[iDC] Re: A critique of sociable web media

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Trebor,

I still have serious problems with your point of view.

As I see it, we have sharing platforms, operating largely outside a monetary
circuit, and the attention being monetized in order to fund the platform and
make a profit. Focalising all your critical and militant strategies on
convincing volunteers that their very act of sharing is alienated, is a
losing proposition, especially in the context of the larger context of real
and terrible exploitation.

You seem to imply that the very act of owning a platform is immoral, and in
my opinion, this equates markets with capitalism.

In case of communities for shared individual expression, characterized by
generally weak links, where a minority might be in the game for gain,
revenue sharing is a legitimate, but not an obligatory issue, since it
destroys the non-reciprocity and thereby the highest motivations. So in
effect, you want to capitalize sharing.

A better strategy is to defend the commons against the bad practices of the
''owners'", while at the same time, mobilizing peer production projects to
build distributed platforms without central ownership. But it is far from
certain these will be more efficient and competitive with the hybrid
projects.

In case of real peer communities involved in common creation, lots of them
have their own platforms, and the real issue there is how to make the
projects sustainable without direct link between the production and the
income.

In the specific case where the production is for the market, and cannot be
qualified as non-reciprocal peer production, cooperatives are a natural and
well tested format to operate with equity,

Michel


On 1/1/70, Trebor Scholz <trebor at thing.net> wrote:
>
> In Internet time I'm far behind, I know. Pat Kane argues, and I agree,
> that ads are often secondary to the social online experience. Let's just see
> the thing with all its
> complexities.
>
> Pat quoted Virno: "Contemporary capitalist production mobilizes to its
> advantage all the attitudes characterizing our species, putting to work life
> as such." [1] That's it: leisure,
> fun, and all that affective activity are commoditized to multiply the
> wealth of the very few on the backs of the very many.
>
> The paradox is that those who are getting used, get a lot out of it. It's
> like working a McJob while at the same time getting lots of dates, making
> friends, establishing some
> micro-fame, and becoming creative.
>
> Or, take Benkler's argument that the act of becoming a speaker (on blogs)
> is an empowering experience, which may lead to political involvement in real
> life. At the same time
> that this person is politicized, the corporate context-provider is getting
> richer of this very speech act.
>
> Most American teenagers could not care less about all this because for
> them capitalism is inevitable. Such thinking inside the box, in my opinion,
> does not make the core sites
> of the sociable web (Google, Del.icio.us, Yahoo, eBay, LastFM, iTunes,
> Skype, Technorati) any less amoral.
>
> The exploitation of labor, mind you, is not transhistorical; it is exactly
> not some gene that we are born with. Capitalism is surely not a human
> inevitability. There is nothing
> natural about it. [2]
>
> What would lead us to "communal unshackling"? First of all, there needs to
> be an awareness of the fact that we are being used. Currently, I do not see
> much protest or even
> conflict in this regard. But that will change soon. Geographically spread
> communities will ask for 1) an appropriate share of the created monetary
> value of their creative labor, 2)
> transparency of the rules of the game: Who owns the uploaded content?
> (Give us control over our content.) What exactly do you do with the data we
> provide in our profiles?,
> and 3) support decentralization of giant context-providers. [3]
>
> Whether or not you are with me on this, will largely depend on your belief
> in the possibility of societal alternatives to this rotten system.
>
> ts
>
> [1]
> http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/01/17/2225239&mode=nested&tid=9
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhistorical
> [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Data
>
> Howard Rheingold pointed me also to this post on Buzzmachine
>
> http://www.buzzmachine.com/2005/10/26/who-owns-the-wisdom-of-the-crowd-the-crowd/
>
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