[iDC] The Ethics of Participation

[keith at thememorybank.co.uk]

Trebor,

I opened your message thinking that it would be about the ethics of
participation on this list. After all it is not long since you sent one
lamenting that conversation seemed to have died here. As it is, I am
grateful for the numerous links, but your positive recommendations for an
e of p could be summarized in a paragraph or less. I wonder how many
readers would persevere long enough to discover your conclusion: we should
keep lists like this one going rather than sell out to the forces of
capital concentration.

I can't help connect this contribution to the energetic thread on
'continuous partial attention' which I followed with great interest, not
least as proof that conversation has not died on the list. Your
introduction of the idea of ethics has nudged me into mentioning something
that seemed relevant to that thread, but somewhat marginal. I have been
considering for some time an essay with the title, 'The death of
reciprocity'. In my time as moderator of a list, one of the most common
complaints was from members who posted a comment and had no reply. They
wondered if they had been cut off. I used to say, 'If you stood up in a
bar and made an uninvited speech of that length, how many people do you
think would still be listening by the time you reached the end?'
Techniques of launching a conversation are quite subtle, in this medium or
any other.

Levi-Strauss said that reciprocity is a human universal. But my bet is
that it was invented by agricultural societies and lasted only into the
first stage of industrialization. The age of the internet has more in
common with foraging societies for whom sharing is an active principle,
but reciprocity generally is not. So one question might be, Is an ethics
possible without reciprocity? For surely granting ones attention is not
usually an ethical matter.

Returning to ethics of lists like this one, my experience as an organizer
of networks is that people will participate as long as the network gives
them a chance to do something they can' t do anywhere else. When it fails
to do so, they leave or just become passive. I gave up berating lapsed
members with their unethical behaviour in failing to reciprocate the
opportunity I had given them and learned to live with their temporary
loyalty.

Fortunately for the list, a number of people have come out of the woodwork
since New Year to say it does something for them. I guess I must be one of
them or I wouldn't be here.

Keith



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