting tool turns corporate the moment it gets
vaguely successful? Temptations that are brought forth are often
bandwwidth, ease of use, convenience, and the offer ofa fairly wide
range of free services. But these "free" offers come with a price.
GoogleVideo is less used than YouTube because it only allows you to
watch uploaded in the google window. YouTube gives you the option of
seeing your video in a neutral frame. But a few days ago YouTube was
bought by MTV. MySpace is now in Rupert Murdoch's hands. Google acquired
Writely as part of their online vision. Blogger is of course in Google's
pocket for a long time. Del.icio.us and Flickr are now owned by Yahoo.
Perhaps our alternative economies and actions have to stick like hybrid
parasites on the chest of the corporate media landscape?

best,
Trebor